The Report

Changing our ways?
Behaviour change and the climate crisis
The report of the Cambridge Sustainability Commission
on Scaling Behaviour Change

The Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour ChangePeter Newell, Freddie Daley & Michelle Twena
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do
not necessarily reflect those of the KR foundation which supported the work of
the Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change.

Author biosPeter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex
and co-founder and research director of the Rapid Transition Alliance. His recent
research focuses on the political economy of low carbon energy transitions, but
he has undertaken research, advocacy and consultancy work on different aspects
of climate change for over 25 years. He has worked at the universities of Sussex,
Oxford, Warwick and East Anglia in the UK where he was Professor of Development
Studies, and FLACSO Argentina. He also sits on the board of directors ofGreenpeace UK and is a member of the advisory board of the Greenhouse thinktank. He sits on the board of the journals Global Environmental Politics, Journalof Peasant Studies, Journal of Environment and Development, European Journalof International Relations and the Earth Systems Governance Journal. His
single and co-authored books include Climate for Change; The Effectivenessof EU Environmental Policy; Governing Climate Change; Globalization and theEnvironment: Capitalism, Ecology and Power; Climate Capitalism; Transnational
Climate Change Governance; Global Green Politics; and Power Shift: The Global
Political Economy of Energy Transitions.
Freddie Daley is a Research Assistant at the University of Sussex and a
campaigner for Green New Deal UK. His research focuses are sustainablebehaviour change, supply-side mitigation policy and energy transitions.
Michelle Twena is a Research Associate at the University of Sussex. She has a PhD
in EU environmental policymaking from the University of East Anglia, UK, and has
published on a range of topics exploring climate and environmental governanceand policy, with a particular focus on institutional innovation, experimental
learning, and transformation. She has worked at the Center for International
Climate Research in Oslo (CICERO), the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, Norway,
University of East Anglia, UK, and CARE International, Dar es Salaam, where
she has undertaken research on climate impacts and adaptation, international
climate negotiations and agreements, climate-poverty reduction strategies andsocial exclusion, for the European Commission, Norwegian Research Council, andNorwegian Ministries for the Environment and Foreign Affairs.

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Acknowledgements
We are immensely grateful to the KR foundation in supporting the work of theCommission. We are also thankful to the board of the foundation for feedback
on initial findings and draft report. In particular, we would like to thank Kate
Power for her guidance, support and input in helping us steer the process to a
successful conclusion. We would like to thank the 31 members of the Cambridge
Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change for their time, expertiseand insights, as well as the invaluable comments on the first draft of this report.
We are very grateful to the Boundless Roots Community with whom we organiseda webinar discussion to gain key insights from practitioners and to Leila Hoballah,
Anna Birney and Sophia Courtney for helping to facilitate this. We would also liketo thank Professor Tim Jackson for suggestions about how best to manage theCommission’s work and feedback on an earlier version of the report.

Plane image: John McArthur, Mississauga, Canada Dutch bicycles: Shyam, Delft, The Netherlands

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3Members of the Cambridge Sustainability
Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, UK.
Dr. Lewis Akenji, Hot or Cool Institute, Berlin, Germany.
Dr. Solange Alfinito, University of Brasilia-UnB, Brazil.
Dr. Manisha Anantharaman, Saint Mary’s College of California, USA.
Professor Kevin Anderson, University of Manchester, UK.
Nicole van den Berg, Utrecht University, Netherlands.
Dr. Anna Birney, Forum for the Future UK.
Dr. Kate Burningham, University of Surrey, UK.
Dr. Stuart Capstick, Cardiff University, UK.
Professor Doris Fuchs, WWU – University of Muenster, Germany.
Dr. Heide Hackmann, CEO of the International Science Council, Paris France.
Dr. Rob Hopkins, Transition Network, UK.
Professor Tim Kasser, Professor Emeritus, Knox College, USA.
Dario Kenner, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, UK.
Dr. Ryu Koide, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan.
Dr. Renée Lertzman, Inside Out, USA.
Professor Julia Mildorfova Leventon, Czech Globe, Czechia.
Dr. Wenling Liu, Beijing Institute of Technology Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, China.
Dr. Sylvia Lorek, Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Germany.
Dr. Jennie Moore, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Canada.
Leo Murray, director of innovation at the climate NGO Possible, UK.
Dr. Edward Mungai, Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Climate Innovation Centre (KCIC), Kenya.
Dr. Paula Owen, CEO of Green Gumption, UK.
Ruth Potts, Schumacher College, UK.
Professor Bill Rees, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Professor Juliet Schor, Boston College, USA.
Andrew Simms, New Weather Institute & Rapid Transition Alliance, UK.
Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, UK.
Sally Weintrobe, Climate Psychology Alliance UK and Chair International Psychoanalytic Association’s
Climate Committee.
Professor Emeritus Frances Westley, University of Waterloo, Canada.
Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, Head of CAST Centre, University of Bath, UK.

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4List of abbreviations
BAU

Business-as-usual

CDR

Carbon Dioxide Removal (technologies)

CSA

Community Supported Agriculture

DTC

Direct to Consumer

EEIOA

Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis

EFA

Ecological footprint analysis

EV

Electric Vehicles

GHG

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

IPCC

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

LCA

Life Cycle Analysis

SBC

Sustainable Behaviour Change

SCC

Strong Sustainable Consumption

SCMOs

Sustainable Community Movement Organisations

SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals

SES

Socio-ecological systems

SUVSports Utility Vehicle

UNFCCC

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

WSC

Weak Sustainable Consumption

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction

7

Background and Context

8

Influencing behaviour

12

2. The scale of the Challenge

15

One Planet Living

16

Defining parameters

16

Table 1: Defining fair shares for sustainability

18

Social dimensions

19

Table 2: Sustainable consumption hotspots

21

3. Understanding behaviour change

26‘Nudge’ theory

26

Psychological approaches

28

Sociology and social practice32

Political economy

35

4. Leverage and tipping points

40

Table 3: The chain of consumption

46

Covid-19 as a tipping point?

48

5. Future intervention points

53

i. One planet living: ‘Strong’ global sustainability

55

ii. Just transitions: Economic and social (climate) justice56

iii. Rebalancing political systems

60

Table 4: Institutions for increasing accountability and deepening democracy

61

iv. Driving social transformation

62

v. Focusing on behaviour hotspots

66

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1
Introduction
Behaviours change. That much weknow. And if we were in any doubt
about the speed with which they canchange and the scale of their effects, theCovid-19 pandemic has served as a sharp
reminder. But beyond such times of crisis,behaviours also change at key moments
in our lives, when we have children,
retire or move home. They are shaped bya range of family, community, regionaland broader societal influences andphysical infrastructures. But there is little
consensus about how best to deliberately
shape and directly influence everyday
behaviours around transport, food andenergy use in more sustainable directions
and where responsibility and agency toeffect that change lies.
This is particularly true of discussions about how
best to scale behaviour change. Government policy,
economic incentives and broader cultural change
all have a role to play. But can they achieve thescale of change over short-term time frames within
which ‘transformative action’ needs to take place
to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement?
In climate and broader sustainability terms, somebehaviours matter more than others. Carbon
footprints are closely correlated with income levels,
highlighting the need for targeted and differential
strategies within and between societies. Tools,
strategies, levers and entry points, to be effective,
have to recognise important cultural differences,
uneven capacity to affect and enact change andvery different levels of responsibility. There are few
one-size-fits-all solutions to delivering change at
this scale across and between divided and unequal
societies. Multi-pronged approaches are required.

Photo by Yann Arthus-Bertrand / Spectral Q

This report of the Cambridge Sustainability
Commission on Scaling Sustainable Behaviour
Change draws on research syntheses about
the potential contributions of behaviour change
towards climate and sustainability goals to
attain the goals of the Paris Agreement. The
commission focused on the state of knowledge andempirical evidence of leverage points for societal
transformations at national and regional scales.
The report provides examples of past evidence
and future options of major shifts in lifestyles andvalues, providing evidence, where possible, ofleverage points for deep social transformations.
In addition to a review of academic theory andevidence of how to achieve systemic behaviouralchange and social transformations at large
scale, and in-depth interviews with 31 leading
experts from a range of disciplines and regions,a collaborative review was undertaken withexperienced practitioners from civil society toensure that, as far as possible, the assessment
is grounded in practice and can be used as aspringboard for developing ambitious action.

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7

Background and Context
Robust evidence on the role of behavioural change
in societal system transformations and empiricalevidence of effective leverage points for societal
change are needed to guide a range of actors,
from philanthropy to policy and civil society, intheir quest to identify high-impact and scalable
initiatives for rapid changes towards sustainablehuman development. Yet clearly attributing
agency responsibility is a fraught and controversial
exercise and different parameters and benchmarks
generate very different estimates about behaviours
and the scope to change them.

72%

According to some estimates,
households are responsiblefor 72% of global greenhousegas emissions as a result of
their consumption behaviour

One the one hand, for example, according to someestimates, households are responsible for 72% of
global greenhouse gas emissions as a result of
their consumption behaviour (Hertwich & Peters2009). Ivanova et al. similarly show that around
two-thirds of global GHG emissions are ‘directly
and indirectly’ related to household consumption,
where the global average is about 6 tCO2eq/cap(2020:1). Research suggests that the opportunity
for household carbon reductions could besubstantial. An interdisciplinary study of 17 action
types concluded that the implementation of themost successful behavioural programmes could
reduce U.S. household carbon emissions by 20%
by 2020, an amount equal to all of the emissions
from France (Dietz et al., 2009), while Moll et al.
(2005) estimate that 70 to 80% of national energy
use in the United Kingdom relates to household
activities. According to Cafaro, individuals cansave huge amounts of carbon in what he calls a“behavioural mitigation wedge” (Cafaro, 2011, Dietzet al., 2009). This analysis suggests that measures
such as avoiding eating meat or reducing air travelalone can bring about savings of as much as 15
billion tonnes by 2060 (Cafaro, 2011). Grubler et al.,

1

15

GIGATONS
Measures such as avoiding
eating meat or reducing air travelalone can bring about savingsof as much as 15 billion tonnes(gigatons) by 2060

meanwhile, explore an alternative mitigation
scenario which includes lifestyle changes,
accelerated adoption of renewable energy,
agricultural intensification, and lab grown meat(2018). These reduce overall energy demand by
40% from today’s levels, which in turn reduces theburden on overall supply and makes it possible toreach the 1.5 °C target without relying on negativeemissions technologies (Grubler et al., 2018). Van
Vuuren et al. found that by combining lifestylechange, reduction of other greenhouse gases, andrapid electrification through renewable energy, it
was possible to reduce, but not eliminate, the useof Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies(2018).1 From this perspective, individual behaviour
undoubtedly drives both energy-intensive lifestyles
and a large share of global carbon emissions, and isalso a potential source of large, low-cost emissions
reductions (Stern et al., 2016). This makes it a
critical factor in achieving the 1.5 °C goal under theParis Agreement.
Similar degrees of impact from consumption apply
to the whole range of SDGs when we consider
impacts on land, forests and marine environmentsof everyday patterns of consumption by wealthiercitizens in particular. This is not just about climatechange, therefore, and as we argue below, efforts
to radically decarbonize through behaviour change
need to be cognisant of their impact on otherenvironmental problems such as biodiversity loss,
waste, and water pollution, where a narrow focus
on decarbonisation may obscure unintended
consequences if a more holistic approach is nottaken. This might be the case with regard to theelectrification of transport (without considering theintensification of mining lithium and cobalt) andmoves to plant-based diets (if pursued throughmonoculture industrial agriculture), for example.

Earlier studies on reducing footprints by factors of four or five also made the case that economically affordable, technologically viable solutions to
get to 80% emissions reductions were already available twenty years ago (von Weizsäcker et al. 1997 & 2009).

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8

Science in HD, UMass Crop Animal Research and Education Center in South Deerfield, MA.

Others are more critical about such estimates
because they include the entire life-cycle of theconsumption of goods and services from cradle tograve, and give consumers full responsibility foremissions, regardless of whether or not they are
actually in a position to influence the supply chainof environmentally relevant resource consumption(e.g. in the production process). In sum, thisallocates a much higher share of environmental
impacts to households than they will be able toactively influence in reality.

If further evidence were required, a report by
Creutzig et al. (2016) found that dietary shift has
the potential to reduce emissions in the agricultural
sector by more than 70% by 2055 based on BAU
scenarios (see also Green et al., 2015 for theUK). The 2019 ‘1.5 Degree Lifestyle’ report alsoemphasises reducing meat and dairy consumption,
switching to non-fossil-based energy, and reducing
car use and air travel. Taken together, food, housing
and transportation comprise approximately 75% of
total carbon footprints (Akenji et al., 2019).

Yet these estimates do inform climate actionplans. A report by Williamson et al. (2018),
building on the earlier ‘Drawdown’ plan,2 identifies
and ranks 30 (of the original 80) ‘Drawdown
recommendations’ that are dependent upon
behaviour changes at the individual level. They
categorize the recommendations into fourdomains: food, agriculture and land management,
transportation, and energy and materials. The
top recommendations include: (1) reducing foodwaste, (2) plant rich diets, (3) electric vehicles,and (4) rooftop solar. When taken together, thethirty actions could mitigate 19.9 to 36.8% of global
emissions between 2020 and 2050 (Williamson
et al., 2018). Reinforcing the second of theserecommendations, a Lancet study produced ananalysis of the optimal diet for human health andwhat is required for environmental sustainability,
concluding that we need to cut the vast majority ofmeat out of our diet by 2050 (Willett et al., 2019).

Though we do not return to the theme in the report,
it is worth noting that at the most personal end of
assigning individual responsibility, one controversial
element that ecologists mention (Porritt 2020), andwhich is drawn attention to by other writers andactivists (advocating ‘birth strikes’), is population
control.3 The decision to have fewer children or
no children at all, according to some estimates,is the most significant way of making a personal
contribution to avoiding emissions. For example,
according to one study, having one fewer childprevents 58.6 tonnes of carbon emissions every
year. That compares with living car-free (whichsaves 2.4 tonnes), avoiding a transatlantic return
flight (1.6 tonnes), or eating a plant-based diet (0.82)(Wynes & Nicholas, 2017). Having one fewer child,
Wynes and Nicholas argue, is vastly more significant
than any other choice that an individual could make.
Another study found that having fewer children
was almost 20 times more important than any otherchoice an individual can make.4

2

https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/project-drawdown-100-solutions-to-reverse-global-warming/

3

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/25/why-a-generation-is-choosing-to-be-child-free?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

4

https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2009/jul/family-planning-major-environmental-emphasis

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9Such claims have been questioned, however,regarding the methodology used to calculate
emissions,5 and reignite old controversies about thedangers of inviting regressive birth control measures
including forced sterilisations and other measures
aimed at controlling women’s bodies. Additionally,
there is the thorny question of attribution of
responsibility for emissions if it is assumed thatparents are held to account for the unrealised‘emission entitlements’ of future generations.
Taken together these studies point to the huge
potential of behaviour change to achieve the aims of
the Paris Agreement. The means of realising thesepotential contributions is less well understood,
however. Behaviour change has not been givenhigh priority in current climate policy strategies.
Despite its huge potential, sustainable behaviour
is often downplayed in debates about climate
mitigation. In the international climate policy arena,
behaviour change has often been neglected andovershadowed by a focus on technology and market
mechanisms. This has side-lined a greater focus onchanging consumption and demand-side options, inaddition to supply-side measures.
The idea that sustainable behaviour requires
changes at both the individual and political levels,and that these two areas are not only linked, butalso reinforce one another, is gaining traction.
The 1.5 Degree Lifestyles report states: “thesheer magnitude of change required for a shift
towards 1.5-degree lifestyles can only be achieved
through a combination of system-wide changes
and a groundswell of actions from individuals andhouseholds” (Akenji et al., 2019). Lifestyles canbe targeted ‘from above’ through policies andattempts to shape infrastructures and choicearchitectures, as well as emerge organically ‘frombelow’ from autonomous actions on the partof civil society and households. This implies a
combination of cultural change and shifting social
norms, alongside interventions by institutions andthrough the market as part of a broad ecosystemof transformation. This suggests the need forunderstanding pathways to change which combine
top-down and bottom-up, state, market and civilsociety-led transformations (Scoones et al., 2015).

“high confidence” that “pathways that include low
energy demand (…), low material consumption,and low GHG-intensive food consumption havethe most pronounced synergies and the lowest
number of trade-offs with respect to sustainable
development” (IPCC SR15, 2018:21). Likewise, in thelatest World Energy Outlook a scenario for primaryenergy demand imagines falls by 17% between 2019and 2030 even though the global economy is twiceas large where ‘Electrification, efficiency gains andbehaviour changes are central to achieving this’.6
The 2020 UN Emissions Gap report meanwhile,for the first time, included a chapter dedicatedto ‘equitable low carbon lifestyles’. It calls for‘Reforming consumption behaviour’, noting that
although: two-thirds of global emissions are linked
to private households, when using consumptionbased accounting. Developed nations, in particular
the wealthy, bear greatest responsibility. The
combined emissions of the richest 1% of the global
population account for more than the poorest 50%.
This group will need to reduce its footprint by atleast a factor of 30 to stay in line with the Paris
Agreement targets. The poorest 50% could actually
increase their footprint several times.7

The combined emissionsof the richest 1% of the
global populationaccount for more thanthe poorest 50%.

30%

1

%

50%

This group will need to reduce its
footprint by at least a factor of
30 to stay in line with the Paris
Agreement targets.

There is evidence of a recent shift in approach
towards behaviour change as it gains theincreasing attention of policymakers. In their 1.5 °C
report published in 2018, the IPCC noted with5

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab213

6

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2020/achieving-net-zero-emissions-by-2050#abstract

7

https://www.unep.org/interactive/emissions-gap-report/2020/

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10Keeping global warming well below 2°C and aimingat halting warming at 1.5°C requires halving
greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. According to
Akenji et al. (2019), this means reducing
consumption-based emissions to a per capita
lifestyle footprint of approximately 2.5 tonnes ofgreenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and 0.7 tonnes
per person by 2050, if not sooner. This would
require a considerable transformation given that a
1.5 tonne carbon lifestyle demands changes to foodsystems, a reduction in household energy use, carownership, and air miles travelled in the order ofthree quarters or more (Moore, 2015). It is
unsurprising that politicians, businesses and NGOs
are not clamouring to reflect on, let alone act upon,
the political, economic, social and cultural
implications of this. As President Bush Snr.
famously stated at the Rio conference in 1992 ‘The
American way of life is not up for negotiation’.8 Yet
it is a way of life, increasingly emulated andpursued the world over, that very much needs to bere-negotiated if climate chaos is to be avoided.
Policy can affect such change through a range oftools which include regulation, the provision of
infrastructure, market mechanisms and financial
rewards (Hardman et al., 2017) and public-facing
information campaigns targeted at a range ofsectors. For example, this will include support
to more plant-based diets given that the reportmakes clear that livestock are responsible formore GHG emissions than all other food sources(up to 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions).
Globally, savings of CO2 equivalent of between 29
and 70% are possible by moving towards a more
plant-based diet including measures aimed at
reducing the demand for meat and other livestock
products, bringing other co-benefits such as
reducing consumption in line with human healthguidelines (Willett et al., 2019). Likewise, efforts to
reduce food waste need to be stepped up given the
climate impacts of food production, of which a third
currently gets wasted (FAO, 2011; 2019).
For industry, depending on the industrial sector,
mitigation consistent with 1.5ºC would mean areduction of final energy demand by one-third,
an increase of the rate of recycling of materials,
and the development of a circular economy (IPCC
SR15, 2018:335). There remains huge untapped
potential to realise gains in energy efficiency andenergy conservation. In the transport sector, forexample, pricing and regulatory policies havesuccessfully brought about change in places asdiverse as Singapore, Stockholm and London
where car ownership, car use, and GHG emissions
have all been reduced (IPCC SR15, 2018:366).
Notably, positive momentum can be brought about
as co-benefits around health and financial savings
become apparent.
So, what is a sustainable lifestyle? Getting a clear
metric is a challenging task. Below we discuss arange of approaches from ‘One Planet Living’ tosustainable consumption corridors, many inspiredby the need to ‘shrink and share’: establishing
upper limits on consumption and minimal
thresholds to ensure the developmental needsof all are adequately met. In relation to climatechange, projections have been produced about
what 1.5-degree compatible lifestyles look like
(Akenji et al., 2019). As already emphasised, climatechange is of course only one among a number ofsustainability challenges we face, but a failure
to tackle climate change will render most SDGs
impossible to achieve. At the level of principles andaims, Akenji & Chen (2016:3) suggest,“A “sustainable lifestyle” is a cluster of
habits and patterns of behaviour embedded ina society and facilitated by institutions, norms
and infrastructures that frame individual
choice, in order to minimize the use of natural
resources and generation of wastes, while
supporting fairness and prosperity for all.”9
Although behaviour change is often assumed to
be voluntary, we need to constantly recognise thechanging circumstances that give rise to it. The
responsibility for societal transformations cannot
be put on the sum of all individual shoulders.
Such transformations can only be achieved
when embedded in sustainable systems change,
integrating shifts from individual values andcommunity behaviour, with societal changes ininstitutions and governance. As Commissioner
Lewis Akenji told us, “It is right to give some
responsibility to individuals and households for the
implications of their choices, but they are being
pushed beyond the limits of their capacity andagency. It is choice architectures and systems ofprovision that are key. This is what locks people into
particular modes of consumption”. Indeed, the roleof behavioural and value change provokes mixed
reactions in environmental debates.

8

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/05/us-lifestyle-is-not-up-for-negotiation/

9

https://www.oneplanetnetwork.org/sites/default/files/a_framework_for_shaping_sustainable_lifestyles_determinants_and_strategies_0.pdf
For a useful overview of different ways of conceptualising sustainable lifetsyles see Agnew et al. (2020).

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11Mary Heglar puts it bluntly,
The belief that this enormous, existential
problem could have been fixed if all of us had
just tweaked our consumptive habits is not
only preposterous; it’s dangerous. It turns
environmentalism into an individual choicedefined as sin or virtue, convicting those who
don’t or can’t uphold these ethics…While we’rebusy testing each other’s purity, we let the
government and industries — the authors of
said devastation — off the hook completely.
This overemphasis on individual action shames
people for their everyday activities, things they
can barely avoid doing because of the fossil
fuel-dependent system they were born into...
Fight the oil and gas industry instead.
(Heglar, 2019).

“Office lights left on
overnight use enoughenergy in a year toheat a home foralmost five months.

Turn them off
and save.”
Carbon Trust, 2013

fighting if not people, organised collectively? In
which case, our behaviours and actions not only
matter, they are at the very heart of changing
systems in the way that we want to see happen.
Despite this, many policy approaches embody
this disconnect and have been built around what
Shove calls ‘ABC’ models of behaviour change(Cabinet Office, 2013), in which attitudes (A), drive
behaviour (B), and hence choices (C) (Shove, 2010).
Typically, ‘individuals do not consciously decideto emit carbon. Rather, emissions are associatedwith the practices and routines of everyday life,
from cooking to travelling’ (Newell et al., 2015:527).
The routines of daily life are often embedded in theuse of technologies, materials and systems which
individuals have little power to alter. This means
going beyond ‘expressions of individual preference
and choice’, to open up discussions about thevery definition of ‘taken for granted needs and thedifferent means by which warmth and welfare,
freedom and mobility, and economic and energy
security might be achieved in different settings’(Newell et al., 2015:527). The generation of demandand desire, everyday routines and practices, andthe ways these are sedimented by regulations,social pressure and built infrastructures, all require
greater attention.
Influencing behaviour

Credit: National Union ofStudents, Green Impact, Students
Organising for Sustainability

Even advocates of the significance of individual
and household behaviour change recognise thelimits of approaches which rely on that strategy
alone. Dubois et al. suggest that ‘short term
voluntary efforts will not be sufficient bythemselves to reach the drastic reductions neededto achieve the 1.5 °C goal; instead, households
need a regulatory framework supporting their
behavioural changes. But there is also a mismatch
between the roles and responsibilities conveyed bycurrent climate policies and household perceptionsof responsibility’ (2019:144). This reinforces ourcentral argument about the importance ofchallenging these binaries and linking individual
and system change as part of ecosystems oftransformation. As one Commissioner put it, it isoften assumed that somehow ‘fighting the oil andgas industry’ is not itself something that is done byindividuals. But who exactly is going to do thisOver the last three decades, there has been aplethora of initiatives targeted at individuals andhouseholds aimed at shifting behaviours in orderto address climate change and other sustainability
challenges. Strategies by governments,
corporations, and non-governmental organizations
have included regulatory measures, market
mechanisms, and interventions aimed at shifting
behaviours and norms through education andpublic information campaigns, for example.
Yet gaps remain in our understanding of thecomplex ways in which individual behaviours are
influenced and interventions work best, which
different disciplines have sought to fill using abroad range of methods and theories (which we
explore in chapter 3 below). As Vandenbergh
and Sovacool (2016:93) put it: “A recent renewed
focus on individual behaviour reflects the growing
recognition that additional emissions reductions
from large, industrial sources would be expensive
and inadequate to achieve many pollution
standards and that individuals often contribute
more emissions than the industrial sector, if viewed
as a discrete source category.” It also flows fromthe growing understanding of the influence ofnorms on environmental behaviours (Doherty &Webler, 2016; Carlson, 2005).

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12Cartoon by U.S. cartoonist Joel Pett for USA Today.

This more socially informed analysis of everyday
decision-making departs from and challenges
conventional accounts of economic rationality(Vandenbergh & Sovacool, 2016). It strengthens
an appreciation of social context whereby: (i) the
potential of households to reduce their footprint
is greatly influenced by the size of the home andthe demographics of who lives there (see also
Sovacool et al., 2018; Tukker et al., 2010), (ii) there
are different key phases of life when particularly
significant household decisions are made, such as
when having children or retiring, (iii) regulation isrequired to support households in going beyond
the effect of short term voluntary actions which
will be insufficient to achieve the degree of change
required by the Paris Agreement, (iv) this will help
to address the misalignment between the roles
and responsibilities assumed in climate policy andhouseholds’ own perceptions of the responsibilities
they bear (Dubois et al., 2019:144; see also Girod etal., 2014).
Recognising the pace and scale of thesustainability transitions now required, it is a key
moment to consolidate knowledge, evidence andinsights about the role of behavioural change
contributing to societal system transformations.
It is important to contextualise and globalize theconversation about scaling behaviour change
across cultures and regions and to look at theinterface with different social cleavages anddynamics such as race, class and gender. The
focus to date has been on behaviour change
in richer societies for obvious reasons relating
to their higher carbon footprints and historicalresponsibility, as well as the fact that mostbehaviour change research is conducted in thosecountries. There is also increasing attention to
the role of the richest - the 1% - in driving climatechange (Wiedmann et al., 2020) or what Kennerrefers to as the ‘polluter elite’ (Kenner, 2019). Yet,as others note, rapidly industrialising countries areprojected to contribute almost all of the growthin carbon emissions, with increases in household
consumption driving much of that increase, as
the expanding middle classes in China and India
reach the per capita levels of the USA and EU,
underscoring the importance of what has beenreferred to as ‘lifestyle leapfrogging’ (Schroeder &Anantharaman, 2017).
A key neglected dimension of the debate is how
behaviour change will be induced by the effects ofglobal heating. Like it or not, the world is alreadycommitted to drastic change as a result of global
heating (combined with other environmental andnon-environmental threats). The impacts of climatechange are already being felt today around theworld by millions (Ohba & Sugimoto, 2018; Williams
et al., 2019; Wallace-Wells, 2019). Our climatic
future, where more frequent and severe impacts
are now unavoidable, means that a certain degreeof behaviour change will be inevitable, as humanity
adapts to a warmer world. Behaviour change in thisregard can be understood as a form of adaptation,
where habitual behaviours, systems of provision,
patterns of mobility and consumption will shift toensure resilience in the face of climate impacts(Semenza et al., 2011). This type of behaviourchange is visible in altering food systems in the

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Photo credit: Liam Edwards, June, 2020.

face of changing climates, crop failures andincreased pests (Shi et al., 2019; Gomez-Zavaglia etal., 2020), as well as human migration in countries
like Bangladesh (Bernzen et al., 2019) and regions
like the Middle East and Central Asia (Piguet &Laczko 2014). Yet we are not passive players in thisunfolding scenario. The terms of our adaptation,
the depth of the changes and the pace at which
they take place, and who bears the greatest
costs of adjustment, are still very much up forcontestation with important justice implications.
As Greta Thunberg et al. recently noted, “we are
inevitably going to have to fundamentally change,
one way or another. The question is, will thechanges be on our terms, or on nature’s terms?”(2020). And if the ‘our’ refers to humanity as awhole, who precisely will get to set these terms?
Policies and initiatives must centre on what is
to be gained from scaling sustainable behaviourchange - rather than what is to be lost - in favourof revitalised notions of collective benefit, thecommon good and reduced social and economic
inequality. There is, after all, much to be reaped
from rising to this challenge, from cleaner air andmore vibrant local economies, to enhanced leisuretime (or ‘time affluence’ as Kasser and Sheldon

2009 put it) and improvements to wellbeing.
Much existing research suggests it is possible
to live a ‘good life’ within planetary boundaries(Hickel, 2019; Millward-Hopkins et al., 2020), andresearch on the ‘spirit level’ shows that beyond acertain level of income wellbeing indicators do not
improve (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Steinberger
et al. (2020) also show how increases in carbon
emissions are not coupled with increased life
expectancy. In many cases, mitigating climatechange and its impacts also need not be thecentral motivator for such societal shifts (Howell etal., 2016; Howell & Allen, 2017; RESET, 2020), andscaling behaviour change may in fact benefit fromnot always using climate concerns as its central
driver. The majority of the Commission were clearthat scaling up sustainable behaviour change
would, for the most part, improve the everyday
material and spiritual wellbeing of most people.
Either through the myriad co-benefits associatedwith sustainable lifestyle transformations andreduced levels of inequality, or the more esotericshifts in values and approaches to community,
there is significant scope and desire for change.

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2
The scale of the Challenge
Published in autumn 2018, adopting
language more associated with radicals
and revolutionaries, the IPCC, often
criticised for being cautious, called for‘transformative systemic change’ inorder to achieve the goals of the Paris
Agreement (IPCC, 2018). That scale ofchange needs to occur across all sectors
and regions of the world at unprecedented
speed.
Behaviour change by all actors is a crucial elementof this transformation since 1.5°C-consistentpathways assume significant changes in behaviour.
The IPCC SR15 (2018) made clear that behaviourchange and demand-side management cansignificantly reduce emissions, thus substantiallylimiting the reliance on carbon dioxide removal
to limit warming to 1.5°C. This message wasunderscored by the 2020 UN Emissions Gap report(UNEP, 2020).

the need for reductions of over
90% in greenhouse gas emissions
by 2050 from today’s lifestyles
New ground has also been broken with the report
1.5-degree lifestyles: Targets and options for
reducing lifestyle carbon footprints, which makes
for sobering reading. The report assessed the GHG
emissions and reduction potential by looking atlifestyle carbon footprints, including emissions
both directly emitted and indirectly induced from

10

Photo credit: Tan Kaninthanond.

household consumption10 (Akenji et al., 2019:9). It
highlights the need for reductions of over 90% ingreenhouse gas emissions by 2050 from today’s
lifestyles. This implies per-person carbon footprint
targets of 2.5 (tCO2e) in 2030, 1.4 by 2040 and
0.7 by 2050. To put this into context, allowing
for differential impacts and uneven historicalresponsibility, this means footprints in developed
countries need to be reduced by 80-93% by 2050.
This is assuming that actions for a 58–76%
reduction start immediately to achieve the 2030
target. Yet, even for developing countries, thereport highlights the need to reduce footprints
by 23–84%, depending on the country and thescenario, by 2050 (IGES, 2019). These required
emissions reductions reflect very different
starting points where Ivanova et al. (2020:1)
have highlighted, for example, that “the average
per capita carbon footprint of North America
and Europe amount to 13.4 and 7.5 tCO2eq/cap,
respectively, while that of Africa and the Middle
East—to 1.7 tCO2eq/cap on average”.

It excluded those emissions induced by government consumption and capital formation such as infrastructure.

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One Planet Living
Adopting a different approach, Moore (2015:4747)
develops consumption benchmarks in the domainsof food, buildings, consumables, transportation,
and water by combining ecological footprint
analysis with ‘lifestyle archetypes’. The
background to this is that while there have been
gains in efficiency regarding energy and material
use in the region of 30% and 50% respectively
across the global economy, studies of ‘urban
metabolism’ reveal that resource consumption
in cities is growing (Moore, 2015:4748). Moore
explores the sorts of transformative changes thatwould be needed for the per capita consumption
patterns of urban dwellers to achieve ecologicalsustainability. They include, “a 73% reduction inhousehold energy use, a 96% reduction in motor
vehicle ownership, a 78% reduction in per capita
vehicle kilometres travelled, and a 79% reduction in
air kilometres travelled” (Moore, 2015:4747). Moore’s
work clearly underscores that in a world where
there is still no clear substitution, the goal has to beabsolute and not just relative reductions.
Specific tools for calculating impact include Life
Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Ecological Footprint
Analysis (EFA) and Environmentally Extended
Input-Output Analysis (EEIOA). The former is used
as a communication tool for raising awarenessabout sustainable consumption choices, while
the Ecological Footprint compares a population’s
demand on productive ecosystems (its footprint)— with the ability of those ecosystems to keep
up with this demand (biocapacity). The Global
Footprint Network’s ‘National Footprint Accounts’
tracks the footprints of countries by measuring
the area of cropland, grazing land, forest, andfisheries required to produce the food, fibre, andtimber resources being consumed and to absorb
the carbon dioxide (CO2) waste emitted whenburning fossil fuels.11 Ecological Footprint studies
reveal that currently the “world is in ecologicalovershoot by as much as 50 percent” (Moore &Rees, 2013:42).
There is significant scepticism, nevertheless, about
the use of some types of footprint tools amid theproliferation of apps and tools to measure peoples’
carbon use (and monitor their consumption
habits), especially when supported by industry
actors such as oil companies. Here there is a valid

concern about such tools serving as a diversionary
tactic to shift attention away from their own
responsibility to act and a way of enabling ‘guiltfree’ unsustainable consumption as long as offsets
are provided to absorb the carbon released.12
An interesting alternative to this type of footprint
analysis is carbon hand-printing (Grönman et al.,2019; Sitra, 2020). While carbon footprints analyse
the environmental costs of individual actions,mobility choices and consumption patterns, carbon
hand-printing looks to the positive actions thatcan be extended beyond an individual’s lifestyle
to help other people, and wider society, shift ontoa more sustainable pathway. Individuals’ carbon
handprints can comprise consumer choices, suchas purchasing a dairy-free milk alternative, civic
duties, like organising an organic food market, or
political actions, such as voting for political parties
with a comprehensive climate policy platform.
Vitally, carbon hand-printing takes into accountthe multiple roles we all fulfil - at work, as part ofthe community and within the home - and how
this diversity of roles can be leveraged to enactsocietal behaviour change. This is consistent
with the more holistic and integrated approach to
behaviour change that we are advocating for here,
as it underscores the multiple arenas in publicspheres in which behaviour change occurs beyond
the household, whilst reflecting the unevenly
distributed agency to bring about that change(Stern, 2000).

Defining parameters“There are limits. We can try to recognisethem in time, or we will run into trouble. The
economic system is a man-made system we can change it. But we can’t change theecological system.”(Commissioner Sylvia Lorek)
At a societal, international and national level, many
Commission members emphasised the inevitabilityof targets regarding what has to be reduced bywhen, if we want to remain within our ecologicallimits (Lorek & Fuchs, 2013). As Commissioner
Lewis Akenji put it: “The reality is that we need togive up certain things. We need to consider theconcept of environmental space – thresholds

11

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/2016/03/08/national-footprint-accounts/

12

https://grist.org/energy/footprint-fantasy/?utm_campaign=btns&utm_source=share&utm_medium=email

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Source: WIRED– upper and lower limits to get us onto a moresustainable pathway”. The means and modalitiesof doing this are challenging. Commissioner Doris
Fuchs explains, “Limits guarantee freedom, they do
not restrict it”.
However, they are highly controversial anddifficult to enforce in a neoliberal context due
to ideological commitments to notions ofconsumer sovereignty, freedom of choice, andassumptions about what Commissioner Bill Rees
calls ‘human exceptionalism’: the idea that thedrivers of extinction of all other species on theplanet somehow do not apply to humans. As
Commissioner Sally Weintrobe elaborates, limits will
be imposed by reality, but they are an emotionallychallenging concept for people to accept froma psychological point of view, when, in manysocieties, the dominant culture of materialism has
so aggressively promoted the pursuit of plenty:“It is shocking for us to accept limits. Expect areaction! We are reluctant to take on the culture.
We are not brave enough to tell people it mightmean rationing because people are reluctant
to accept limits...But we have to start with theworld that we want”. This may explain the appealof the Commissioner Juliet Schor’s (2011) ideaof ‘plentitude’ which we discuss further below:
liberating time and freedom for creative expression
and civic expression in return for constraints on
excessive consumption and income.
Some advocates of de-growth are critical of
the notion of limits from a different angle.
Hickel suggests for example, that “The notion oflimits puts on the wrong foot from the start. It
presupposes that nature is something ‘out there’,separate from us, like a stern authority hemming
us in. This kind of thinking emerges from thevery dualist ontology that got us into trouble in
the first place” (2020:34). He argues instead for‘interconnectedness’: a deeper value shift in our
relationship to nature.
Unsurprisingly, this ambivalence is also reflectedin the collective reluctance among politicalleaders to convincingly confront the need forlimits, which leads Commissioner Sylvia Lorek
to advise that change needs to come from lower
levels of governance, “We can’t wait for the global
community to address budgets and limits. If
we wait for political agreement to occur at the
global level, we are under an illusion. So we needbottom-up, regional, and national levels to takethe first steps instead”. In this spirit, Amsterdam’s
City Doughnut initiative, which ‘downscales’ theconcept of a ‘global doughnut’ was heralded byseveral Commissioners as a much-needed step inthe right direction, by striving to create a circular
economy, operating in the space between its social
foundations and ecological ceilings (Raworth et al.,2020, also see Table 1 below). We also note below
the importance of governance innovations suchas citizen’s assemblies to drive climate action frombelow, while also challenging incumbent control of
the conversation about what count as ‘plausible’
and ‘realistic’ responses to climate crisis. Table 1
below summarises various attempts to define theparameters of consumption.

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Table 1: Defining fair shares for sustainability13

Approach

Means

Level

Contraction andConvergence14

Per capita carbon entitlements

Globally agreed

Greenhouse Development
Rights framework15

Calculation of responsibility and capacity
beyond a development threshold

Globally agreed

Individual carbon
allowances/rations
derived from global
carbon budgets16

Per capita entitlements. A carbon ration
operates as a simple allowance (in kilosof carbon), paid into a digital rationaccount to citizens

Globally agreed, nationallyimplemented

Carbon fee and dividend17

Enforced through an initial fee of $15/
metric tonne on the CO2 equivalentemissions of fossil fuels

Globally and nationallyThe proposal is that this would rise by$10/metric tonne each year. 100% of
the net fees from the carbon fee would
then be held in a Carbon Fees Trust fundand returned directly to households as amonthly dividend18
A border tax adjustment to stop businessrelocation
Sustainable Consumption
Corridors

Defining upper and lower limits or
thresholds of consumption

Corridors agreed andimplemented in local andnational contexts, but withconsideration of global
conditions and the needsof future generations.

Doughnut Economics19

Outer limits set by planetary boundaries.
Inner floor set by basic social needs

National, city level

Ecological footprint
analysis20

Compares a population’s demand on
productive ecosystems with biocapacity(the ability of those ecosystems to keep
up with this demand)21

National, city or individual13

For a useful review of many of these approaches see van den Berg et al. (2020).

14

http://gci.org.uk/

15

http://gdrights.org/about/16

https://carbonrationing.org/support-for-total-carbon-rationing/

17

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/18

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/19

https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/

20 https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint/
21

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint/

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Back to Contents18Social dimensions
The changes required to get the world onto a
1.5 degree pathway should not to be shoulderedequally by all in society. As Figure 1 illustrates, theaverage per capita emissions share of CO2 varies
strikingly between income groups. Considerable
effort is required to ensure the sociallydifferentiated drivers and contexts of consumption
are addressed seriously to avoid individualising
responsibility or saddling poorer groups with adisproportionate burden to act. As Commissioner
Kate Burningham noted, “we are not all in this
together”. The most prolific consumers, movers
and polluters must make the most substantialchanges to their lifestyles and, by doing so, will
generate substantial carbon savings in the shortterm. Commissioner Kevin Anderson has shownthat if the richest 10 of society were to bring theiremissions in line with the level of the average
European, and the remaining 90% of humanity
made no adjustments to their lifestyles, then global
emissions would drop by one-third within a coupleof years (Anderson, 2018).
Figure 1: Per capita and absolute CO2
consumption emissions by four global income
groups in 2015

Source: UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2020

It is a small percentage of humanity that needs tomake the greatest transformations in their lifestyle– a fact that is all too often overlooked in publicdebate around sustainable behaviour change. As
Moore and Rees show on the basis of their footprint
analysis,the main perpetrators of this global experiment
are the relatively well-educated 20 percent of
the human population who live in high income
consumer societies, including most of North
America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, alongwith consumer elites of low-income countries.
Densely populated, high-income countries
typically exceed their domestic carrying
capacities by a factor of three to six or more
and thus impose a growing burden on othercountries and the global commons. This wealthy
minority of the human family appropriates
almost 80 percent of the world’s resources andgenerates most of its carbon emissions fromfossil fuels (2013:42).

Key to the successful design and social acceptanceof any scheme to set and enforce limits andconstraints on consumption, or ‘shrink and share’
schemes, therefore, is equitable allocation. Moore
and Rees (2013) consider 1.7 gha/per capita to beeach person’s equitable or “fair Earth-share” ofglobal biocapacity. Currently, more than half theworld’s population lives at or below a fair Earthshare. Most of those people are based in Latin
America, Asia, and Africa (2013:42).
The process for agreeing on those limits anddetermining the means by which they should beachieved raises a series of complex issues about
which there has to be a public discussion (Fuchs,
2020). Public deliberation needs to determine
minimum socially acceptable limits, which together
with scientific expertise on planetary boundaries
translate into maximum consumption limits, if
all individuals living now and in the future are tohave the opportunity to achieve the minimum
levels of consumption. In this scenario, theminimum is defined by what constitutes a good
life, and the good life is defined by being able tosatisfy needs (as opposed to wants). This relates
closely to the idea of doughnut economics: a safe
operating space for humanity between meeting key
developmental needs within ecological planetary
boundaries (Raworth, 2017).
Current and historical inequalities within andacross societies need to be addressed by ‘shrink
and share’ schemes that limit and redistribute
future entitlements to both production andconsumption (see Table 1). This is the premiseof proposals for ‘contraction and convergence’(towards an agreed per capita carbon entitlement),
for example, which demand larger and nearer
term reductions from richer countries thathave over-used carbon space, and smaller andslower reductions from poorer countries thathave pressing development needs to meet and

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who have contributed far less to the problem
of global heating thus far (GCI, 2018), as well as
the Greenhouse Development Rights framework
which only applies to citizens above a specificdevelopment threshold and only then on the basisof a calculation of responsibility and capacity to act(GDR, 2020).

According to the Rapid Transition Taskforce Report,
in the UK “over 40% of those in the top income
vigintile take three or more flights each year,
compared with around 4% of those in the bottom
three vigintiles. Data show that these patterns arerepeated in other rich nations such as Sweden,
France and Germany” (2019:22).

Nearly half of the total growthin absolute emissions was dueto the richest 10% (the top twoventiles), with the richest 5%
alone contributing over a third(37%).

Crucial to this enquiry, though, is the divergent
nature of consumption among different income
groups, with the richest sections of society actually
increasing their consumption related emissions,whilst sharp contractions in emissions have takenplace among the middle and lower income groups.
Gore and Alestig (2020) note that between 1990
and 2015, the poorest 50% of the EU population’s
consumption emissions fell by 24% and emissions
from the 40% of ‘middle income’ Europeans fell by
13%, respectively.

On this basis, the Civil Society Equity Review (2018)concludes that the most equitable mitigation
framework would see the richest 10% globally takeresponsibility for 87% of the total emissions cutsneeded, while the poorest 50% are not yet required
to cut emissions at all. Though, as we emphasisethroughout the report, there is critical scope
to avoid ‘carbon lock-in’ through the provisionof services and choice architectures for poorer
communities and thus to enable a degree of‘lifestyle leapfrogging’ (Schroeder & Anantharaman,
2017). Underscoring this analysis, SEI and Oxfam
have produced a database that covers 117
countries, around 90% of the world’s population,and global carbon emissions across the 1990–2015
period. They conclude: “The disproportionate
impact of the world’s richest people is unmistakable– nearly half of the total growth in absoluteemissions was due to the richest 10% (the top twoventiles), with the richest 5% alone contributing
over a third (37%). The remaining half was due
almost entirely to the contribution of the middle
40% of the global income distribution (the next
eight ventiles). The impact of the poorest half (thebottom ten ventiles) of the world’s population waspractically negligible” (Kartha et al., 2020:7).
There is, therefore, a clear and obvious need totackle uneven consumption within countries(see Box 1 on the polluter elite). Across Europe,
analysis reveals that the emissions reductions
achieved since 1990 have predominantly
come from lifestyle changes and the reduced
consumption of lower and middle income EU
citizens, while the total emissions of the richest
10% actually grew. Over the period of 1990 to 2015,
the richest 10% of EU citizens were responsible for
27% of the EU’s total cumulative emissions - thesame amount of emissions as the poorest half ofthe EU population combined (Gore & Alestig, 2020).

Emissions from the most affluent citizens,
however, are going in the opposite way:emissions from the richest 10% of theEuropean population grew by 3% andemissions from the wealthiest 1% –the super rich – grew by 5%.
These figures clearly show the need for adifferentiated approach to behaviour change,
as well as how the responsibility for emissions
reductions is not shared equally across society.
For example, to meet a 1.5-degree consistentemissions pathway by 2030, the richest 1% of
the European population needs to reduce theiremissions by a factor of 30, while the poorest 50%of the European population needs to halve theiremissions (Gore & Alestig, 2020).
How reductions are made needs to be attentive toinequalities within societies to ensure extra burdens
are not merely passed onto poorer and excluded
groups. Commissioner Manisha Anantharaman(2014) highlights the invisible and implied labour
behind the performance of sustainable lifestyles:
the informal and gendered economies that, insome contexts at least, involve domestic staff,
waste pickers and fleets of informal construction
workers (for insulation, PV installation etc.). Levels of
inequality within society are important here not onlyin terms of responsibility, or because they determine
who bears the cost of action, but because they drivecompetitive consumption (Schor, 2015).

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As Danny Dorling highlights,“in more unequal societies, there is a proliferation of products that are designed not to last, so
as to allow greater profits to be made. Producing endless must-have new versions exploits thehigher levels of emotional insecurity that living with great inequality generates” (2017).
What this reveals is that “more economically unequal countries in the global North have higher levels ofpollution, consume more meat and fish, take more flights, use more water for domestic use, and dump morehousehold waste, across the entire income spectrum” (Rapid Transition Taskforce, 2019).
Box 1: What is the polluter elite?

“The polluter elite are extremely rich individuals whose net worth, luxury lifestyle and politicalinfluence all rest on wealth that is derived from investments in polluting activities e.g. fossil
fuels. What differentiates the polluter elite from other stakeholders is that as major shareholders
they profit from the fossil fuel economy. As decision makers they approve lobbying ofgovernments (funding lobbyists and direct donations to political parties) to block the transition
away from fossil fuels. They use their political power to restrict the consumption options ofordinary citizens to keep them “addicted” to lifestyles dependent on fossil fuels (e.g. diesel andpetrol vehicles, plastic packaging, coal and gas for electricity, heating and cooking).”
Source: Kenner, https://whygreeneconomy.org/the-polluter-elite-database/

What this work suggests is the need for priorities and targeted approaches to addressing over-consumption
among richer groups and to focus on particularly carbon-intensive behaviours - or what we refer to as
hotspots (see Table 2). The IGES report (Akenji et al., 2019) found that just three domains (nutrition, housing
and mobility) have the largest impact, amounting to approximately 75% of total lifestyle carbon footprints.
Table 2: Sustainable consumption hotspots

Key hotspots

Possible measures (behaviour/practices in italics)

Travel: Air and car travel● Planning that reduces need and demand for car use● Congestion charges● Vehicle fuel-efficiency improvement● Affordable electric public transport● Frequent flyer taxes/air travel adaptation levy
● Support for bicycle lanes and pedestrianisation
Car-free private travel
Ride and car sharing
Electric and hybrid cars
Reductions in air travel

Energy: Fossil fuel-basedenergy● Planning policies to reduce energy use● Extensive and affordable supply of renewable energy● Smart grids
Switching to renewable energy tariffs/sources

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21Key hotspots

Possible measures (behaviour/practices in italics)

Food: Meat and dairy
consumption and food waste● Taxes on meat
● Procurement policies● Innovations in farming methods and protein creation● Labelling of sustainability of foods
Moving towards plant-based diets
Reducing food waste

Housing: Poor insulation, highenergy and resource use● Material footprint profiling● Restrictions on house size
Heat pumps
Smart metering
Replacing gas for heating and cooking
Insulation

IGES suggests that if some of these options were
to be fully implemented, they could reduce thefootprint of each hotspot domain by anything froma few hundred kilograms to over a tonne annually(Akenji et al., 2019:vi). Ivanova et al. (2020) findoverall that from many of the measures listed
above, “the top ten consumption options together
yield an average mitigation potential of 9.2 tCO2eq/
cap, indicating substantial contributions towards
achieving the 1.5oC–2oC target, particularly in high-Given what has been said about the complexity of
the challenge of delivering behaviour change atscale, how do we approach the question of scale?
There are a variety of conventional approaches,
which are summarised in Box 2. Scaling ‘up’
through size, represents (vertical) ‘scaling by
numbers’ or getting more people to engage in
specific sustainable behaviours and activities.
Scaling ‘out’ is more context-specific, involving
rolling out change across different contexts“The problem is 50/50 - 50% behaviour and 50% technological. The technologies need toco-evolve with behaviours to have a transformative impact. People’s voluntary behaviouralchanges could halve their emissions - this is huge with little regulation and just providing
better information. ‘We will do half of what is needed by ourselves’ is a powerful message”.
Commissioner Prof. Benjamin Sovacool

income contexts” (2020:1).22 Many authors are atpains to point out, however, that any such gains
are contingent on changes across society andthe economy. As the IGES study makes clear: “Therequired levels of reductions, exceeding 90% basedon current lifestyle carbon footprints, imply a radical
rethink of sustainability governance and the needfor new business models to shift the paradigms
on which we base infrastructure, economies andconsumer lifestyles” (Akenji et al., 2019:5).

(horizontally). Scaling through depth, is a moreindividual and internal process, targeting values,
norms and worldviews consistent with a broader
sustainable lifestyle (rather than individual actions).
Finally, reactive scaling can be understoodas adaptation to events or crises rather thanconscious planning.

22 For transport, the options with the highest mitigation potential include living car-free, shifting to a battery electric vehicle, and reducing flying by along return flight with a median reduction potential of more than 1.7 tCO2eq/cap’. For food, “the highest carbon savings come from dietary changes,
particularly an adoption of vegan diet with an average and median mitigation potential of 0.9 and 0.8 tCO2eq/cap, respectively”. For housing “Shifting
to renewable electricity and refurbishment and renovation are the options with the highest mitigation potential … with medians at 1.6 and 0.9 tCO2eq/
cap, respectively” (Ivanova, 2020).

The Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change

Back to Contents22Box 2: Conventional approaches to scaling● Scaling ‘up’ through size: This approach seeks to achieve scale-up through rapid growth, expansion
and roll-out. In terms of behaviour change, it is most commonly associated with vertical shifts to
impact an increasing number of people by mainstreaming certain types of behaviour, and therefore
magnifying the scale of achieved emissions reductions. An example would be the uptake of cyclingthat has been mainstreamed in cities in many Scandinavian and Northern European countries. While
this approach to scaling takes into account the urgency of transformation required, it may fall victim
to the fallacy of ‘one-size-fits-all’ or the flaws of a top-down approach (i.e. it generates resistance oris less adaptive to local cultural conditions).

● Scaling ‘out’: Similar to scaling in size, this approach seeks to scale behaviours horizontally,

including across different contexts, including localities, sectors, markets and regions. While speed isstill an important aspect here, this approach is by necessity more contextualised than simply scaling‘up’. It may also be applied to organisations or communities with closed feedback loops and at asmaller scale where the replication of behaviour is more likely. For example, the Transition Network
which started in the UK has inspired the proliferation of groups around the world which adopt acommon approach and have shared aims, but adapt their strategies to the particular contexts theywork in. There are now estimated to be between 2000 and 3000 communities involved in Transition
initiatives in over 50 countries.23● Scaling through depth: Instead of looking to externally scale behaviour change throughout

society, this approach turns to the psychology of the self. Deep scaling seeks to shift values within
individuals, and eventually, cultural norms in communities that then cascade and ripple out, leading
to broader social transformations in behaviours. Many behavioural shifts and practices adopted byfaith-based organisations and intentional communities adopt this approach.24● Reactive scaling: Scaling may occur in response to shocks and stresses to physical and social

systems (e.g. climate events, conflict, pandemics), ranging from short-term, reactive, ‘coping’
responses, to building resilience in the long-term, which could take place via any of the three scaling
drivers mentioned above. The impacts of climate change are already being felt throughout theworld, and with their frequency set to increase and intensify, a certain degree of behaviour change
will be necessary in order to adapt. Climate impacts are already transforming patterns of behaviour
and consumption. Here, behaviour change is a necessary, and in some cases mandatory, response
to climate impacts as a matter of resilience. Examples include shifts in diet due to crop failures orshocks to work patterns as a result of dangerous levels of air pollution or high temperatures.

Other recent scholarship uses the language of
amplification to develop a typology of eightprocesses which aim to increase the impact of
initiatives for transformation: stabilizing, speedingup, growing, replicating, transferring, spreading,scaling up, and scaling deep (Lam et al., 2020).
Although some of these different conventional(overlapping) categorisations are useful, wesuggest the need to re-think scale. Dominant
approaches, such as mainstreaming, emphasise
numbers and roll-out in a static, generic andsocially undifferentiated way. This serves todecontextualise the nature of change, andoften misrepresents where the predominant
responsibility and agency for action lies (i.e withthe polluter elite, while downplaying the roleof choice editing and the provision of enabling
infrastructures, for example). They also oftenemphasise size and reach, rather than directly
acknowledging the limits necessary to avoid
rebound effects. Such discussions often also fall
into the scalar trap: the misconception that whatworks in one place will necessarily work elsewhereor that small changes can automatically andunproblematically be scaled. What is to be scaled,
how and by whom are key yet neglected questions,but need to be a central part of conversations
going forward.

23 https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/transition-towns-the-quiet-networked-revolution/
24 See for example the Findhorn foundation https://www.findhorn.org/

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23For this reason, we offer an alternative and more
holistic way of thinking about scale. Our point of
departure is that many approaches mistakenly
imply shallow scaling: that is, mainstreaming
without disrupting key trends around consumption,
work, growth, production. Instead, we suggest deep
scaling needs to be transformative. This involves
value shifts and culturing transformation throughdeep scaling, as well as concerted efforts to ‘scale
back’ existing ways of doing things and challenging
incumbent control over systems, infrastructures,finance and production. Ultimately, a combinationof speed, breadth and depth of change will be
required across multiple contexts, which weconceptualise as ‘spiral’ scaling, consisting of
mutually reinforcing feedback loops between theindividual, social and systemic levels, towards
strong global sustainability (see Box 3).

There are also a number of challenges for
scalability that need to be considered andameliorated within policies, strategies andinitiatives. Beyond the ‘scalar trap’, there is also thepressure to create ‘demonstration effects’: that is,
to provide evidence of impact and its evaluation.
Yet measuring intangible outcomes such as shifts
in values, for instance, is often harder to do. This
is in addition to the well-known bias towards the‘present’ that psychologists highlight25 (or what
economists might call ‘discounting’ the future),
which makes it hard to persuade people to act now
to avert future negative impacts which they may
not suffer themselves. A deeper challenge still iswhat Commission member Bill Rees described in
the following way drawing on insights from neurocognitive biology: “Arguably, there can be no
greater systemic obstacle to behaviour change thanevolved behaviours (nature) or entrenched ways of

Box 3: A new approach to scaling: Shallow, deep and spiral● ‘Shallow’ scaling is associated with the concept of superficial change or ‘thin’ learning, and canbe instrumental or cognitive, vertical or horizontal. It may represent a response to a nudge, market
mechanism, policy instrument or new information, but does not alter underlying values or worldview.
It incorporates the idea of behavioural contagion, where humans copy and imitate the behaviours of
their peers, both consciously and unconsciously, as exemplified by the increasing popularity of plantbased diets or the diffusion of rooftop solar panels in suburban areas (Bollinger & Gillingham, 2012).
Conversely, it is apparent in many of the unsustainable behaviours that are driving the climate crisis,such as flying and the increasing popularity of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in some societies. Shallow
scaling also incorporates top-down infrastructural de-scaling, which curates the choice architecture
through choice editing. This is achieved through the provision of services to shape behaviours inline with a desired outcome, such as reducing waste or the energy intensity of certain actions. It caninvolve a degree of lifestyle leapfrogging across contexts. Such an approach may be effective at
shifting behaviours at scale, addressing both the demand and supply-side of the economy, but will
not challenge the social values, norms and practices that underpin consumptive behaviour, risking
rebound effects elsewhere in the economy. An example might be car-free cities, the pedestrianisationof city centres or the energiesprong housing insulation initiative in the Netherlands.

● ‘Deep’ scaling occurs when behavioural change leads to a wider social transformation or paradigm
shift (Kuhn, 1962). This happens when certain behaviours, values and norms become culturally andinstitutionally embedded, and socially acceptable or ostracised. Examples include equality and civilrights norms and legislation. Because social transformations are inherently context-bound, ‘strong’global sustainability will require multiple, differentiated transformations across social, geographic
and temporal contexts, operating on the same upward trajectory.

● ‘Spiral’ scaling highlights the process of transformation from ‘shallow’ to ‘deep’ scaling as a dynamic
sequence of interactive feedback loops between individuals, society, institutions and infrastructures.
It envisages an iterative, reciprocal and reflexive social learning approach, and responds to theneed to move away from linear and even circular understandings of scaling, towards multiple, deeptransformations - i.e. axial behaviour and systems change across diverse contexts, which areconceptualised as an upward-moving vortex or ‘spiral of sustainability’. This perspective aims tobetter reflect the empirical reality whereby elements of shallow and deep scaling often operate
in tandem within and across contexts over time, until deep scaling prevails and transformation isachieved. This is inspired by O’Brien et al.’s (2013) ‘axial revolution’ for transforming education andcapacity-building for global sustainability.

25 https://behavioralscientist.org/fight-climate-change-with-behavior-change/

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24

Photo credit: Chris Barbalis, Italy.

thinking that can respond only marginally or slowly
to social learning (nurture)”. These are ‘biologicaldrives’ that undermine rational decision-making.
Running through our inquiry was a discussion
about how to square urgency with the depth andscale of behaviour change required. As Anna
Birney, member of the commission, put it:
There is an inherent tension in social learning andtransformation; that we do not have time to build
the capacity for personal transformation andchange. The process that a person might need togo through to get the depth of change required
to really shift how they see and act in the worldis just too long and the issues we are facing are
too urgent for it to take that long. It can take time
for individuals to shift their deeper paradigm andworldview.

And yet, as Donella Meadows puts it:
There’s nothing physical or expensive or evenslow in the process of paradigm change [change
in the shared idea in the minds of society, thegreat big unstated assumptions]. In a single
individual it can happen in a millisecond. All ittakes is a click in the mind, a falling of scales
from the eyes, a new way of seeing.26“We don’t have the time not
to take the time”

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3
Understanding behaviour change

What insights can we glean from theexisting research on how best to scale
behaviour change?
While many academics – including several
members of the Commission – may agree
to disagree over the means and merits ofsustainable behaviour change strategies
to achieve 1.5°C lifestyles, there is broadconsensus that different theoretical
approaches can help us to identify andtackle different pieces of the puzzle.
Nielson et al. (2020:23) explain, “the very traditions,
methods, and theories that allow for high-quality
research within a discipline can lead to ignoring
factors not central to those traditions”. Exploring
how blind spots can be overcome by incorporating
insights from multiple perspectives, can therefore
help us to generate a portfolio of responses tosustainable behaviour change and allow access toa broader range of tools. As Commissioner Solange
Alfinito points out, “in the same way you need toengage the whole of society, you need to engage inall methods”, especially to understand the interplay
between individual and system change.
To this end, we cast our theoretical net as widely
as possible in order to inform our analyses ofchange, but principally draw on four disciplinary
perspectives. The first two, ‘nudge’ theory and(a cluster of) psychological approaches, take theindividual as the basis for analysis. As they see
agency as primary, they tend to be more optimistic
about prospects for behaviour change. The second
two, sociology and practice theories, and political
economy, see systems as being critical contexts
within which individuals operate, and therefore,
behaviour is understood to be driven

Photo credit: Adli Wahid, Kathmandu, Nepal.

and circumscribed by social, political and physicalstructures, which are slower to evolve and harder todisrupt. Since we argue that individual and systemchange are required, we make the case for moving
forward by combining these insights.

‘Nudge’ theory
The logical place to start looking at theories of
behaviour change is with the so-called behaviouralapproaches, which focus on the observableand measurable aspects of human actions andresponses. As mentioned above, psychologists
tend to focus on the role of individuals andhouseholds, and as such, the discipline sharessome of its basic assumptions with behavioural
economics, whose object of analysis is generally
individuals – or consumers. As Gifford puts it,“amelioration of that part of… climate change overwhich we have some potential control occurs at

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26the individual level” (2008:273). The focus thenbecomes enabling pro-environmental or climate
behaviours through information, monitoring andmetering (a mix of ‘antecedent’ and ‘consequent’interventions (Capstick et al., 2015)). Behavioural
economists refer to this as ‘nudge’ theory (Thaler& Sunstein, 2009; Nature Human Behaviour, 2020),
that is: making it easier to do the ‘right’ thing fromthe point of view of sustainability. According toThaler and Sunstein, a nudge “is any aspect of the
choice architecture that alters people’s behavior
in a predictable way without forbidding any options
or significantly changing their economic incentives”(2009:6). By altering the choice architecture,
optimal outcomes (in this case more sustainablebehaviours) become more predictable, without
infringing on one’s individual liberty throughmanipulative means. Lehner et al. (2016) suggestthat nudge interventions make use of four tools
to alter the choice architecture: simplificationand framing of information, which is the mostcommonly utilised for sustainability purposes(Thøgersen & Schrader, 2012); adjustments to thephysical environment; changing default policies(Momsen & Stoerk, 2014) (around green electricity,
for example (Kaiser et al., 2020)), and the useof social norms, such as initiatives that gamify
recycling through neighbourly competition (Johnet al., 2013).
Nudge theory’s focus on the choice architecture,or environment, in which decisions are mademeans it is reliant on a certain theory about theway in which all of us make choices and the ways
in which our cognition enables those decisions.
Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking, Fast and
Slow, provided the theoretical underpinning fornudge interventions through his idea of decisionmaking being split into two systems (2011). System
1 operates almost automatically, with very little(or no) effort and no sense of voluntary control,using rules of thumb and other habit-based
processes. System 2, however, pays attention to
the more laborious mental activities, including
complex computations, and the subjective
experience of agency, choice and concentration– our conscious, reasoning ‘self’. Kahneman
purports that, despite System 2 being the realm ofcomplex cognition, System 1 is where the majority
of decision-making takes place and is therefore
the target of nudge interventions. Due to thisapproach, critics have labelled it ‘neoliberal’ or‘soft paternalism’ (Jones et al., 2011), due to its
emphasis on the individualisation of responsibility,
using “policy interventions to induce voluntarycooperation in social dilemma situations” (Nagatsu,
2015:481). Others have been harsher, accusing
nudge interventions of being manipulative andopen to government abuse (Hausman & Welch,2010), entrenching the idea that economic
rationality is the sole driver for decision-making(Berg & Gigerenzer, 2010) as well as potentiallyundemocratic (Goodwin, 2012).
In terms of the impact of nudge in practice, aconsiderable meta-analysis of (over three million)
behavioural interventions to promote climate action
in households found, “[t]he intervention with thehighest average effect size is choice architecture(nudges)”; however, the authors were keen to
stress that the effect of these measures werevery short-lived – not lasting beyond the durationof the intervention – and also suggested that
potential mitigation effects could have been more
successful had nudges been used alongside othercomplementary strategies such as fiscal incentives
or legislation (Nisa et al., 2019:1-2; Stern 2020)
makes a similar point in defence of nudge whenused as part of a package of interventions). But
while the evidence shows that nudging individuals
in the right direction can achieve a degree ofsuccess in changing behaviour – and has beencredited, for example, with increasing the numberof organ donations in many countries (Shepherd
et al., 2014) – it is clear that its reach is generally
confined to specific, simple and narrow contexts,
and in spite of its omnipresence (think nutritional
information on food labels and menus), not tomention likely under-reporting of unsuccessful
campaigns, its capacity to effect behaviour change
to date has been notoriously limited (Nature Human
Nature Editorial, 2020).
One significant reason why nudge on its own may
be destined to fail in certain circumstances is that
it is poorly equipped to address countervailing
psychological and systemic influences. For
example, Nisa et al. (2019) found minimal change
in household behaviour in relation to the purchaseof energy efficient appliances and (private) car
use, possibly because these are arguably areas
where providers and intermediaries have strong
incentives to maximise sales (Vandenbergh &Sovacool, 2016). Nudge efforts might also be
subject to ‘rebound’ effects, identified in theeconomics literature in relation to energy savings(see Box 4). As Sorrell et al. explain, “Improvements
in energy efficiency make energy services cheaper,and therefore encourage increased consumption of
those services. This so-called direct rebound effectoffsets the energy savings that may otherwise beachieved” (2009:1356). For example, buying a more
fuel-efficient or hybrid car might cause a driver
to make longer or more frequent journeys (direct
rebounds), and even spend the money saved on
additional goods and services, such as a second

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car (indirect rebounds). Some estimate that direct
rebounds in certain sectors can be up to 30%(Sorrell, 2009) or higher, though others warn thatin most cases “[r]ebound effects are small and are
therefore no excuse for inaction” (Gillingham et al.,2013:476).
From a psychological perspective, a major
deficiency in the effectiveness of nudge as a tool
for behaviour change is that it fails to engage withthe consciousness, attitudes, values or beliefs
underlying a person’s motivations for taking actionin the first place (though this is not something thatnudge approaches try to do). It is also a criticism
levelled by sociologists, such as Burningham and
Venn, who argue, “This framing ignores the extent
to which everyday consumption is situated bothwithin immediate family contexts and broader
infrastructural and socio-economic settings”(2017:20). Instead, they highlight the importanceof distinguishing between motivations forbehaviour, which in the case of their study, ranged
from reducing consumption for ethical reasons(frugality), to consuming less to save money (thrift)(Burningham & Venn, 2017:15, Jackson, 2005a,b).
This distinction is significant because it affects thelikelihood of rebounds occurring, if, for example,
savings are spent on carbon-emitting alternatives.
However, given that we are seeking to urgently
change embedded patterns across a rangeof behaviours and situational contexts (andnot just instigate individual actions), it seems
inevitable that we will need to look beyond nudge
approaches. As Dolan et al. conclude, “the bestinterventions will certainly be those that seek
to change minds alongside changing contexts”(2012:274).

27

Psychological approaches
To address nudge’s shortfall in cognitive depth,
we turn to social and environmental psychology,
which (long before the inception of ‘nudge’), hasmade considerable inroads into our understandingsof how human behavioural responses can be used
to promote climate mitigation policy, low-carbon
action and adaptive behaviour, by emphasising
the importance of perceptions and motivations.27
Several books and papers provide useful overviews(Adams, 2016),28 but at its core, psychologicalperspectives essentially see values (personal,
guiding principles) and identity (how people
define themselves) as the “building blocks of public
engagement” (McLoughlin et al., 2019:16). Whereas
public opinion and attitudes shift, surge andwane, values and identity tend to be more stable
and consistent across contexts, which can be
helpful in framing communications and targetinginterventions to promote conscious change andembed low-carbon lifestyles – rather than simply
triggering a collection of disparate pro-climate
actions (Nash et al., 2017).
Certainly, psychological studies in the fieldof climate change have made considerable
contributions towards our understanding ofscaling ‘up’ or shallow scaling (see Boxes 2 and 3
above), by identifying targets and exploring thepotential for behavioural change through specificinterventions to improve the uptake of highclimate-impact actions (Nielsen et al., 2020:25),
often by highlighting individual and social barriersand constraints (information, financial, confidence,
time, mobility, expertise), and indicating how they
can be overcome (Atari et al., 2010; Lorenzoni etal., 2007; Dietz et al., 2009; Poortinga & Whitaker,2018). One such barrier is what is referred to as‘solution aversion’ (Kay & Campbell, 2014), where
people deny problems and the scientific evidence
supporting their existence when they are averseto the solutions (inconvenient truths), evaluating
the evidence in light of whether they interpretits policy implications as desirable or in line with
their ideological beliefs. Solution aversion canbe overcome via a variety of methods such as
clarifying the solution to avoid misunderstanding,through affirmative action around the solution,

E.g. attitudes to risk, cognition, denial), values (Schwartz, 2012, Kasser, 2016; Crompton et al., 2014; Van den Linden et al., 2015), identity (e.g. virtuesignalling and ‘conspicuous consumption’ (Frank, 2020), emotional responses (such as guilt and shame), and wellbeing (Dittmar et al., 2014; Clayton &Manning, 2018; Brown & Kasser, 2005)

28 A Task Force commissioned by American Psychological Association explored psychological perspectives on climate change, including perceptions,causes and consequences (2008), and led to a special issue of American Psychologist in 2011, which Clayton & Manning (2018) subsequently built
upon. Other useful overview papers include Swim et al., 2011 and Nielsen et al., 2020. With regard to energy early insights came from Stern andGardner (1981).

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reward substitution to incentivise action in spite ofsolution aversion, ideological affirmation to avoid
polarisation and changing the solution (although
this is very difficult in addressing climate change).29
Another area where psychology offers a platform
for scaling ‘up’ (or shallow) behaviour change isby harnessing positive ‘spill-over’ effects (alsoreferred to as ‘catalyst’ or ‘wedge’ behaviours).
This operates rather like a foot in the door or firstrung on a ladder of engagement, by assuming that
one relatively simple, targeted eco-behaviour canlead to another (e.g. recycling at home leading torecycling at work), which may, in principle, resultin more radical structural changes over time,
especially if behaviour spills over into social andpolitical realms, and causes scaling ‘out’ or evendeep scaling (Defra, 2008: 22; Nash et al., 2017;
Thøgersen & Ölander, 2003). For example, a studyin Maine, USA, found that engaging in everyday‘green’ behaviours, made residents more likely tosupport wind power expansion, even controlling fortheir interest in environmental concerns in the firstplace (Thøgersen & Noblet, 2012).
However – and this is a big caveat – it is important tonote that reviews of interventions targeted at proenvironmental spill-overs have overall found them
to be relatively ineffective for a variety of reasons(Maki et al., 2019; Capstick et al., 2015; Thøgersen &Crompton, 2009; Abrahamse et al., 2005; Truelove
et al., 2014). What has become increasingly evident
is that using economic (extrinsic) rationales foraction in interventions to promote environmentallyconscious behaviour produces limited results andcan even lead to negative spill-overs (Bolderdijk
et al., 2013), which in psychological terms areequivalent to rebound effects. For example,
Commissioner Lorraine Whitmarsh explains thatthe introduction of the plastic bag charge in theUK, although successful in drastically reducing thenumber of single-use bags being purchased, did
not lead to further pro-environmental behaviourchanges or broader efforts to tackle waste, possibly
because it was presented as economic policy(appealing to extrinsic values via a price signal)
rather than an ecologically-motivated action(reinforcing intrinsic values).
This relates to another concept associated withnegative spill-overs: moral licensing, whereby
one environmentally - ‘virtuous’ action (such as
reusing or recycling plastic bags) may be used tojustify other unsustainable behaviours (such as
buying heavily packaged items) (Zhong et al., 2010).

Scaling behaviour change is therefore far fromstraightforward.
At the same time, other research has shown thatby targeting motivation and conviction, rather
than (only) providing information or exercising
coercion, individual actions can trigger further
eco-behaviours (Barr et al., 2010; Thøgersen, 1999;
also see the CAPSI project), though admittedly,
this is most evident in people who already express
environmental concerns. Other factors found toaffect the likelihood of achieving positive spill-overs
are attitudes and identity. As mentioned already,those identifying as ‘green’ are more likely todemonstrate eco-friendly behaviour (Whitmarsh &O’Neill, 2010), which can be particularly pronouncedwith respect to high-cost actions (Gneezy etal., 2012). They are also likely to place greater
emphasis on intrinsic values (self-transcendence
and altruism), than extrinsic values (selfenhancement and materialism), and experiencehigher levels of wellbeing.
These connections between wellbeing andintrinsic values offer a promising hook forsustainable behaviour interventions, albeit
tempered by the current dominance ofconsumerism, as Kasser relates in Quote Box 2(which we return to in Section 5). Not only ismaterialism found to be negatively associatedwith pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours(Hurst et al., 2013), as well as significantly
associated with lower wellbeing (Dittmar et al.,2014), but even when individuals don’t identify as‘green’ as such, evidence suggests that engaging in
pro-environmental behaviours can be sufficient tocreate positive associations with wellbeing (Kasser,2017).
Quote Box 2: Promoting intrinsic values“Successful interventions [should]
encourage intrinsic/self-transcendent
values/goals, increase felt personal security,
and/or block materialistic messages fromthe environment. These interventions would
likely be more effective if policies were also
adopted that diminished contemporary
culture’s focus on consumption, profit, andeconomic growth.”(Kasser, 2016:489)

29 https://bppblog.com/2018/03/27/solution-aversion/

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29This evidence of conflicting motivations, values
and identities, often pulling in different directions,also demonstrates that presenting the co-benefitsof low-carbon actions can be an effective way of
appealing to diverse motivations across the value
spectrum, and may go some way towards mitigating
against the attitude-behaviour and intentionaction gaps that have long confounded academics,
policymakers, NGOs and green marketeers, whereby
individuals report eco-consciousness, but fail to act
correspondingly (van Basshuysen & Brandstedt,
2018; White et al., 2019a; Johnstone & Tan, 2015;
Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). Encouragingly, Bain etal. (2015:1) found that by presenting the co-benefitsof ‘development’ (understood here as ‘economic
and scientific advancement’) and ‘benevolence’ (‘amore moral and caring community’) in promoting
actions to combat climate change, people across
24 countries were motivated to engage in private,public and financial activities to a similar degree,whether or not they were convinced about thevalidity or importance of climate change itself. The
study concluded,“Communicating co-benefits could motivate
action on climate change where traditional
approaches have stalled”(Bain et al., 2015:1).
Priming also has the potential to motivate
environmentally conscious behaviour, by activating
intrinsic values at the point of choice. A study
exploring consumers buying fresh produce inDenmark and Brazil found that in both countries(known to have diverse cultures and markedly
different levels of organic market penetration),
priming for normative goals resulted in greater
importance being placed on purchasing organic
food, and also reduced consumer requests for a
perfect product appearance (related to hedonic
goals), which may support attempts to reduce foodwaste (Thøgersen & Alfinito, 2020).

Furthermore, experiments conducted by
Bauer et al. (2012) found that invoking‘citizenship’ rather than consumerism, led todecreased orientations towards materialistic
concerns, whilst exposure to consumeristcues was associated with reduced interest insocial involvement, greater competitiveness,and lower feelings of responsibility.

As Kasser points out,
all of us have materialistic tendencies…
researchers need to ask not only, “Who ismaterialistic?” but also “When are people
materialistic?” (2006:506).

For this reason, understanding that people areconflicted and fallible, and reminding them how
their actions relate to their values, clearly has a partto play, especially given that materialistic priming– via marketing, sponsorship and advertising
campaigns – remains ubiquitous in most societies.
Just as behavioural psychology has extensively
informed communication and marketing strategies(UNEP, 2005), what seems particularly pertinent intoday’s increasingly polarised political and social
media climate is that effective framing, messaging
and modelling will be key to delivering sustainablebehaviour change at scale. Lessons we can draw
are, first, that the source is as important as thecontent of the message because information will
be filtered by political and social allegiances (Whiteet al., 2019b). When people are actively deliberatinga choice and engaging in decision-making, theyseek information from sources they trust, i.e. thosethey share common values with (friends, family,
neighbours) or from independent/formal sources
they consider to be objective and competent (e.g.
health professionals, NGOs, teachers, scientists).
Modelling can also be influential, particularly fromsocially-relevant, aspirational figures, who candemonstrate, and help rewrite what is understood
to be ‘the done thing’ (e.g. celebrities, entertainers,social media influencers, sports personalities,
religious leaders) (Gächter & Renner, 2018). Finally,
proximity to others can also lead to scaling by social
contagion (see Box 3 earlier), as has been found tobe the case in the uptake of solar panels and electricvehicles in local neighbourhoods (Frank, 2020;
Bollinger & Gillingham, 2012; White et al., 2019b).
Thus, to shift from unsustainable living to
low-carbon lifestyles, we might utilize ‘norm
entrepreneurs’. To change norms, we need tochange both what people are doing (social norms)
and what people believe others think they should
be doing (the norm expectations) (Bicchieri &Mercier, 2014). Individuals and groups can work to
shift social norms towards a low-carbon lifestyleby visibly practicing and clearly articulating a set ofsustainable behaviours. Additionally, new research
about dynamic norms - norms that are shifting indicates that by articulating a changing or trending
norm, we can help speed up the rate of change andthus the movement towards normalizing sustainableliving (Sparkman & Walton, 2017).

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A further – and potentially significant – routeto maximising the reach of behaviour change
stems from the understanding that individuals
not only hold multiple values simultaneously, butalso assume multiple roles and operate acrossspheres of influence. By thinking of behaviour inthese broad terms, the impact of individual agency
can be extended well beyond the sum of a person’s
discrete actions, and be amplified across families,
friendship circles, workplaces, social and religious
groups, schools and learning institutions, leisureand sports clubs, NGOs, corporations, and otherorganisations and networks (Tosun & Schoenefeld,
2017). As Commissioner Stuart Capstick explains,

In her work, Commissioner Frances Westleytakes the concept of agency-reach further still,by emphasising the role individuals can play as‘institutional entrepreneurs’, with the capacity todrive sustainability innovation strategies by eroding
the resilience of dominant institutional systems
and presenting, “viable shadow alternatives andniche regimes” (Westley et al., 2011:762). She
expands, “Key persons can play pivotal roles
in such learning processes including providing
leadership, building trust, developing visions, andsense-making. These individuals can be important
brokers for connecting people and networks andalso play a key role as nodes in learning networks”(Westley et al., 2011:771).

“If we can think of behaviour in expansive
terms, then there are lots of different entry
points into the system via our different
roles (everyday decisions and consumption,
influencing those around us, advocating forchange, working in new ways). We can exert
influence formally and informally, and also
via coalitions.”

Research also offers pointers about psychologicaldevices to avoid (or use with caution)
when pursuing behaviour change. Several
Commissioners explained that although shameand guilt were often invoked in environmental
campaigns and advocacy, such strategies werelikely to prove counterproductive in the long-term.
Whilst shaming may make instigators feel better
about their own ‘virtuous’ conduct (and may evendemonstrate a degree of success, as Commissioner
Leo Murray points out in the case of ‘flight-shame’/flygskam and ‘train-brag’/tågskryt in Scandinavia),
it does not necessarily induce positive behaviourchange in the targets of shaming when used as anexternally driven strategy.

The Sitra report by Impiö et al. (2020) demonstrates
this potential, by calculating not only the carbon
footprints of fictional individuals, based on theirlifestyle-archetype profiles, but interestingly,
also describes and quantifies the spill-overs
corresponding to their pro-eco behaviours interms of emissions saved, which they call, ‘carbon
handprints’ (see Quote Box 3). This touches on
several of the scaling approaches and drivers
identified in Section 2, including scaling up, scalingout, and shallow scaling through contagion.
Quote Box 3: Carbon ‘handprints’“To enable systemic change and to escapethe solely individualist point of view that
often distorts low-carbon lifestyle studies,
we describe here the carbon handprint
people may have. By carbon handprint wemean positive actions that extend beyond
one’s own lifestyle, actions that help otherpeople or the whole of society to reach the
1.5-degree target. These include consumer,
civic and political activities, such as the
choices people make at school, at work,
while practising hobbies, while shopping,
online and on the street.”(Sitra, 2020)

Indeed, shame can become a form of virtue signallingrather than a motivator for generating positivesocial change. As Commissioner Jennie Moore
put it, “If you make people feel bad, you have lostthem.” Commissioner Whitmarsh also explains,“Negativity only works under specific conditions– that is, settings where [three conditions hold]:(1) people are at risk, (2) changing their behaviour
can help to reduce that risk, and (3) an action ispresented as a way to help them mitigate or avoid
that risk.” Therefore, its use is generally confined to
public health and safety campaigns (e.g. seat belts,
smoking, drink driving). Instead, she emphasises that“communicating efficacy is important. Not just fear.”This ties in with related research proposing the useof more empowering cues, such as telling a positive
story, projecting self-efficacy, and highlighting cobenefits – such as health, wellbeing, and community
cohesion (McLoughlin et al., 2019).
Although disciplinarily distinct from psychology,
psychoanalytical and psychosocial perspectives
also show that there are more profoundopportunities for engagement in sustainablebehaviour change via dialogue and connection.
Commissioner Renée Lertzman argues there is

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a need to look beyond subjectivity, and instead
reframe behaviour change as ‘meaning change’,
whereby meaning and relationships are seen as
key entry points for broader social change. By
this account, the unconscious human mind isunderstood to be conflicted and messy, affective
and defensive. Therefore, too narrow a focus onvalues fails to acknowledge the internal struggles
and barriers people face in trying to live by
their values and reconcile the contradictions ofsustainable living (also Lertzman, 2014:3).
Climate anxiety can cause overwhelm, denial anddisavowal, which can lead to anger, paralysis and asuspension of reality, which prevents people fromacting creatively and engaging in problem-solving:something we have seen all too clearly in publicdebates about climate change and sustainability.
Commissioner Sally Weintrobe expands, “it is not[only] about individuals, but rather a mindset.”
Meanwhile, Adams goes on to lament, “Despite
increased knowledge, the populaces of wealthy
nations appear to be outwardly ignoring such risks,
continuing their consumption patterns unabated,
and failing to mount a significant public response”(2013:52). In order to break the impasse, andaddress the “social organisation of denial” (Adams,2013), psychoanalysts advocate safe spaces totalk about lifestyle, and call on political leaders
to communicate and behave in a way that models
and nurtures a ‘culture of care’ (Commissioner
Sally Weintrobe), and fosters ‘attunement’ withpeople’s collective trauma and grief (Commissioner
Lertzman). From a psychotherapy perspective,
creating inclusive and dynamic spaces to holddifficult conversations will be key,30 and as
Lertzman concludes,“By listening more deeply and focusing on
invitation, versus persuasion and fearbased appeals, we can build deeper coalitions
and collaborations that cross political andideological boundaries.”31
This raises challenges of collective psychology: abroader cultural developmental process. It is at thisdeeper level that it is perhaps hardest to engage
and change, but where the most profound andlasting change can come: via shifts in values andworldviews, and by accepting and attuning to themessy nature of reality, which informs so many
aspects of our lives, as Anna Birney expresses in
Quote Box 4:

Quote Box 4: Scaling through depth“Changing individuals at the level of values
and self-perception — at the level of theirworldview — results in people cascading
multiple changes in their behaviour.
Behaviours take care of themselves. People
fly less, eat less meat, recycle more, reuse
more etc. They don’t need to hear andbe exposed to individual campaigns andmessaging for change to happen in theseareas. To achieve the goal of sustainable
lifestyles, it is more efficient and powerfulto shift at the inward, worldview level, notthe outward, behavioural level. Change
the story. Change the person. Change
the behaviour.”Boundless Roots Community (Birney, 2020)

Sociology and social practiceHaving begun with an analysis of behaviouralapproaches associated with ‘methodologicalindividualism’, we move on to explore how
systemic theories understand and elucidate
behaviour change. We turn first to sociologicalapproaches, which Evans and Jackson (2008:4),
claim, “can add an invaluable level of depth andsophistication to understandings of consumer
behaviour and the complexities underlying thechallenges of ‘lifestyle change’.”
While studies from this perspective have been
notably less numerous compared to those fromthe behavioural sciences, by these accounts,
social and physical structures are understood to
be woven together via webs of understandings,
often strongly derived (and perpetuated) by
culture, and co-determined by norms, objects,
symbols, identities and practices, which givemeaning to life (Jackson, 2006). By focusing too
much on individual behaviours, they argue, we failto sufficiently account for these complex socialand cultural processes (Sovacool & Griffiths, 2019;
Stephenson et al., 2010), as well as physical and

30 Reference Carbon Conversations. http://www.carbonconversations.co.uk/p/about.html
31

https://reneelertzman.com/book/

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economic ‘lock-in’ (Unruh, 2010; Sanne, 2002).
As Warde (2014:284) explains, “Against the modelof the sovereign consumer, practice theories
emphasise routine over actions, flow and sequence
over discrete acts, dispositions over decisions, andpractical consciousness over deliberation.”
In relation to sustainable lifestyles, behaviouralapproaches also neglect what Shove (2003) calls
the “social organization of normality”, wherebysocial and infrastructural factors produce certain
patterns of demand, which correspond to thenormalisation of (unsustainable) habits, routinesand everyday practices of consumption, forexample, around washing, showering and laundry,
as well as travel and heating. Therefore, by tackling
the systemic conditions and drivers of thesepractices, we can potentially reconfigure systems
in a more sustainable way.
In this sense, sociological and social practice holdgreat promise in understanding the enabling
conditions for achieving sustainable lifestyles byanalysing the reverse: the systems, infrastructuresand cultures that produce and reproduce
unsustainable consumption. By providing theanalytical scope for capturing many of the scaling
approaches introduced in Section 2, sociologicaltheories present a comprehensive framework forunderstanding systems change, synthesising
not only perspectives of scaling up and scalingout, but also deep scaling via shifts in normative
frames of reference, practices and physicalsystems, which will be necessary to create newpatterns - and possibly even new paradigms of sustainable behaviour. As Giddens explains,consumption choices in today’s complex world are
not one-stop, quick-fire actions, but rather relate
to deeper self-identity, and represent, “decisions
not only about how to act but who to be” (1991:81,
emphasis added). This need to express selfidentity in consumerist cultures via predominantly
materialistic means (earning more to spendmore), represents one of the biggest challenges
for achieving sustainable behaviour change, andexplains why green consumerism has provided
such a successful placeholder or proxy for thoseseeking to improve their eco-credentials without
the need to step out of the prevailing acquisitive
growth paradigm against which they will most likely
be judged. This can also leave behaviour change
initiatives open to the ‘performative behaviour’ trap
identified by Commissioner Manisha Anantharaman(Quote Box 5):

Quote Box 5: The ‘performative behaviour’trap“Too much of behaviour change work has
become about performative behaviour with
cultural and sociological markers about
what sustainable living ‘should look like’.”(Commissioner Manisha Anantharaman)
It also raises the question of how to create acounterculture to consumerism, when its reachis so pervasive. This has brought a renewed focus
from scholars within the discipline on inequality
and excess consumption (Evans, 2018; Dietz el al.,2020; Urry, 2010). As Evans and Jackson explain,“Consumerism is best understood as a cultural
condition in which economic consumption
becomes a way of life. It is a state of affairs inwhich more and more cultural functions arehanded over to the activity of consumption
such that it colonises more and more aspectsof human experience.”(2008:6-7)
Therefore, as long as consumerism, materialismand economic growth continue to enjoy cultural
supremacy, and until they are replaced by moresustainable and self-transcendent frameworks ofmeaning, such as wellbeing and sufficiency (moreon this in Section 5), it will be an uphill struggle todivert behaviours in a sustainable direction without
an alternative to replace it with. To this end, Dietzet al. (2020) propose that sociology has a roleto play in unpicking the contextual conditions
driving variations in GHG emissions between andwithin countries (macro), corporations/social actors(meso), and individuals (micro), to gain a better
understanding of what drives some actors to act
differently under similar social, political and economic
institutional conditions. Further, they point to theutility of sociological approaches for exploring
intersectionality, that is, how the interplay betweensocial and political identities, such as gender, class,disability, race, sexual orientation affect climate
justice, i.e. “the concern that the causes andconsequences of climate change, and the impacts ofefforts to reduce the magnitude of climate change
and adapt to it, are inequitably distributed”, as
exemplified by the differential impacts of Hurricane
Katrina in 2005, and the Amazon rainforest fires in2019 (Dietz et al., 2020:144).

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33Turning for further guidance to practice theory,social practices are understood to consist of
three elements: materials (tools, technology,
infrastructure), meanings (values, symbolism,
identity), and competences (knowledge andskills) (Shove et al., 2012; Shove & Spurling, 2013).
Shove suggests, therefore, that it is misguided toexogenise social structures and contextual factors
in behavioural models (based on choice) because
practice plays such a key role in the expression ofvalues and, at the same time, in perpetuating them(2012:1279). The two approaches are therefore
perceived to be incompatible, as behavioural choicemodels accord such a high degree of agency toindividuals, arguably resulting in ineffective policy
interventions that focus on influencing choiceat the expense of more “historically grounded
analyses of how relevant social practices,
systems of practice, and related infrastructuresand institutions evolve” (Shove, 2012:1280). This
interpretation also stresses the co-production of
consumptive practice, “consumers and producers
are both involved in constituting and reproducing
practices, the successful accomplishment of which
entails specific forms of consumption” (Shove &Pantzar, 2005:62).

institutional and infrastructures, as well as reflectedin broader “patterns of time and mobility” (Shove,
2010; also see Egger & Swinburn, 1997).

Shove believes that the dominant A(ction),B(ehaviour), C(hoice) paradigm has been so
successfully sustained in governance and policy
discourses because it serves the needs andinterests of policymakers to put responsibility
for action (and inaction) primarily at the door ofindividuals, rather than questioning the institutions
and systems that sustain it (2010:1283). As applied
to sustainable behaviour research, she warns
against assuming that evidence of apparently
successful interventions in one sphere (e.g. on
smoking, littering, seat belt use) is necessarilytransferable to other contexts (citing the approachof the UK’s DEFRA and Department of Transport
in the mid-2000s), which may result in misguided
policy and outcomes (also see Burningham & Venn,
2017:20). Instead, improving the sustainability ofmobility, diets, and energy use in society requires
directing attention to the multiple and interrelatedsocial practices embodied by these actions. Shove(2010) argues that a promising way forward would
be to reorient research towards understanding thesocial context in which unsustainable actions
occur (also see Batel et al., 2016). She suggests that
greater academic and policy attention be paid to theevolution of ‘envirogenic’ environments, which
would result in more self-reinforcing sustainablebehaviours, and cites the success of the more
holistic approaches taken in public health andurban planning spheres to tackle obesity, where dietand exercise are understood to be shaped by social,

Quote Box 6: Social practice and behaviourchange policy

Despite the undoubted capacity of social practicetheory to, first, help identify barriers to scaling,
second, capture the complexity of relationships
between social and physical structures, and, third,
offer a comprehensive framework for evaluating
the shortcomings of behavioural interventions,the practical applicability of the approach for
informing policy has been criticised for offering
little more than general advice to “tak[e] social
norms a bit more seriously as influences of
behaviour” (Jackson, 2005b:63). Further, its
limitations in helping shape the precise design oftarget interventions have also been highlighted,
given that so little is yet understood about theevolution and dynamics of social practices. Evanset al. (2012), however, firmly rebuff this critique by
presenting a series of “emergent programmes ofpractice-based interventions” in the housing, foodand mobility sectors, summarising that successfulprogrammes need to be coordinated, attentive towebs of practice, and adaptive (see Quote Box 6).

“Crucially…there is a need for programmatic
policy responses that are co-ordinated,consistent and focused on specific sets ofinterrelated practices. Allied to this, it wassuggested that these programmes should
be flexible enough to adapt to the dynamics
and contingencies of practices (andinterventions) as they unfold.”(Evans et al., 2012:127-8)
Commissioner Manisha Anantharaman also points
to the fact that, as a theory, social practice has
a flat ontology: “it doesn’t have a good way of
thinking about power and hierarchy relations”. She
goes on to describe the context of food practices inIndia, where domestic activities invariably involve
power relationships between domestic helpers
and household owners, which impact on foodprovisioning, preparation and consumption. She
asks, “How do we conceptualise these power-laden
relationships and the way in which they impact onwhat types of behaviour takes place?”

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Taking an integrative theoretical approachmay, therefore, be a potential way forward.
Indeed, despite coming from a predominantly
psychological disciplinary perspective, Nash etal. (2017) argue that social practice theory has
the potential to improve understandings of how
to foster sustainable lifestyles, and highlightthe value of paying greater attention to social
norms in generating climate-conscious spill-overbehaviours, specifically, “via carriers of practice,materiality, and through relationships between
practices within wider systems of practice” (2017:1).
Furthermore, several Commissioners withpsychology backgrounds mentioned that promisingand effective methods for behaviour change havebeen developed and applied in the habit literature
on public health (Verplanken et al., 2008; 2018).
Commissioner Lorraine Whitmarsh explains, “Someof the work in the habit literature in psychology
overlaps with social practice theory in as far as
they agree that what we do is based on context– where we are, and who we are with. There arehelpful intersections to explore here.” This wasechoed on the sociological side by Commissioner
Kate Burningham, who points out that although
psychological approaches focus on the features of
the immediate environment in which behaviours
are habitual, there are important linkages withsociological practice, which explores the broader
elements of social and structural environments
in which practices are normalised (also see
Southerton, 2013; Darnton et al., 2011).

Political economy
Though there is some common ground withsociological approaches, political economists argue
that approaches to consumption from economics,sociology and psychology tend to “ignore structuralelements of the problem grounded in political andeconomic systems” (Princen et al., 2002:ix), where
economists equate consumption with the ‘demand
function’ and sociologists as an expressionof identity and search for meaning in modern
society (Giddens, 1991). From this perspective,
consumption is viewed, “not just as an individual’s
choice among goods, but as a stream of choices
and decisions winding its way through the various
stages of extraction, manufacture and final use,embedded at every step in social relations of power
and authority” (Princen et al., 2002:12). In sum,as Commissioner Doris Fuchs put it, “to change
behaviour, we need to change structures”.

Traditionally, political economists often focus on
production (and struggles over who controls it) as
the root of social change and are often critiqued
for their reductionism and neglect of questionsof culture, despite advances in cultural political
economy (Jessop, 2010). They tend to view
consumption largely in relation to the role of debt
and crises of under-consumption for growth ina capitalist society. In relation to socio-technicaltransitions, there is an emphasis on ‘lock-in’(Unruh, 2000), as well as cultures of consumption(Princen et al., 2002; Dauvergne, 2008) that fueland sustain consumption through (among otherthings) Fordist production models which require
mass consumption, or more recently debtfuelled spending, and the role of advertising insustaining demands that are unsustainable from anenvironmental point of view.
As political economists, they are alert to thechallenges that attempts to check consumerism
face. Maniates notes, for example, “advertisers
have the full weight of Western liberal tradition in
their corner. To be anti-advertising is to be antidemocratic, if not anti-market” (2002:207). Part ofscaling behaviour then is also about how to un-scaleand descale unsustainable behaviours. Capstick etal. (2015) suggest, for example, that a more radical
approach to reducing personal emissions in linewith the sorts of parameters described above would
need to challenge dominant norms and givens in(capitalist) society. For example,
to deliberately promote reduced consumption
as a means of lowering people’s embedded
carbon emissions … immediately collides
with powerful and deep-rooted political andeconomic assumptions about the importanceof consumer spending as a means of driving
economic growth. Indeed, the paradigm ofeconomic growth is itself used as a proxy forsocietal wellbeing (Capstick., 2015:7).

This speaks to a much deeper political economy
challenge around the very function of the state ina capitalist society: to reproduce the conditions
for the expansion of capital, even if that meansincreasing social inequalities and environmental
degradation. Fuelling growth through advertisingand consumer spending is central to this wayof organising the economy. From this point ofview, therefore, individual behaviour change isinsignificant when set against the need for ‘degrowth’ (Kallis, 2018; Hickel, 2020) and structuralchange in the very purpose of economic activity
away from growth as the means and end of statepolicy, as opposed to prosperity or wellbeing for
instance (Jackson, 2011). Given the level of power

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Where such approaches are useful is in pointing to
the need to disrupt power relations and get to theroots of unsustainable consumption by addressing
economic policy, the conduct of elite politics, thepower of advertising and so on. Many scholars
working on behaviour change within this tradition
attend to the intrinsic links between sustainableproduction and consumption, including the workon sustainable production and consumption by
Lorek, Fuchs and Akenji reviewed above. They
also tend to place more emphasis on the role ofsocial movements as the disruptors of consumer
culture and the sites of alternatives. This can be
through protest against particular products orbusiness practices, the co-production of ‘civil
regulation’ of the private sector through codes ofconduct, certification and the like (Newell, 2001) orbuilding of alternatives as ‘prosumers’ get involvedin community energy production and local food
networks, for example (Seyfang, 2006).

Photo credit: Scott Evans, Guildford, UK, 2020.

of incumbent actors this is not an easy undertaking(Fuchs et al., 2019). Nor does it sit easily with theneed for rapid change. Indeed, political economists
are often far better at accounting for why things do
not change, than how and when they can (Newell
and Simms, 2020).
In terms of global political economy, thoughmany of these connections are often underexplored, attention would focus on the global andhistorical patterns of exchange, extraction anduneven development which underpin contemporary
inequalities in consumption and their ecologicalconsequences (Newell, 2021). These relate tohistorical inequities and patterns of colonialism
aimed at extracting resources and wealth forthe benefit of the Global North, but which persist
through unfair terms of trade and patterns ofregulation and global governance which lock-in
privileged market access for mobile transnational
companies (Newell, 2012). Hence the ‘cheap’oil, cotton or meat which features highly in the
consumption patterns of the polluter elite can only
be consumed on a large scale, and is under-priced
in social and environmental terms regarding thecosts it passes on to society and the ecosystem,
because of structural inequalities which, according
to this view, need to be addressed as part of abroader project of transforming the economy awayfrom its current destructive path.

The focus is often the system, rather than theindividual, however. For example, applying apolitical economy analysis to a systems provision
approach, Mattioli et al. (2020) show that
research on car dependence often lacks analysisof the political-economic factors underpinningcar-dependent societies - which include thepower of the car industry, the provision of car
infrastructure over affordable public transport, thepolitical economy of urban sprawl and culturesof car consumption (Paterson, 2006; Böhm et al.,2006). These, they argue, are crucial elements
to the maintenance of car dependence and the
reproduction of carbon lock-in (Unruh, 2010).
A final contribution of political economy analysis
to understanding sustainable behaviour change isto provide an account of historical precedentsof large-scale shifts in behaviour, including ones
initiated and enforced by the state. For example,
Newell and Simms (2020:11) argue that “When theychoose to do so, states can play a proactive role indramatically and rapidly shifting cultural practices”.
Dramatic levels of resource conservation
during the Second World War were achieved byrationing around household waste reduction, theconversation of land from livestock to cereals
and the establishment of 1.7 million allotments toencourage people to ‘dig for victory’. They suggest,“Amazingly, from today’s standpoint of rampant
mass consumerism, efforts were invested by thestate in de-legitimising wasteful consumption”(Newell and Simms, 2020:12). Railway companies
advertised that needless travel is a crime.

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The Railway Executive Committee produced
a poster which read ‘Is your journey reallynecessary?’, while the UK Ministry of Fuel andPower appealed to people not to ‘squander
electricity’ and to ‘save fuel’, ‘mend, sew, repair.’ In
the USA, the Food Administration urged citizens
not to ‘waste food’ and issued a list of instructions
about how to do it which included: “buy it withthought, cook it with care, use less wheat andmeat, buy local foods, serve just enough, use what
is left”.
In the UK, between 1938 and 1944, a complete
revolution in consumption patterns was devised,
implemented and the broad-based engagementof the population secured. Behaviours towards
food, fuel, transport and civic engagement altered
rapidly. Andrew Simms suggests that apart fromsome well-known privations, an outcome of therapid changes was not just a successful reductionof consumption and equalisation of access toresources among the population, it also saw adramatic improvement in general health, life
expectancy and infant and maternal mortality(Simms, 2013).
Political economy approaches would point
to the need to bring back the state into thedebate about sustainable behaviours, as the only
institution with a specific mandate and the means
to advance and protect the public interest. This
would be a broader project of recommoning: tosocialise control over the provisions of key services
that has been ceded to the private sector underneoliberalism. In this view, legislative and regulatory
frameworks provide the policy context within which
individual and institutional actions can be mosteffective. As Commissioner Bill Rees put it:
Much ‘heavy lifting’ will have to come in theform of major government intervention in theeconomy on behalf of the common good. I, as
an individual, cannot implement the necessary
carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems, otherwaste charges, resource depletion taxes andrationing schemes. Nor can I provide better
urban public transportation or national energy
strategies. You, as an individual cannot ensure
fairer wealth and income tax regimes needed toensure a just transition to a sustainable state.
Unsustainability is a collective problem thatdemands collective solutions in the form ofwhole-society change. We must both re-insert
the notion of ‘public interest’ into the politicaldebate and re-assert the legitimate role ofgovernment responding to broad societal values
as bulwark against unwarranted incursions of
the private sector into the global commons.

Before moving on to explore Levers for change
in more detail, we stay within the political realm
to take a brief look at relevant perspectives fromenvironmental governance, political science andpolitical sociology, as a means of pulling together
some of the threads identified in this chapter
regarding how to bridge individualist and systemic
approaches.
To turn first to environmental governance, the ideaof ‘polycentric’ climate governance, associatedwith the late Elinor Ostrom (2010), suggests thatthe number of actors engaging in climate action
has proliferated in recent years, partly in responseto the slow progress of the global climate regime,
but also because global climate initiatives, suchas the Paris Agreement itself, have more recently
called for the increased participation for nonstate and sub-national actors (Hale, 2016). Thishas created new levels and entry points forengagement whereby,
Each unit within a polycentric system exercises
considerable independence to make norms andrules within a specific domain (such as a family,a firm, a local government, a network of local
governments, a state or province, a region, anational government, or an international regime.
(Ostrom, 2010:552)

This increases scope for informal, non-state
actors to complement - as well as provide analternative (radical) track - to more formal, stateled governance processes due to their: flexibility;
capacity to self-organise locally; scope for building
trusting relationships; potential for experimentationand innovation; and ability to incorporate feedbacks
through experiential learning (Jordan et al., 2018;
Bulkeley et al., 2014).
The role of polycentric governance in supporting
sustainable behaviour change is also identified
by Sovacool and Martiskainen (2020) in their casestudies exploring ‘rapid and deep’ transitions inhousehold heating systems in China, Denmark,Finland and the UK. They find,“political and governance architecture canbe just as salient as technical innovation anddevelopment in stimulating transitions,”
identifying six features of polycentric governancecommon to helping facilitate change in theirfour cases: equity (sharing costs and benefits);
inclusivity and local involvement; integrating
information and feedbacks; enhancing ownershipand accountability (of producers and users);

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involving multiple stakeholders with overlapping
responsibilities across scales; and building
experimentation and flexibility into the process(Sovacool & Martiskainen, 2020:1).
Conceptually, governance and institutions,
therefore, offer a way of bridging the gap
between the agency of individuals and supremacyof structures because they highlight the role ofinformal institutions (e.g. networks, social groups,
implicit norms and practices), and explore how
they interact with, and co-constitute, formal ones
(such as laws, rules and procedures). The utilityof taking an institutional approach is also evident
in the fact that the concept has been used (albeit
with different emphases) in political science,
political economy, sociology and anthropology(Hall and Taylor, 1996; Schmidt, 2008; Cleaver &De Koning, 2015). It also provides a promising way
of examining how ecosystems of transformation
can operate as webs of interconnections, linking
actors with systems via formal and informal
institutions, across multiple arenas and levels.
Indeed, the concept of ‘institutional work’, “focuseson the role of actors in creating, maintaining, or
disrupting institutional structures” (Beunen &Patterson, 2019:12).
Returning to a political economy perspective,
however, it is clear that the best prospects fordeep scaling behaviour change will lie not only inreconfiguring existing relationships and structures,
but also entering and occupying the closed,
hidden and empty spaces between them as away of disrupting and reshaping the asymmetricpower structures driving reliance on fossil fuels,
consumptive materialism and unsustainable
lifestyles.
To this end, we close the chapter by presenting
Gaventa’s ‘power cube’ (see Figure 2), which
re-integrates notions of power, and presents a
visualisation for the interrelationships between
spaces, levels and forms of power, and in doing so,
offers a useful framework for civil society actors
to strategically “begin to assess the possibilities oftransformative action in various political spaces”(2006:25).

Figure 2: Gaventa’s ‘power cube’: the levels, spaces and forms of power

Source: Reproduced from www.powercube.net

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Photo credit: Markus Spiske, Nürnberg, Germany, 2019.

First, the model illustrates that levels of
engagement can be household, local, national or
global, as per the first side of the cube. Second,the ‘space’ where engagement takes place canbe a closed or invited institution, i.e., a political orsocial channel, discourse or practice, where terms
are likely to be stacked against newcomers - orinterestingly, they can be created spaces, which
Gaventa argues provides alternative ‘third’ spaces,“where social actors reject hegemonic space andcreate spaces for themselves” (Gaventa, 2006:27).
Finally, drawing on Lukes (1974), Gaventa identifies
three forms of power: (1) visible power, whichis accessible to a plurality of interests, usually
exercised in formal political arenas; (2) hidden
power, only available to privileged interests who
control the agenda and mobilise bias (e.g. fossil fuelindustries, polluter elites); (3) and invisible power,
which achieves willing acquiescence from people
by “dominating ideologies, values and forms of
behaviour,” using processes of socialisation, culture
and ideology to define what is appropriate andacceptable (Gaventa, 2006:29). Operating in all ofthese ‘3 x 3’ dimensions is necessary to to achievetransformation, as Gaventa explains,
Transformative, fundamental change happens,
I suggest, in those rare moments when social
movements or social actors are able to work
effectively across each of the dimensions
simultaneously, i.e. when they are able to linkthe demands for opening previously closed
spaces with people’s action in their own spaces;to span across local and global action, and tochallenge visible, hidden and invisible power
simultaneously. Just like the Rubik’s cube,
successful change is about getting each of thepieces on each dimension of the cube to alignwith each other, simultaneously. (Gaventa,
2006:30)

Clearly, many aspects of this model chime withthe different theoretical perspectives we haveintroduced above. At the risk of caricature,
economic and psychological behaviourists
tend to operate where actions and arenas are
more visible; sociologists emphasise habitual
practices and implicit social structures; andpolitical economists hone in on the political andeconomic realms and the circuits of structuraland institutional power that pervade the system.
In this way, it is apparent that the four main
theoretical perspectives we have laid out in thischapter operate at different levels, and present
broadly distinct ways of approaching the questionof behaviour change: how to understand it, scaleit, and make it more sustainable. Though theyeach assume different theories of change andpotential points of intervention, we have tried
to suggest, nevertheless, that there are areas ofcomplementarity and overlap that are useful indeed necessary - for understanding and engaging
with the complex mosaic of societal behaviourchange. In the end, academic theories on thesubject of behaviour change, and how and when
it might be possible to scale it, need to be closely
integrated with observations and reflections basedon lived experiences to fully appreciate the way thatthings happen in the real world. In the following
sections, we unpack what this means for achieving
behaviour change in practice.

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4
Leverage and tipping points
The question of scaling, suggests theneed not just to work across all sites of
behaviour change and all approaches toengaging types of behaviour change fromindividual to systemic, but also to consider
tipping points and leverage points in theseecosystems of change, where change
can be deepened and accelerated to thegreatest extent.
Firstly, tipping points. This is the idea of there
being tipping points in systems which originallycame from the natural sciences (Lenton & Williams,
2013), but has been adopted by social scientists
to understand social tipping points (Centola et al.,2018; Otto et al., 2020, 2020a; Smith et al., 2020)
including in relation to decarbonisation (Smith etal., 2020). Social tipping points (STPs) have been
defined within an SES (socio-ecological system)as the point “at which a small quantitative change
inevitably triggers a non-linear change in the social
component of the SES, driven by self-reinforcing
positive-feedback mechanisms, that inevitably andoften irreversibly lead to a qualitatively different
state of the social system” (Otto et al., 2020:3).
There is also interest in the “butterfly effect”, ananalogy that comes from chaos theory: how a small
act can trigger huge effects. A good example might
be the protest of climate activist Greta Thunberg
alone outside the Swedish parliament triggering a
global Youth Strike 4 Climate movement that withinjust half a year had grown to 1.5 million students
in 125 countries (Otto et al., 2020), or how thedeath of George Floyd lit the fuse of the Black Lives
Matter movement; or how Extinction Rebellion
protests triggered many governments and cities
to declare climate emergencies. The point in thesecases, however, is that these moments embolden

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

others to act on deep-seated concerns andgrievances around which there are long histories ofmobilisation to draw on and re-activate.
Applied to behaviour change, the idea of ‘tipping
points’ alludes to the way in which behaviours
become socially unacceptable or new behaviours
become widespread and diffuse. Moments of crisis
are thought to create opportunities to acceleratethese shifts. It is no coincidence that many of themost popular and frequently referenced examplesof mass behaviour change come from the Second
World War, around rationing, local food productionand efforts to eliminate food waste for example,
where there is clear evidence of radical reductions
in consumption (Simms, 2013). A challenge interms of drawing too many parallels from theexperience of rationing, is that while publics may
have been willing to make temporary sacrifices fora war effort, societies may be less willing to do so
as part of a new norm of reduced consumption
as would be required to tackle climate change(Newell & Simms, 2020). Rationing only lasted
during the war, then consumption rapidly increased

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40

afterwards. That said, during the 2007-2008
financial crisis people looked at radical measures
to reduce public spending. This involved working
less with the benefit of reducing stress. Utah in
the US introduced a four-day week for public
sector workers and studied what happened.
There was a 14% drop in CO2 by closing publicbuildings for the extra day, wellbeing rose andabsenteeism dropped as workers were happier(Simms, 2013:393). Although they changed the time
period for accessing public services, a third of the
public thought services had improved. Currently,
the speculation is about whether the Covid-19
pandemic can perform such a catalytic role, as we
explore below.
Otto et al. analyse the potential of social tipping
interventions to “activate contagious processesof rapidly spreading technologies, behaviours,social norms, and structural reorganization within
their functional domains that we refer to as social
tipping elements (STEs)” (2020:2354). STEs thenare “subdomains of the planetary socio-economic
system where the required disruptive change may
take place and lead to a sufficiently fast reduction
in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions” (Ottoet al., 2020:2354). Interestingly - and significantly
for this work - very few of the STEs identified
directly relate to behaviour change. Only the callto strengthen climate education and engagement
comes closest to behaviour change, and even
there the assumed causality is very indirect, eventhough ‘lifestyles’ are listed as a social tipping point
element and embrace of fossil-free consumption
and vegetarian diets are mentioned as examples.

The STEs they focus on include things such as
removing fossil-fuel subsidies, constructing
carbon-neutral cities, divestment from fossil fuelsand disclosure of GHG emissions.
A second concept, popular among systems
analysts, is the idea of “leverage points”(Meadows, 1999). These are places within a system
where a small shift in one part of the system cangenerate changes across the system as a whole.
With regard to leverage points, existing literaturepoints to the need for more transformational
approaches, but questions remain about how
these will be achieved in practice (Smith et al.,2020). Echoing earlier reflections about themismatch between carbon intensive behaviour‘hotspots’ and where most policy interventions
aimed at scaling behaviour change have been
directed to date, Abson et al. (2016:30) suggest“many sustainability interventions target highly
tangible, but essentially weak, leverage points(i.e. using interventions that are easy, but have
limited potential for transformational change).
Thus, there is an urgent need to focus on lessobvious but potentially far more powerful areas ofintervention”. This approach to identifying ‘deep
leverage points’ is inspired by the work of Donella
Meadows (1999) on the hierarchy of intervention
points for achieving change (see Figure 3 below).
This suggests the need to go beyond incremental
change aimed at adjusting policy parameters andtowards rules, structures, values and paradigms
implying a role for strategies informed by the typesof psychological, sociological and political economy
thinking reviewed above.

Figure 3: Intervention points in a system

Source: Meadows (1999)

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Many Commissioners expressed sympathy with
the idea that many existing approaches to activate
these leverage points or to generate positivesocial tipping points and avoid negative ecologicaltipping points (or feedback effects) are limitedby their failure to address broader systems. As
Ruth Potts put it, “the juggernaut is moving in
the wrong direction”. Energy use and growth arealmost exactly correlated, with a recent academic
synthesis showing that large and absolute
reductions of resource use and GHG emissions
cannot be achieved through observed decoupling
rates, meaning that decoupling needs to becomplemented by sufficiency-oriented strategies
and strict enforcement of absolute reduction
targets (Haberl et al., 2020). Efficiency gains areoutweighed by production increases (see Box 4 on
rebound effects).

actions were placed in three categories: home,
appliance and travel and a number of personalised
actions were available in each. This allowed
householders to review them and choose the ones
they thought they could adopt and once they had
achieved them they were marked as completed andthat was added to their individual profile. Others,
however, have been critical of the incremental
nature of some of the behaviour changes it
proposed (Corner & Randall, 2011).

17-20 %
Between 17 and 20% market or
population share can be enoughto constitute a tipping point

From this point of view, absent a shift in the basic
direction and orientation of the economy, behaviourchange fades into insignificance. Others raise amore profound barrier still, questioning how muchhuman nature itself can change. Commissioner Bill
Rees (2020) suggests that humans have a built-in
bias against climate action due to the fact that wesocially, temporally and spatially discount it, leaving
us with the challenge of how to break out of the“safe cognitive cocoons” in which many of us exist.
Isolating the effect of specific intervention points
is also very difficult, especially as in many studies
the point of reference is the impact of a ‘bundle’of interventions. For example, Dietz et al. (2009)
show that interventions that combine massmedia messages, household - and behaviour specific information, and communication throughindividuals’ social networks and communities
could lead to reductions of 20% in household
direct emissions. Moreover, they suggest thiscan be achieved in less than 10 years, with little
or no reduction in household wellbeing. In termsof engagement or awareness raising (or what issometimes called ‘social marketing’) rather thandeeper behaviour change, the effect is sometimes
easier to capture. For example, the ‘Act on CO2’
campaign – the UK central government, thenDepartment of Energy and Climate Changefunded Carbon Calculator – the first gov-backed
carbon footprint calculator for the domestic
sector, launched in the 1990s was very popularwith the public with high levels of engagement
and enthusiasm about the project. In the first six
months, the site received nearly 2 million uniquevisitors, with the creation of around 650,000
footprint profiles, according to Commissioner Paula
Owen and official statistics from the Departmentof Energy and Climate Change. Different potential

A transition in systems provision can besaid to have occurred when 50% market
share is secured

25%

A committed group of 25% can be
sufficient to overturn social convention
Predicting when such tipping points might occur or
isolating critical variables and precise causation
when there are so many intervening variables atplay is a fraught endeavour, however. Indeed, evenin tipping points research, such moments aredescribed qualitatively, not quantitatively: when acertain behaviour goes from being ‘a minor
tendency’ to a ‘major practice’ (Otto et al., 2020), as
perhaps with the rise of veganism in recent years insome parts of the world as part of a broader uptakeof plant-based diets. Nevertheless, others do focus
on key thresholds. Some suggest between 17 and
20% market or population share can be enough toconstitute a tipping point and become thedominant pattern (Otto et al., 2020). Extinction
Rebellion activists often point to the work of
Chenoweth and Stephan (2011) on the percentageof the population that need to engage in civil

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disobedience for it to have disruptive effects, whiletransition scholars suggest a transition in systems
provision can be said to have occurred when 50%
market share is secured (Fouquet, 2016). Centola etal. (2018), meanwhile, explore experimental
evidence of how minority groups can reach acritical mass sufficient to induce social change.
They suggest that a committed group of 25% canbe sufficient to overturn social convention within
the total population.
It clearly matters where, when and who leads suchchange. Some authors argue that it must be the“right” share of population, including well-connected
influential people, trendsetters, and other types ofsocial leaders with a high degree of agency (Ottoet al., 2019:3). This speaks to our argument about
intermediaries, brokers and leading by example,
which is outlined further below. There are also
implications for improving the efficacy of targeted
strategies.

Commissioner Tim Kasser argues, “I believe
we need to go for the changeable people...
If you want policy changes, you need to get
30% of the middle 50%”.

In other words, those people that inhibit the space
between the group resistant to any change andthose who have already embraced behaviour change
generally.
On timing, as Otto et al. (2020:7) acknowledge,“Since social-ecological dynamics are subject tocomplex processes that cannot be fully anticipated,
it is not possible to predict when and where exactly
tipping points will be crossed”. The key issue is what
Commission member Andrew Simms referred toas the ‘prefigurative’ politics: preparing the groundfor when political opportunities arise to scale
ambitions. As E.F. Schumacher put it (1973:31),“Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But eachof us can put up the sail, so that when the wind
comes we can catch it.” Some of the advocacy
around anti-fossil fuel norms (Green, 2018) can bethought of in this way, eroding the social license tooperate of the fossil fuel industry. At the same time,changes to goals and rules are proposed as deeper
leverage points around demands for a multilateralframework on supply-side policies to leave large
swathes of remaining fossil fuels in the ground(Newell & Simms, 2019).
Indeed, there are important temporal dimensions tothe sequencing and timing of interventions:

Source: Stern et al. (2016)
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When more rapid and disruptive change ofa positive nature occurs, for it to become
embedded, socialised and normalised, it needs to
be institutionalised or supported by governanceinnovations that seek to ensure the durability
and longevity of change. Even the prospect ofregulation can be a key driver of change. Examples
from history around efforts to legalise birth control
show this to be the case (Westley et al., 2011). But
besides rights-based struggles, campaigns totackle air pollution, ozone depletion, biodiversity
loss all demonstrate national and international
legal protection often comes on the back of years
or decades of advocacy. Commissioner Frances
Westley also emphasised the importance ofintention: that whilst regulation is important, its
impact never lasts without intention. Aims must
be socialised and become embedded in everyday
conduct. Relevant examples for these particular
phenomena might be around using seat belts
and not smoking in public spaces, or respect for
Covid-19 measures where the law enshrines thesocial expectation, but everyday enforcement relieson the uptake and respect for emergent social
norms.
From transition studies we can see how nichebehaviours get mainstreamed. The case of
packaging free shopping and refilling containers
was one example offered by a commissioner
where in the Czech Republic, for example, themajor drugstore Rossman is now rolling out refill
stations of laundry detergent, while in Germany
the supermarket franchise Edeka has refill stations
for products like pasta and flour and Asda, in theUK, has introduced this in some of its stores. In
other words, a behaviour that was socially andeconomically niche has become more mainstream(scaling out).
Researchers have used a range of approaches tomodel, describe and narrate possible pathways
to change from the use of more quantitative
approaches such as Integrated Assessment Models(IAMs) (van den Berg et al., 2019) to the qualitative‘Pathways approach’ adopted by the STEPS
centre32 (Leach et al, 2010). Behaviour change andlifestyles merely appear as one among many driversof change and features of potential scenarios.
Attempts to integrate IAM work with insights fromsocio-technical transitions hold out promise andrepresent potentially important avenues for future
work (Sluisveld et al., 2020).

A large body of work on socio-technicaltransitions describes transitions in the provisionof services such as mobility, heating and cooling. It
describes how shifts occur whereby ‘niches’ disrupt
dominant ‘regimes’, often enabled by changes inthe broader ‘landscape’ that can accelerate theseshifts (Geels, 2005) (see Figure 4). It combines
analysis of social and technological elements sothat things as diverse as practices, behaviours,
governance institutions, innovation and finance andshifts in population can be included in the analysis.
Examples include larger shifts from coal to oil, as
well as shifts in cooking practices and transport
behaviours. Different bodies of work place different
emphasis on the key factors driving change, butthere has been a move to include more analysis ofgovernance and justice dimensions and to placequestions of power and politics more centrally in
explanations of the speed, direction and depth oftransitions (Newell, 2020).
What is interesting, and useful from the point ofview of our enquiry, is that questions of scale
and pace are gaining more attention in transition
studies (Sovacool, 2016; Newell & Simms, 2020). It
might also be possible to understand key tipping
points in behaviour in relation to the dynamicthat exists between niches, dominant regimes
and practices and the ways in which landscapepressures (around climate change) can disrupt
regimes and move niche behaviours (around plant
based diets or cycling) to become more mainstream(see Figure 4).
As well as forward projections, there are often also
attempts to draw lessons from history about
how behaviours have been changed rapidly, or
proactive attempts to scale behaviour change andagree limits adopted. Rationing during World War II
is often invoked in this regard, alongside examplesof food and energy revolutions in Cuba in responseto the loss of Soviet oil (Simms, 2013) and examples
referred to from public health interventions aroundthe use of seat belts, smoking, drink driving, orefforts to tackle HIV/AIDS (Simms, 2019).
Many Commissioners expressed scepticism,
nevertheless, about the relevance andtransferability of such lessons to the nature, scaleand depth of change now required to tackle climatechange which is more existential in nature and in
most cases less about immediate physical impacts.
In ways the search for relevant examples depends
on the type of change we are interested in. Many ofthe examples mentioned here are of attempts by

32 https://steps-centre.org/

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governments to persuade individuals to change behaviour. But if we think of collective action in pursuit ofradical and disruptive political change, examples from the civil rights and womens’ movements, movements
to end apartheid or the fossil fuel divestment movement become more relevant. Resistance can involve
disruptive behaviour change through consumer action such boycotts or the adoption of Khadi during
the Quit India movement: a large-scale behavior change adopted across social classes, tied to an explicit
political motivation (Koulagi, 2020).
Figure 4: The Multi-Level Perspective

Source: Reproduced from Geels et al. (2017a)

Below, we think about this in terms of an
ecosystem of change, where the goal is to set up
a series of mutually supportive dynamics acrossscales and spaces of governance so that wherever
and whatever the initial point of intervention,effects can be magnified and scaled, spill-overs
accelerated and momentum and contagion
enhanced. Networks and intermediaries thatmove between these spaces using their power
and influence to effect positive change have aparticularly important role to play in scaling social
innovations (Westley & Antadze, 2010). Or as Otto
et al. (2020:8) put it, “The social tipping dynamics
are likely to spread through adaptive networks ofinteractions rather than via straightforward cause–
effect systems.” This relates to our point above
about ‘mutual accountability’ and ‘reciprocity’ andthe ratcheting up of ambitions and commitment
over time as states, communities, cities andbusinesses push one another to do more.

There are various points of intervention in thesystem of consumption (or what we refer to below
as the ‘chain of consumption’ (see Table 3) which,taken together, could help to bring about the scaleof behaviour change prescribed. They are informed
in different ways by the four approaches tobehaviour change reviewed above. These run fromthe generation of demand, to shifts in corporate
practice and government decision-making andcitizen action with a view to setting in train virtuous
circles where reduced and shifting patterns ofdemand within limits set by governments are met
in innovative ways by business and civil society
increasingly organised around goals of ‘plentitude’
and wellbeing rather than growth and increases in
economic throughput per se. In different ways, andby different means, they address Meadow’s (1999)
leverage points (see Figure 3).

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Table 3: The chain of consumption

Approach

Instrument

ExampleSupply side
policies

Bans, moratoria, phaseouts of new production

Oil moratoria in Costa Rica, New Zealand, France,
BelizeBans on fracking
Phase outs of petrol and diesel cars
Bans on ozone-depleting and climate warming
chemicals (CFCs etc)

Budgets

Rationing

WWII examples of rationing

Individual allowances &carbon budgets

Proposals for individual carbon budgets

Tradable emissions
quotas33
Working less/consuming less

Reducing length of theworking week
Job sharing
Paid care work

Globally- contraction and convergence andGreenhouse Development Rights framework

4 day working week34
Universal Basic Income
Utah state (USA)Germany’s Kurzarbeit part-time working policy
Grande-Synthe in France’s guaranteed social
minimum

Providing/shapingalternatives

Planning

Affordable public transport

Infrastructures

Bike lanes & schemes for employees / support for
EV Grants for EV installation & home insulation

Advertising35

Restrictions on advertisingin certain spaces (schools,
hospitals) & at certain
times

Subsidies and support

Restrictions on targeting
Restrictions on products
Tax on advertising
Regulation andchoice editing

Energy efficiency
standards
Fuel efficiency standards
for vehicles

Grenoble, Chennai, São Paulo
Restrictions on TV adverts before certain times toprotect children36
Bans on tobacco advertising‘Badvertising’ campaigns on fossil fuel products
such as SUVs
1% tax on all advertising37
Energy labelling for products
CAFE standards (USA)
Restrictions on airport and road expansion,industrial farming

Rejecting carbon-intensive
infrastructures

33 For more on David Fleming’s proposal see https://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/faqs/
34 https://www.4dayweek.co.uk/
35 By some estimates 2018 global advertising spend is expected to top $630bn https://www.statista.com/topics/3201/ad-blocking/36 In Sweden, for example, TV advertising targeted at under-12s is banned on the grounds that children in that age range are unable to distinguishbetween programmes and advertising. See also Kasser and Linn (2016).
37

This has been proposed by the Rapid Transition Taskforce.

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ApproachInstrument

ExampleSelf- regulation

Codes of conduct

Roundtables on responsible beef, soy, biofuels etc

Supplier agreements

Targets by major retailers to decarbonise supply
chains (Walmart, Tesco)

Voluntary targets

Science-based targets38
Consumer
information

Labelling

Soil association standards for organic foodCertification

Marine and Forestry Stewardship Council

Carbon foot-printing apps

BrewDog carbon footprint menu
Carbon reduction apps like VYVE39

Education

Voluntarism

School programmes

School sustainability leaders

City wide initiatives

Carbon Trust and Energy

National programmes

Savings Trust (Switch off campaigns)

Experiential learning

Forest schools

Pledges

Meat free Mondays

Voluntary simplicity

Flight Free Year pledges

Community organising

Veganuary
Ride share schemes
Repair cafes

Socialmobilisation

Campaigns aimed at
specific products /companies
Generic campaigns
Campaigns for alternatives
Campaign in cultural
spheres to challenge thesocial license to operate

OilWatch
Boycott Exxon
Divestment movement
Shareholder action
Fridays for Future/ Youth Strike 4 Climate
Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Support for wind energy (Possible)
Art not Oil movement, Liberate Tate, Liberons leLouvre, Fossil Free Culture in the Netherlands

New goals/
metrics40

Going beyond conventional
indicators of growth:
Wellbeing / Prosperity /Plenitude as the goal

Happy planet index
Gross National HappinessWellbeing index
Degrowth

38 https://sciencebasedtargets.org/
39 https://www.bp.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home/news/press-releases/vyve-a-new-way-to-understand-track-and-reduce-carbon-from-yourphone.html
40 For critical analyses of wellbeing indicators see Fuchs et al. (2020), Jackson (2020), and Walker and Jackson (2019).

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Covid-19 as a tipping point?

“Those who dismiss things as too small to have an impact on the world haven’t heard of coronavirus”(Commissioner Paula Owen).
As the Commission started its work, the world was
slowly waking to an unprecedented global threat:
the Covid-19 pandemic. The suffering and miserythat the virus has brought to many millions aroundthe globe is unparalleled. Beyond the virus itself,
which has killed over 1.5 million people worldwide
to date, the containment measures implemented tohalt its spread have unleashed a raft of social andeconomic issues that will be felt for a generation.
As the World Health Organization (WHO) notes,
lockdowns and coronavirus containment measures
are having a “profound negative impact on
individuals, communities and societies” (2020) withthe poorest and most disadvantaged in society
being the hardest hit. Around the world, we areseeing spikes in mental health problems (Moreno
et al., 2020), disruptions to education and widening
inequalities across employment and health, which
are magnifying and reinforcing existing inequalities
across lines of socio-economic status, education,age, gender, ethnicity and geography (Blundell et al.,2020). The overarching reality of Covid-19, however,is that it is not a random anomalie. The frequencyof emerging infectious and zoonotic diseases will
only increase in light of our warming climate andour continued infringement on the natural world(Schmeller et al., 2020).
In terms of behaviour change, the pandemic has
given rise to a live experiment in efforts to shape
behaviour on a mass scale, which potentiallysheds light on our enquiry. This ongoing crisis
also opens up new horizons of possibility forunderstanding social acceptance of different
approaches to behaviour change, which mightalso apply to tackling sustainability challenges
since it has brought changes to patterns of work,
mobility, food and energy consumption. Perhaps
above all, the central role of the state as provider
of welfare and in ensuring the provision of goods
and services to meet basic needs has come to thefore: repurposing industries, guaranteeing basic
incomes, supporting more vulnerable social groups
and reconfiguring systems of transport and foodprovision in light of the crisis. These are also roles
the state will be expected to perform to address
sustainability challenges and align collective
behaviours with the severity of the climate crisis.
Views were divided among Commissioners about
the likelihood that new patterns of behaviour
observed in some parts of the world and amongcertain social groups around home working, theembrace of cycling, greater use of public parks(once immediate quarantine measures were lifted)
and the development of networks of mutual aid
would outlast the pandemic. It is notable thatsome employers have been open to the idea ofmore home-working, the popularity of virtual
conferences has been tried and shown to be viable,
and some governments have provided support tocycling and pedestrianisation, as well as using state
funds to support vulnerable workers, heightening
interest in universal basic income schemes.
Covid-19 has disrupted individuals’ behaviours,
having a marked effect on the way in which we allnavigate our daily lives, what Leo Murray referred toas a “huge habit discontinuity event”. In his words,“the more time that passes, the more our past lives
will become a distant memory”. In many ways, wehave been granted a glimpse of how alternative
economies can rapidly be brought into being andhow ideas and policy proposals deemed outlandish
before, become possible within a very short spaceof time. The same could be said for alternative waysof living. As Commission member Dario Kenner put
it, notwithstanding the immense suffering thathas accompanied it: “The pandemic has provided
us a glimpse of a low-carbon, low-mobility ‘good
life’”. The range of societal responses to Covid-19
offered, in Commission member Julia Leventon’s
words, “an opportunity to see what might be”.

“The pandemic could be a catalyst for behaviour change on a new scale that we couldn’t haveimagined. How we draw attention to that needs to be done with thoughtfulness and handled withcare and compassion.”(Commissioner Renée Lertzman)

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The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) RESET enquiry, led by UKpolitician Caroline Lucas, found evidence of a substantial desire forbehaviour change amongst the British General Public:

66

%

63

%

66% of UK adults want the
government to prioritise healthand wellbeing of citizens overGDP growth

63% cent support a jobs guarantee

57

%

66

%

57% support some form of
universal basic income

66% of the public think theGovernment should intervene
to make society fairer

60

65

%

%

65% support rent caps

60% support a shorter working week

30%

30% want to commute less19%

only 19% thinkhousing policy is
working well

18%

18% think they will shop less in future

26

%

13

%

26% think they will holiday morein the UK in future

13% are growing more food themselves(UK APPG RESET Enquiry findings, 2020)

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Photo credit: Atom, Unsplashed, 2020.

Others were keen to emphasise, however, thatthe pandemic may only constitute a temporary
rupture in society. Commission member Manisha
Anantharaman labelled the ‘Covid moment’ as a“partial infrastructural breakdown” that emphasised
our “mutual vulnerability”. It was, as Commissioner
Nafeez Ahmed noted, as if the “crisis is the pinthat burst the bubble”, exposing vulnerabilities in
our food, transport and care systems. While theexperience of lockdown was deeply subjective,
infrastructural breakdown’s structural impacts
were visible in the uneven access to healthcare,mobility and green space.
Other members of the Commission urged caution,
therefore, with regard to the transformative
potential of the pandemic, reflecting that it could
go either way. Commissioner Kate Burningham
stressed that the vulnerabilities exposed by Covid
were perhaps less mutual and more asymmetricin practice than had originally been conjectured- with affluent, home-workers finding themselvesbetter insulated against Covid risks than thoseliving in more public-facing, precarious anddeprived situations, often with limited access to(green or even indoor) space or the financial andphysical capacity to self-isolate. She emphasisedthat alongside the scale of deaths, long-term
illness and immiseration, the impacts of existing
inequalities in outcomes and broad impacts on
wellbeing and mental health were just becoming
apparent, and while environments may have
improved in visible ways in some localities, theoverall impact in terms of reducing emissions
may, in the end, have a minimal impact on climatechange. Indeed, Commissioner Wenling Liu pointed
to the surge in car ownership in China as the useof public transport was now seen as a public healthrisk, with obvious implications for both near- andlong-term emissions lock-in, as well as dampening
the momentum building around air pollution andpedestrianisation policy. Dr. Liu also cited the factthat lockdown measures have awoken consumers
to the convenience of e-commerce, which is atrend that could continue long into the economic
recovery. While only one part of a broader economic
trend, this observation echoes the sentiment ofCommissioner Lewis Akenji that “Covid-19 has
shown that our systems of provisions are notdesigned for sustainability – they are based on
demands for convenience”.

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The disagreement within the Commission as
to whether Covid-19 could be a springboard or
tipping point for scaling sustainable behaviourchange, is testimony to the messy, unpredictable
and non-linear nature of behaviour change, a factwhich presents challenges for attempts to shapeand understand it. All moments of crisis present
opportunities for political forces to exploit theensuing disorientation and advance their preferredpolitical project. As Milton Friedman, an architect ofneoliberal thought, once argued:
Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces
real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions
that are taken depend on the ideas that are
lying round. That, I believe, is our basic function:
to develop alternatives to existing policies, tokeep them alive and available until the politically
impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
(2009:14)

Moreover, evidence of the rush to get back to
an abnormal ‘normal’ is there for all to see. Frombailouts for oil companies and airlines to the fasttracking of controversial infrastructural decisions
and the increased clearing of rainforests in Brazil,
many governments have made the most of reduced
public scrutiny and scope for social mobilisation
to consolidate and advance climate destructive
projects. As the recently published Production
Gap Report demonstrates, “G20 governments
have directed more COVID-19 recovery support
to fossil fuel production and consumption thanto renewable energy, energy efficiency, and otherlow-carbon alternatives (USD 233 billion vs. USD
146 billion, as of November 2020)” (SEI et al., 2020:
20).41

USD 233 billion

USD 146 billion,

G20 governments have directed more
COVID-19 recovery support to fossil fuelproduction and consumption than torenewable energy, energy efficiency, andother low-carbon alternatives.

41

Gains in reduced traffic and air travel have beenquickly undone. In the case of the UK, in the first
four weeks of the lockdown carbon emissions
fell by 36%. Nevertheless, by June, Britain’s total
emissions savings had been reduced to a 16% drop,
as more cars returned to its roads and demandfor energy started to rise.42 Air pollution in China
is already back to pre-Covid levels, with Europe’s
cities not far behind (CREA, 2020). Commission
member Paula Owen recounted the rise in single
use plastics and a general “throwaway culture of
Covid-19” which, while sanctioned on the groundsof public health, has undone years of sustainablebehaviour change and has the potential to spillover into other sectors of society. It is also worth
recalling that even the reductions in emissions
associated with reduced travel and the like during
the pandemic (in the range of 10-30%) still fall far
short of the levels of reductions required for 1.5
degree compatible lifestyles (Akenji et al., 2019).
Clearly, both those advocating systemic change
and behaviour change for sustainability, as well as
those keen to bolster their support for incumbents,
are seeking to capitalise on the crisis for different
ends. Added to this is the fact that responses to
the Covid-19 crisis were underpinned by forced
behaviour change, accompanied (in theory atleast) by enforceable sanctions and an agreed andimminent threat, a scenario unlikely to be mirrored
in responses to climate change.
Yet, there are lessons from policy communicationand framing which could have implications for
scaling sustainable behaviour change (Ockwell etal., 2009; Whitmarsh et al., 2011). Commissioner
Ruth Potts noted “that if a proposal is clear,well communicated and has a clear objective,
people will comply, and even go way beyond
that” in reference to social distancing and otherbehavioural shifts. In fact, strict compliance tosocial distancing, self-isolation and mask wearing
suggests that notions of civic duty and collective
responsibility can still be leveraged throughout
society and could be instrumental in scalingsustainable behaviour change. According to the
Rapid Transition Alliance, several lessons standout from global pandemic responses with regard
to behaviour change:43 the importance of clearlycommunicating risk; the speed with which daily
habits can change and adapt to shifting social
norms; how opposition to change can rapidly
dissipate once changes have been introduced; andAlso see: Energy Policy Tracker: https://www.energypolicytracker.org/

42 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/19/carbon-savings-from-covid-19-lockdown-halve-within-weeks
43 https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/pandemic-lessons-for-the-climate-emergency/

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51how restrictions on normal consumer activity cancreate space for innovative, creative action andnew ways of meeting needs.
However, despite the initial compliance ofmask-wearing and social distancing, new virus
containment measures implemented in response toa second wave have been greeted with pushback,most notably in the UK and the USA. While thispublic backlash has been attributed to thephenomenon of behavioural fatigue, the evidencebase is weak (Mahase, 2020; Harvey, 2020). It
does, however, emphasise the inevitable risk that
top-down, forced behaviour change (accompanied
by enforceable sanctions) will be politicised andmay buttress ongoing ‘culture wars’ within thepolitical discourse, where a distrust of expertise,
the media and the support of divisive politicalfigures may prolong the pandemic and subsequentcontainment measures, including the rollout ofvaccines. For stakeholders active in the sustainablebehaviour change space, this is a concerning trendthat must be monitored closely and all initiatives
and strategies must be conscious of it. It also
demonstrates the critical need for culturallysensitive communication, as well as a conciliatory
leadership style that can speak effectively todiverse audiences, interpreting new rules throughtheir own social, cultural and ideological lenses.

Photo credit: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona, London, UK, 2020.

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5
Future intervention points
As things stand under a business-asusual scenario, we are headed towards
3-4 °C of warming by the end of the
century, with catastrophic consequences
for humanity and the ecosystems uponwhich we depend (O’Neill et al., 2016;
Sherwood et al., 2020). What has led tothis scenario, and sustains it today, isunsustainable behaviours by governments,
businesses, cities and citizens. We clearlyneed dramatic and far-reaching change by
all of these actors, though responsibility
is - in the words of the UNFCCC - ‘common
but differentiated’.
Consistent with the idea of ecosystems oftransformation, change in one area can enable
and facilitate change in others. The key is tosupport an upward trajectory of ambition as
cycles of reciprocal action by diverse actors drive
deeper change. Ambitious government targets
that incentivise the private sector to bring different
technologies to market, which embolden city
planners to design zero carbon cities and to build
alternative infrastructures that make it easier forindividuals to lead meaningful, sustainable lives,
could be transformative. Likewise, mobilisations
and demands from below by communities, youth
movements, NGOs and citizens participating indemocratic spaces can push cities, businesses
and governments towards more ambitious climate
action, as the multiple declarations of climate
emergencies testify. As we have seen, individual,
household, voluntary and community action all
make a difference in their own right, as well as
creating space for bolder government action andnew innovations from public and private actors
by preparing the ground for more ambitious

interventions. This is what we refer to as thevirtuous cycles of reciprocity, where action
by one set of actors enables action by another,ratcheting up ambition in a positive upward spiral.
If it is often claimed that larger transitions will
not be possible until citizens have demonstrated‘demand’ for it, as politicians fear adopting
unpopular measures and not bringing voters withthem (Willis, 2018). Though frequently invoked tojustify inaction, such claims need to be treatedwith extreme caution since most people are notasked about the level and pace of change theywould like to see, or which of the costs associatedwith doing nothing they would be willing to bear.
Indeed, as Moberg et al. (2019: 508) argue: “thedoor for stronger government intervention isalready ‘half-open’. Governments already intervenewith command-and-control measures in several
high mitigation potential areas, so one may assume
that this means there is already public acceptancefor such intervention; an assumption corroborated
by our study. Respondents specifically call for

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53

The challenge is to identify and activate
the virtuous cycles along the spectrum ofintervention points, using all levers within theecosystem of transformation.

Photo Credit: “Presenting an outline: layers of the Citizens’
Assembly” by nhscitizen is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
To view a copy of this license, visit
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

stronger government intervention in the highmitigation potential areas as of yet receiving
minor policy focus.” Yet government action needs
to be complimented with behavioural change by
individuals and communities if dangerous climatechange is to be avoided. This has to be the basisof the social contract for addressing the climate
emergency: each of us doing what we can, with theresources and means available to us, in the time wehave available and in the places we are, supported,enabled and enhanced by government action.
Given the gravity of the situation we face, and thediminishing window of opportunity within whichto scale-up action, all options and strategies
for change need to be aggressively pursued
simultaneously, tailored to the contexts in which
they will be enacted and change sought. With
this in mind, we have sought to emphasise theinterdependence and mutually reinforcing natureof strategies directed towards future intervention
points, as they can bolster and sustain one anotheras part of an ecosystem of transformation. We
clearly need both individual and systemic change.
The time for arguing over which comes first has
passed. But choices about which combinations ofstrategies to pursue must be tailored and targetedto the scale and nature of change sought, as wellas the context in which they will be pursued. It isclearly also a time for bold experimentation given
the scale and severity of the challenge and thepotential for positive unforeseen effects as ideas
are shared, demands gain traction and unexpected
political realignments take place.

Insisting on system change as a prerequisite
to other types of change discourages change
from below at the very moment we need it most,reifying outdated models of top-down socialchange that remain popular among some on theLeft (encapsulated in the slogan ‘one solution,
revolution!’). It can also justify inaction and negate
the impacts (positive and negative) we can all
have in the multiple roles we fill - in the workplace,at home and as part of communities. Fossil fuelcompanies and multinationals around the world
would be delighted at the prospect that active
citizens are discouraged from taking personal
responsibility or mobilising in the everyday, in
preference for awaiting the end of capitalism
and mass consumerism. At the same time, as
noted above, reducing the challenge to theindividualisation of responsibility plays well to thoseseeking to avoid structural change to an economy
in which they are heavily invested and from which
they greatly benefit.
We have sought to emphasise below thediversity of intervention points to initiate thesetransformational shifts. There is clearly significant
variance in state capacity, around planning,taxation, enforcement and the like, as well as
different forms of capitalism and state-market
relations, which will undoubtedly shape thenature of leverage points and the scope and likely
effectiveness of interventions. For instance, what
is possible in China might not work in Denmark andvice versa. The degree of engagement from civilsociety and business is also highly uneven acrossdifferent political and cultural contexts.
Given the different levels of historical responsibility
and global interdependence, sectors and regions
also have different starting points and baselines
from which to shift behaviours. Promoting cyclingin the Netherlands has a head start, but it will
be harder in the USA because of the size of thecountry, the organisation of infrastructure anddominant cultures. Likewise, the baseline forsupporting plant-based diets in India, as opposed
to in a meat-heavy culture like Argentina isvery different. In many poorer societies, there
are significant opportunities to avoid lock-in tounsustainable practices and pursue ‘lifestyleleapfrogging’, supporting these shifts throughaid and climate finance. In all societies, however,
the most resistance might come from the fact that

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54the most prolific consumers and movers are also
often the most powerful political actors, using theirinfluence to quash initiatives that constrain their
behaviours.

i. One planet living: ‘Strong’ global
sustainability

We have witnessed decades of actions, strategies
and interventions aimed at bringing citizens onboard with climate action. Some have achieved
limited success. None, however, has been able
to achieve the degree and scale of change now
required. We are, therefore, in unchartered territory.
New approaches are needed to get to the roots ofunsustainable consumption and production in thecurrent economy.

Strong sustainable consumption (SSC):
Focusing on input and throughput

Members of the Commission proposed criteriathat should guide future interventions. Futureinterventions should:
1. Improve wellbeing
2. Reduce environmental footprints44
3. Distribute economic resources andbenefits fairly

The Commission identified a number of ‘FutureIntervention Points’ for scaling sustainablebehaviour change where strategies can bedirected to apply pressure and disrupt incumbent,
institutionalised and established behaviours,
values, systems of provisions and structures ofpower. Due to the expansiveness of behaviourchange, and the urgency of transformation
required, the Commission noted the importance ofgoing beyond the intervention points of production
and consumption to explore deeper, more profoundshifts in behaviours and values in order to achieve
scalability.
Below we propose six overarching areas foraction, incorporating 16 key future intervention
points. For clarity and accessibility, each individualintervention is split into two: the ‘what’ and the‘how’. The ‘what’ section outlines the potential thatthe intervention point has, both in terms of theirscalability and their transformative effect. The ‘how’
section outlines strategies, initiatives and shifts
in approach that stakeholders and practitioners
can pursue in order to catalyse change and create
momentum for sustainable behaviour change,
which can spillover into different areas of society.

The Rapid Transition Taskforce report (2019) seeks
to identify interventions that enable “a radical
shift in the Overton window for policies relating
to sustainable consumption, behaviour change,
and regenerative ways of living, internationally andparticularly in high-impact countries.” The Overton
window refers to the six stages that ideas passthrough on the path from being politically marginal
to becoming actual policy, implemented in the realworld: 1. Unthinkable 2. Radical 3. Acceptable 4.
Sensible 5. Popular 6. Policy.
A key question then is what this would look like fora strong sustainable consumption agenda: forproposals currently deemed radical and unthinkable
to become accepted policies enjoying popularsupport. This approach emphasises the needfor a reduction in overall resource consumption,
instead of looking at relative reductions in individual
consumption (Fuchs & Lorek, 2005; Lorek & Fuchs,
2013; Arantharaman, 2018). This is contrasted
with weak sustainable consumption (WSC) as
an approach which focuses on efficiency gains
in existing patterns of consumption throughtechnological innovations and small-scale behaviourchange. In terms of achieving this it is suggested,“NGO campaigning for sustainable consumption has
to overcome the habit of promoting sustainable (infact merely green) consumption based on traditional
marketing strategies. NGOs need to distancethemselves from WSC as well as from addressing
consumers merely as consumers, rather than as
citizens” (Lorek & Fuchs, 2013:41).
In this regard, appeals to intrinsic values, grounded ina ‘new materialism’ (Simms & Potts, 2012; Schlosberg& Craven, 2019), are more likely to lead to a spill-overinto other patterns of behaviour, rather than appeals
to financial self-interest or social status (Kasser, 2011;
Van der Linden, 2015). What’s more, a shift towards
SSC will also tackle issues such as the dominantculture of consumerism and materialism (Mont, 2019)by putting both upper and lower limits on consumption
and production. Combining both upper and lower limits
will also prioritise fairness and equity within behaviourchange, helping to reign in the polluter elite while lifting
up the poorest and most marginalised in society.

44 We use the term “environmental footprints” as opposed to ecological footprints because the latter do not account for greenhouse gases other thanCO2, for example. Environmental footprints incorporate GHG footprints, ecological footprints, and other impacts.

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ii. Just transitions: Economic andsocial (climate) justice
From efficiency to sufficiency: Shifting
the debate on limits and prosperity
The ‘What’To achieve the goals of the Paris
Agreement, countries need to lookbeyond efficiency improvements
towards absolute energy consumption, as well as
understanding the drivers of consumption more
broadly. Discussing innovations in residential energyuse, Lorek and Spangenburg (2019:287) suggestthat “to be effective, efficiency measures have to beembedded in a concept of sufficiency which strives
for limits and absolute reduction of energy
consumption”. This reflects the fact that whileenergy efficiency increased significantly acrossOECD countries, total energy consumption only
decreased marginally because of the existence ofrebound effects and spill-over effects (see Box 4).

The ‘How’
A move towards sufficiency would
capture the emerging recognition that
we need to set upper limits on
consumption either through personal carbon
budgets, rationing measures or sustainableconsumption corridors. Such a shift would
fundamentally question cultural and social values
around what it is to live a ‘good life’ and what isrequired to do so. In other words, what provision ofservices and level of consumption is sufficient for agood life (Princen, 2005)? There is growing interestin wellbeing,45 sustainable prosperity (Jackson etal., 2016) or prosperity without growth (Jackson,2011), de-growth (Kallis, 2018; Hickel, 2020), andthe idea of ‘plentitude’ (see Box 5 below). Settingthese upper limits would need to be democraticallydetermined, in order to ensure public buy-in andlongevity, and then monitored and enforced
accordingly. The difficulty of doing this cannot be
underestimated, but through the application ofprinciples of fairness and the renewal of
democratic institutions it could be feasible.
Others have described their vision of a sustainableeconomy as a ‘conserver economy’ where wellbeing
would be measured not merely in terms of theamount people spend, but rather in the availabilityof clean air and water, nutritious food and safeBox 4: Rebounds and spill-overs‘Energy sufficiency’ involves reducing
consumption of energy services in orderto minimise the associated environmental
impacts. This may either be throughindividual actions, such as reducing car
travel, or through reducing working time,
income and aggregate consumption(‘downshifting’). However, the environmental
benefits of both strategies may be less than
anticipated. This is because:● People may save money that they can spend
on other goods and services that requireenergy to provide (rebounds).

● People may feel they have ‘done their bit’ forthe environment and can spend time andmoney on more energy-intensive goods andactivities (spillovers & moral licensing).

● People may save time that they can spend
on other activities that require energy toparticipate in (time-use rebounds).

Source: Sorrell et al. (2020)
Box 5: Principles of Plentitude
1.	
A new allocation of time. Reversing thedecade-long move toward longer hours ofwork – a “work-and-spend” cycle which has
yielded exhausted, indebted households
and more unemployment, as hours areconcentrated in fewer and fewer people andhigher carbon emissions.
2.	“Do-It-Yourself” or self-provisioning.
People can use the newfound free time thatthey get from following Step 1 to reduce
what they have to buy on the market andprovide for themselves in low-impact ways.
3.	An environmentally aware approach toconsumption. One which emphasises therecirculation and reuse of goods, sharing,and the creation of a new consumer culture.
4.	New investments that are held widely andpublicly. By recovering hours, individuals
are free to fortify social networks and build
common property.
Source: Schor ‘True Wealth’ (2011: 4)

45 https://wellbeingeconomy.org/

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by what is needed to meet these essential needs(Trainer, 1995; Newell, 2019).

policies meet that growth, regardless of whether
that growth is sustainable, whether demand canbe reduced or whether efficiency and conservation
measures can reduce waste.

De-growth meanwhile also signifies ‘a desired
direction, one in which societies will use fewer
natural resources and will organize and live
differently than today. Sharing, simplicity,
conviviality, care and the commons are primarysignifications of what this society might look like’(D’Alisa et al., 2015:3). Such a shift also implies new
indicators of progress. Happiness indicators suchas Gross National Happiness as adopted by Bhutanor the Happy Planet Index developed by the New
Economics Foundation to “measure what matters:sustainable wellbeing for all”, which assesses
nations according to their ability to support “long,
happy, sustainable lives” (NEF, 2016). What follows
is social innovation to drive shifts in businesspractice, technology development and innovation
to support sustainable lifestyles (Westley et al.,2011; Hiteva & Sovacool, 2017), such as local food
networks which enable and reinforce ecologicalcitizenship (Seyfang, 2006).

One approach to understanding this is the “avoidshift-improve” framework (Creutzig et al., 2018)with its hierarchy of avoiding unnecessary resource
use in the first instance as the priority (see below).

Cultures of consumption (Dauvergne, 2008) are
critical here alongside the dominant focus on
productionist drivers of technology, innovation andfinance and their role in meeting rising demand.
Managing demand and addressing consumption,rather than just varying supply, is key. For example,
how far should we invest in new supply as opposed
to reducing demand? Retrofitting existing buildings
is essential as 90% of buildings today will still be
operational in 2050. Retrofitting and demand
reduction is much more cost effective, but thedebate is all about expanding supply (Boardman,2010). Discussions around food and energy futures
tend to forecast and then presume ever increasing
demand and consumption. As such, the only
remaining choices are which technologies andAddressing social and economic(climate) injusticeThe ‘What’At the time of the Commission’s work,
the world was experiencing a seriesof exogenous shocks which shed lighton entrenched economic injustices. As noted
above, Covid-19 accentuated disparities within
the world of work, accessibility to healthcare,housing and mobility, as well as the role of thestate and its ability to intervene. As Commissioner
Manisha Anantharaman remarked, Covid-19 has“interrupted the spatial-temporal rhythms ofeveryday life” to unveil our “mutual vulnerability”.
This shared vulnerability has focussed attention
on the necessities of life and shown that there arealternative ways of working, moving and living, as
well as galvanising the appetite for change (RESET,
2020).
The spread of the Black Lives Matter movement
also signifies a rupture, where the legacies ofsocial, racial and economic injustices have beenbrought to the fore and concrete demands havebeen made in order to overcome the legitimacy
crisis of the current social contract. The valueshifts, legislation and new social contract thatemerges from these events could have a significant
impact on systems of provision, consumption andindividual behaviour change, making it an important

Source: Creutzig et al., 2018. Reproduced with permission.
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57

area of focus for future interventions. As such,strategies that attempt to address and ameliorate‘mutual vulnerability’ can have significant impacts
for sustainable behaviour change, such as reducing
the inequality between the polluter elite and poorestand most marginalised groups in society (Chancel &Piketty, 2015).
Addressing these injustices also speaks to theneed to decolonise the sustainable living debate.
As research on ecologically uneven exchange andglobal environmental justice (Roberts & Parks, 2008;
Sikor & Newell, 2014) clearly shows, unsustainableconsumption by elites the world over is only possible
because of racialised, gendered and class basedmodes of extraction and appropriation organised
around ‘cheapness’ (Patel & Moore, 2018), constituted
historically, but ever present today in the way thesocial and environmental costs and benefits ofconsumption and production are unevenly distributed
within and between societies (Newell, 2020a). The
need to address these issues is underscored by the
analysis above of historical inequities, carbon debts
and the over-use of the commons by polluter elites
which must inform discussions around fair shares,
carbon budgets or rationing proposals.

The ‘How’
By being conscious of economic
injustices, strategies can be effective at
empowering citizens, enacting a varietyof co-benefits and mainstreaming behaviours - allof which having obvious implications for scalability.
Perkins (2019) suggests that addressing economic
injustices is a precondition for participatory
governance and equitable solutions, as the ubiquityof economic injustices actively reduces the politicalspace for climate action. Directly addressing
economic injustices could therefore create the(pre)conditions and space for scaling sustainablebehaviour change. There are also vital racial, classand gender dimensions to access and responsibility
that all interventions and strategies must be
conscious of and explicitly address (Newell, 2005).
For example, patterns of energy access, access to
low carbon technologies and vulnerability to pricerises during transitions are all heavily racialised(Newell, 2020a).
There has been renewed interest in a Universal
Basic Income (UBI) and some experimentation withthis in parts of Europe, as one way to tackle some ofthese inequalities. For example, in Grande-Synthe,on the outskirts of Dunkirk in France, a guaranteedsocial minimum (MSG) has been tested since April
2019. The goal is to provide each month to themost precarious households in Grand-Synthois
with an income corresponding to a poverty line of€1,855 for a single person, for a period of one tosix months. 40% of the 1.2 million Euros budgeted
to fund the scheme (for one year of application)
comes from the savings made by replacing bulbs
in public lighting with LEDs. This is in addition toand builds on long-standing calls from feminists
for paid care work or ‘care work as commons’.46
However, there are emerging concerns that a UBI
may not enable the reductions in consumptionrelated emissions needed to align with a 1.5 degree
celsius target (Kalaniemi et al., 2020; Lawhon &McCreary, 2020). One study in Finland found thatthe average annual carbon footprint at the UBIlevel - the lowest income decile - was around
4.8 tCO2 equivalent (Kalaniemi et al., 2020). Thisis substantially lower than the average carbon
footprint in Finland, which is 9.4 tCO2 equivalent,but is still far from compatible with a 1.5 degree
celsius lifestyle (IGES, 2019; Kalaniemi et al., 2020).
While more research is required in this area, initial
findings suggest that to be an effective mitigation
tool, a UBI that seeks to address economic
injustices must be combined with broader shifts
in values, behaviours and the provision of services
and infrastructures.

Re-thinking work
The ‘What’
Changes to modes of working offer
a powerful way of reducing pressure
and stress in peoples’ lives, as well
as shifting patterns of consumption. As Simms
argues (2010), “moving towards a much shorter
working week would help break the habit ofliving to work, working to earn, and earning toconsume”. The productivity gains derived fromwork can either be used to enhance the volumes ofconsumption or to decrease the time we all spend
working (Cohen, 2019). Due to the need to radicallycurtail consumption in industrialised nations inparticular, worktime reduction has the potential
for scaling sustainable behaviour change acrossregions and sectors. Research suggests that work
time reduction could shift behaviours in moresustainable directions by decreasing the scale ofeconomic output and the environmental intensityof consumption patterns (Knight et al., 2013;
Rosnick & Weisbrot, 2007) including CO2 emissions

46 https://www.degrowth.info/en/2017/02/carework-as-commons-towards-a-feminist-degrowth-agenda/ and https://undisciplinedenvironments.
org/2020/04/07/within-and-beyond-the-pandemic-demanding-a-care-income-and-a-feminist-green-new-deal-for-europe/

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58

(Fitzgerald et al., 2018), as well as improving life
satisfaction and societal wellbeing (Borowy &Aillon, 2017) and nurturing more intrinsic values(Kasser, 2002)). Despite the myriad of benefits,
worktime reduction has stalled in countries overrecent decades and has begun to reverse, with only
some exceptions (Schor, 2011; Burger, 2015).

Covid-19 (Stone, 2021). Not only is there scope
here for funders and organisations to ‘walk the
talk’ by introducing a four-day week internally,
but there is also the opportunity to support wider
campaigns for national legislation that protects therights of workers to request a four-day week (Rapid
Transition Task Force, 2019).

There are many factors that can explain theresistance to work time reduction but, in regard toscaling sustainable behaviour change, the major
drivers are that consumption patterns get lockedin (Cohen, 2019; Schor, 2011) and that work andcareers are the primary conduits for the expressionof worth and social identity. What’s more, consumer
culture has left us woefully unprepared to know
how to fill the additional leisure time that would
be created through work time reduction that is
not tied to further consumption or unsustainablebehaviours.47

Enjoying a liveable income is also an importantcondition for creating a conducive backdrop tosustainable living. In recent years, workers across
many sectors have seen structural changes thathave led to the rise in the so-called gig-economy(e.g. zero-hour contracts and agency work), which,alongside cuts in welfare provision, have conspired
to limit their control over their working hours andconditions (Trades Union Congress, 2020). These
factors are likely to make it difficult - and possibly
economically unfeasible – for some to reduce
their work hours or reorient their (unpaid) leisuretime unless their economic security improves,and sustainable social practices are better
mainstreamed into their daily lives. Interventions
that seek to re-think the world of work must take
into account these differentiated experiences of
employment. There is scope to re-think workplace
incentive schemes, thereby removing perverse
motivations towards greater and more carbonintensive consumption. For instance, replacing
company car schemes with subsidised public
transport allowances, or additional holiday
allocations for those that choose ‘slow’ travel
options over carbon-intensive counterparts, suchas the Climate Perks scheme spearheaded by UK
climate charity Possible.49 Specifically relating
to the fossil fuel industry, Carbon Tracker (2020)
has called for a complete overhaul of executives’
remuneration packages to break the incentive loop
from continuing to expand fossil fuel production.

The ‘How’
Interventions aimed at reducing theworking week and provoking us to rethink the world of work more generally
must be accompanied by efforts to live contently
with more unstructured leisure time and cultivateinterests consistent with both planetary boundaries
and personal ambitions. The economic fallout
and subsequent recovery from Covid-19 could
present an opportunity to challenge traditional
notions of work and introduce work time reduction
measures, temporarily at first, but with a view ofcreating a permanent programme – especially inlight of looming automation in multiple sectors.
Take Germany’s Kurzarbeit part-time working policy
as an example, set to run through 2021, whichallows business to pursue work time reduction
during a time of structurally low aggregate demand(Contessi & Li, 2013), or the USA state of Utah’s
experiment with a shorter working week, initially
proposed for reasons of austerity, but then kept
in place by popular demand on the part of state
employees.48
A recent study of 50,000 British businesses bythink tank Autonomy concluded that a carefully
designed four-day week could be introduced
immediately and be financially viable for most firms
with more than 50 workers (Elliott, 2020). Most
recently, the Spanish government has announcedplans to pilot a four-day working week as a direct
response to the economic challenges wrought by47

As the world of work currently adapts to thestructural challenges posed by Covid-19, withmillions of people having to adjust their working
patterns around the world (Davidson, 2020), there
is added scope to thread sustainable behaviourchange through work and the workplace with thenormalisation of home-working, new and emerging
business models and a wholesale shift towards
online services, products and practices (Carroll &Conboy, 2020).

https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/questioning-the-centrality-of-work-with-andre-gorz/

48 https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/moving-to-a-four-day-working-week-with-one-months-notice/
49 https://www.climateperks.com/

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iii. Rebalancing political systems
Challenging power
The ‘What’
If social transformation, of which
behaviour change is merely one
element (albeit an important one), is tobe progressive, sustained and sustainable, we needshifts in power within institutions and organisations
from the community to the city, regional, national
and international level, as well as across the public
and private sectors. If behaviours, practices,values, institutions and infrastructures are to berealigned towards sustainability, we need change
in each of these sites. Though the magnitude of
the task can appear overwhelming, it also suggests
there are multiple entry points to trigger change
in this ecosystem of transformation. This meansthat interventions to shift finance can bringabout institutional changes and shifts in power
relations which can enable behaviour change as
new values take hold and alternative social andtechnological infrastructures are put in place tosupport and enable sustainable living. Likewise,
behaviour change from below combined withsocial mobilisation can build momentum for lastingchange. Institutions and political programmes,
however, need to protect, generalise and enforce
those gains.

The ‘How’
Shifts towards alternative economies
and lifestyles will not be possible - orwill amount to little - without unsettlingincumbents. As Fuchs et al. put it:
informal and implicit theories of social changeof scholars and activists in sustainableconsumption and sustainable development
fail to address power in a sufficiently explicit,
comprehensive and differentiated manner andhow that failure translates into insufficientunderstandings of the drivers of consumption
and the potential for and barriers to absolute
reductions (2016:298).

They continue, “Simplistic assumptions about thenatural diffusion of good ideas, for instance, canlead to over-optimism by advocates of sustainableconsumption, resulting in frustration and despair
when those changes do not materialize” (2016:299).

They conclude,
for those of us deeply concerned about thelong-term existence of life as we know it, toavoid power is to risk condoning a system that isinherently unsustainable and unjust, both in the
short and long term, and at home and abroad.
Shying away from power allows the trends
to play out to their logical and tragic ends.
Asking about power, uncovering the hidden andexposing the inequitable is a civic obligation,a sustainability imperative, and a justiceprerequisite (2016:306).

Strategies that challenge and un-do incumbency
are key, thereby exposing the close ties between
rule-makers, major corporations and those vested in
shaping and expanding business-as-usual policies.
This also implies active roll-back and advocacy
around funding of political parties, secondments
to government departments, commercial
directorships and the like (Newell & Martin, 2020).
Beyond legislation, strategies and initiatives
that attempt to disrupt incumbency and address
broader governance issues like the role of financein politics, revolving doors between industry andgovernment and structures of corporate governancecan help to advance this agenda. Carbon
Tracker draws attention to fossil fuel executives’
remuneration packages that - despite various
net-zero pledges - still incentivise and reward
unsustainable behaviours, such as increasing fossil
fuel production or the size of reserves, which locks
businesses into loops of continued expansion andexploration (Carbon Tracker, 2020). To put it bluntly,
as Commissioner Doris Fuchs did, “we need toget money out of politics”. Many of the measuressummarised in Table 4 about registries, rules on
conflicts of interest, party funding and the like
illustrate what might be possible.

Governance for a sustainable economy
The ‘What’
As noted above, a prerequisite fordemocratic (rather than imposed)societal transformation is deepening
democracy itself through the revitalisation ofsystems of representation and participation, since
existing structures privilege status quo interests.
Who decides which limits are set, by whom andhow they are enforced are vital to the legitimacy
and social acceptability of transitions. As Clarke
et al. state, “The 1.5 C target also requires lifestylechanges on a range of totemic issues like diet,personal travel and home heating in a relatively

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short period of time. Without public buy-in, these
could prompt significant resistance. Given the shorttimescale, the infrastructure of public engagement
needs to be put in place just as the infrastructureof policy change does” (2018:4). Just as weneed greater attention to be paid to input andthroughput consumption, so too we need to bolster
input and throughput legitimacy, i.e. the qualityof sustainability governance processes (Schmidt,2013).

The ‘How’
From Citizen Assemblies andparticipatory budgeting, to therepresentation for future generations,
there are many spaces for engagement andparticipation that can be activated or built.
This would involve developing and refining
more participatory tools for the deliberative
development of scenarios for change, such as
foresight exercises (Mao et al., 2020) driven by
citizen’s own values, concerns and priorities. To
be challenging and innovative, this would have to
involve artists and cultural industries, as well as
skilled facilitators, to help people visualise different
futures and appreciate the tensions, trade-offs andopportunities that will attend any attempt to movetowards them.
Table 4 below provides some selected examples ofgovernance innovations that funders might wantto support.

Table 4: Institutions for increasing accountability and deepening democracy
Climate change committees
Building cross-party political support
Establishing ongoing reporting and accountability
mechanisms
Rules on party financing:● State funding of political parties (Germany)

Managing interest group control of politics: the ‘captive
state’ phenomena
Mandatory and stringent regulations on lobbying
Transparency requirements for lobbying
Transparency requirements for the additional income ofpoliticians
Limits on campaign spending

Participatory democratic innovations:● Deliberative governance (e.g. citizens’ assemblies in the Bring in more actors with an interest and a stake in bolder
UK, participatory budgeting in Lichetenberg)

action● Standing citizen panels able to hold governments toaccount for agreed transitions pathways

Governing participation and representation:● Ombudspeople for future generations (Israel, Hungary,

Foreground in policy issues the consequences ofdecisions for future generations● Diversifying expert committees

Limit incumbent interest group penetration of decisionmaking processes

Wales)● Lowering voting age to 16 to widen the constituency ofactors with a stake in policy● Registries of interests and active exclusion ofpoliticians with conflicts of interest● Governance and policy for wellbeing

Transparency requirements for interest groups
participating in policy making process
Advisory Committees on Business Appointments could begiven statutory powers and resources to investigate andthe power to block appointments where there is a clear
conflict of interest
WEALL WEGo initiative: a collaboration of national andregional governments promoting transferrable policy
practices around a shared ambition of building wellbeing
economies

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Revitalising citizenshipThe ‘What’
Revitalising notions of citizenship canempower citizens and communities
to make the changes required tolive and thrive sustainably, giving each citizen avoice and showing them that change is possible.
The majority of the Commission highlighted theimportance of revitalising citizenship in order tochallenge the dominant idea that individuals are
passive consumers and instead recognise people
and communities as active citizens with the agency
to shape their own lives and the communities inwhich they live as part of broader ecosystems oftransformation. Re-conceptualizing citizenshipneeds to be done in a participatory and inclusiveway (Moharty, 2006), respectful of difference, andable to express itself in global solidarities not tied toparticular nation states, even if demands and social
contracts are primarily directed and negotiated via
the state.
With active citizenship comes greater
responsibilities on both the individual and collective
level to shift behaviours and societies onto a moresustainable footing. The individual behavioural
response to Covid-19 has offered a glimpse of
the social obligation that responsible citizenshipentails, with individuals voluntarily self-isolating,socially distancing and wearing a facemask to limit
the spread of the virus.

The ‘How’
Threading together many of theinterventions outlined in this section
are strategies and efforts that revitalisenotions of citizenship and participation within
the public sphere. Research indicates that whenspaces and processes are created for citizens
to directly engage with, deliberate and shapepublic policy, the result is recommendations
that recognise and seek to address the
structural determinants of overconsumption andunderconsumption (Kythreotis et al., 2019; Devaney
et al., 2020; Muradova et al., 2020; Citizen’s
Assembly UK, 2020; Convention Citoyenne pour le
Climat, 2020).
The recent findings from Citizen Assembly UK,
for instance, indicate that when individuals are
informed and empowered to analyse, discuss anddebate our collective response to climate change,
there is real appetite for radical change at both themicro, miso and macro-level. Recommendations
from the report include higher prices for frequentand further fliers, efforts to incentivise reduced

meat consumption and scaling up active travel
infrastructure (Citizen’s Assembly UK, 2020).
What’s more, concepts of fairness, accessibility
and affordability are prominent throughout all
the Assembly’s recommendations. Moreover,Ireland’s citizen assembly resulted in similar
recommendations, with the assembly callingfor higher taxes on carbon-intensive activities(Muradova et al., 2020). Indeed, it is abundantly
clear that there is appetite for radical changes(RESET, 2020), but that such change must be
supported by a proactive and protective state. Thisis another manifestation of the cycles of reciprocityemphasised throughout the report.
Strategies that seek to expand and rejuvenate
citizenship could usher in societal transformation
in a multitude of arenas: mobility, housing, diet,leisure and consumption of goods and services.
There is a clear role here for funders and thephilanthropic community to actively pursue
projects and programmes that create the reflexive
and deliberative spaces where responsible
citizenship can be nurtured and exercised, enabling
citizens to amplify their roles as agents of change
within ecosystems of transformation. Examples
of such spaces range from citizen assemblies
and citizen juries, to advocacy networks and local
Transition Networks.

iv. Driving social transformation
Unleashing imagination - individual,
collective and institutional
The ‘What’
Amplifying stories of change is apotent intervention point for driving
and scaling behaviour change,
but they require an underappreciated humancapacity: imagination. Our individual, collective
and institutional imagination has been stymied
in recent decades through an increasingly
bureaucratic, rigid and goal-orientatedorganisational structure (Hopkins, 2019). Now,
imagination is more important than ever for
thinking through many of the problems that weface as a society, conceptualising alternative
paths forward and creating a deep societal longing
for a sustainable future. This implies fostering
the innate imaginative power of humanity
through the creation of safe, reflexive and open
spaces for exploring alternatives. These must
be constructive spaces where different forms

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of thinking and imagining are discussed freely.
They are not, however, spaces for group-think orwhat Commissioner Bill Rees calls “safe cognitive
cocoons” that form refuges from “the harsh barbsof reality”. They need to be challenging, deliberativeand visionary. This is key to building new narratives
about attractive alternatives to the present. As
Commissioner Lewis Akenji notes, “we need toengage people in formulating visions of futuresocieties. Showing alternatives. We have had too
many doomsday scenarios and emphasis on what
we are taking away from people. We need to show
them what society can look like.”

The ‘How’
Working with and through the education
system could be an incredibly impactful
approach to unleashing our individualand collective imagination by cultivating
an understanding of behaviour change from ayoung age and nurturing alternative values. We arereminded of a conversation with a former climate
campaigner for Greenpeace who grew tired ofrailing against the inaction of powerful leaders anddecided the best investment of his time was to set
up an alternative school, with ethics of care andsustainability at its heart to nurture a generation ofpeople with compassionate values that would beless likely to engage in destructive behaviours. Yet,the mitigation impacts and cultural shifts of thismight not be felt for generations, when the urgencyof the climate challenge requires immediate shifts.

The short-term and near-term focus should
therefore be on unleashing the power ofimagination within organisations, such as private
business, local government and community hubs,
which will have immediate effects on decisionmaking, organisational psychology and the overallaims of organisations, underpinned by strong
external incentives to do so. Commission member
Rob Hopkins cited Rob Shorter’s ‘imagination
sundial’, (see image below) which sets out four
conditions required for stimulating humanimagination:
1.	Spaces within organisations that aredesignated for reflection and imagination.
There is a temporal element involved in this,where organisations have to ring-fence time fordesigning, maintaining and using such spaces
and practices.
2.	Places in villages, towns and cities whereindividuals and organisations can visit to shift
their thinking about what is possible. Suchplaces can range in their scope and size, but themost important factor is accessibility.
3.	Practices that actively stimulate and nurturethe imagination. These can include groupexercises that invite participants to actively
imagine potential futures or can be morereflexive, meditative exercises undertaken by anindividual.
4.	Pacts where organisations meet half-way on
matters of imagination. These can be the resultof processes of compromise and convergence ordedicated procedures and mechanisms, such as
Wales’ Wellbeing of Future Generations Act andFinland’s Participation in Long-term Decision
Making (PALO) research initiative.
Stimulating the imagination is only one half of
this process: strategies must also seek to actively
un-imagine the present, displace its status as
the normal way of organising life and challenge
existing paradigms through myth-busting. Thisis the most transformational of the tipping points
identified by Meadows (1999) discussed above.
Here, there is huge potential for funders to support
communications campaigns, public awarenessprogrammes and public relations initiatives thatask questions we all take for granted, such as “whyis flying so cheap?” and “what makes it cheap?”,
raising awareness around the problematic natureof current consumption patterns. By un-imagining
the present, we create a glimpse of what the future
could hold.

Rob Shorter, Imagination Sundial, 2020.

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The co-production of plans, future-gazing and theasking of tricky ‘what if’ questions should also not
lose sight of the very human need for fun, play,empathy, engagement, constructive competition
and rewards - all of which are powerful tools at
most organisations’ disposal. In so far as theseencourage engagement and participation, as wellas enabling change and reflection within powerfulentities like corporations, they have value thatcan be further leveraged. An essential elementof this process is locking in stated behaviouralintentions and commitments, either publicly or
personally, to embed them into habitual behaviour(Kurz et al., 2015). Positive examples include theEnergy Saving Trust (EST) in the UK that targets
both one-off sustainable actions or purchases,
such as insulating your home, and on-goingenergy saving behaviours. There may be a role for
gamification and ‘edutainment’ as a mechanism
to embed - and then cement - commitments andbehavioural intentions into daily life (Owen, 2017).
The need for more powerful ways of visualising andcommunicating alternatives creates an integral role
for arts and cultural organisations too.50

Amplifying change
The ‘What’
It is often difficult to comprehend
the nature and implications of the
far-reaching changes required to put
society on a sustainable pathway. To ameliorate
this, we must become better as a society at
amplifying and celebrating change when it
occurs; showing that it is not only possible, but
desirable. By amplifying change and stories ofchange, we can expand the realms of possibility
and broaden our collective horizons about what is‘normal’, what is ‘possible’ and what is ‘desirable’.
Raising awareness of change also plays a part infacilitating and establishing change within broader
networks of change, which is vital for, in the wordsof Commissioner Dr Kate Burningham, “making
different ways of living normal”.

The ‘How’
A successful programme of amplifying
change will be visible when the once
extraordinary is deemed ordinary, prisingopen the Overton window (see above), assisting “thecreation of new worlds” as Commission member
Nicole van den Berg put it. Historical precedents

can provide some examples of when rapid andtransformation social change has taken place, butthey can only provide sketches and outlines due tothe herculean task of tackling climate breakdown(Newell & Simms, 2020). Showcasing and sharing
what the Rapid Transition Alliance refers to as‘evidence-based hope’ is vital to this endeavour andshould be done through a diversity of channels tomaximise reach and impact.

“We need to find those big voices
and amplify them - they are there.”
Nafeez Ahmed

Supporting social movements
The ‘What’In spite of social movements being
understudied within the fields of
psychology and behaviour change (ifnot within sociological and political spheres, e.g.
see Ciplet et al., 2015; Fisher & Robertson, 2015),
the majority of the Commissioners identified
them as a potential future intervention point. The
past few years have seen a proliferation of social
movements crystalising around environmental andclimate issues globally, such as Fridays for Futureand Extinction Rebellion, that have emphasised thepotential of both collective action and behaviouralcontagion (Otto et al., 2020). Individual behaviourchange can be the first step to more active
engagement with processes of change, including
social mobilisation (de Moor & Verhaegen, 2020;
Kalmus, 2017; Leiserowitz, 2019; Willis & Schor,
2012). Movements like Extinction Rebellion andFridays for Future have been instrumental in
shaping the political discourse around climate
action, but are not the only social movements
enacting change in their communities, with avariety of community and transition groups active
within the field of sustainable behaviour change.
What all these movements have in common isthat they are dynamic and leverage a networked
approach to change, utilising non-violent protest
and new-media platforms to expand their reach.
While the goals and modes of operation of somesocial movements may not entice action from the
majority of the population, they are vital in setting
the agenda on certain matters of policy and the
public framing of specific issues. It is hard to imagine

50 Examples would include Metis, Swarm Dynamics and Julie’s Bicycle.

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64governments around the world declaring climate
emergencies and legislating for net-zero if it hadn’t
been for Greta Thunberg, the Fridays for Future
youth-strikes and protests by Extinction Rebellion.
Social mobilisation is also a key ingredient inenabling and accelerating behaviour change by
harnessing the consumer power of citizens. As
Michael Maniates puts it, “individual consumption
choices are environmentally important, but theircontrol over these choices is constrained, shaped
and framed by institutions and political forces thatcan be remade only through collective action”(2002:65). Sustainable Community Movement
Organisations (SCMOs) provide an important focus
on political consumerism. SCMOs can be defined
as social movement organisations that have thepeculiarity of mobilising citizens primarily via theirpurchasing power and for which the main ‘battlefield’
is represented by the market where SCMOs’
members are politically concerned consumers(Forno & Graziano, 2014:142). Political consumerism
aims at re-socialising ‘wrongdoers’ and changing
business activities through the ‘power of numbers’.
An increasing number of movement organisations
acting regionally, nationally and globally havestarted to incorporate political consumerism into
their repertoire of action.
This type of activism builds on longer histories of‘civil regulation’: civil society-based regulation ofprivate actors through liberal and critical strategies
of working with (codes of conduct, partnerships,
certification schemes) and against the market(boycotts, shareholder activism, protest anddisruption, subvertising) (Newell, 2001). Others go
further in trying to confront consumption throughvoluntary simplicity and living alternative lifestyles,
as well as trying to challenge the power and subvert
the effect of advertising. Examples include theTransition Network, the anti-consumerist network
Enough! and AdBusters, as well as networks such as
the Eco-Villages Network. These movements provide
an important way of challenging trends towards
individualisation of responsibility, commodification,and externalisation and distancing (of consumers
from the impacts of their consumption ‘choices’)(Princen et al., 2002). This is important because,
as Maniates argues, “when responsibility forenvironmental problems is individualised, there islittle room to ponder institutions, the nature andexercise of political power, or ways of collectively
changing the distribution of power and influence insociety” (2002:44).

Quote Box 8: Challenging individualisation“Individualisation is both a symptom anda source of waning citizen capacities toparticipate meaningfully in processesof social change. If consumption, in all
its complexity, is to be confronted, theforces that systematically individualise
responsibility for environmental
degradation must be challenged.”(Maniates, 2002:59)

The ‘How’
Funders and philanthropic organisations
can play a pivotal role in sustaining
social movements, building strategic
frameworks with them and enriching the networked
ecosystems of transformation that movements
are part of and benefit from. Through cultivatingsocial movements and aiding their expansion,conceptions of individuals as passive consumers
can be challenged and more empowering ideas ofindividuals as active, engaged citizens can flourish(Mathie & Gaventa, 2015), articulated around theidea of ‘responsible citizenship’ as suggested
above. More importantly, funders and philanthropic
organisations must illustrate the importance ofconnecting demands for systems change withthe adoption of strong sustainable consumption
practices in line with the ideas of ecosystems oftransformation and cycles of reciprocity.
There is a real risk, however, that by prioritising calls
for systems change, due to their explicitly politicalnature, social movements may underestimate thelevel of individual transformation required, leading
to a form of solutions aversion. What’s more,strategic frameworks must be conscious of theplaces and cultures that they are operating within,
as different political structures and experiencesof democracy mean that social movements will
be received differently. Commissioner Edward
Mungai pointed out that the effectiveness ofsocial movements in Europe, for example, will notnecessarily be mirrored in East Africa and thatfunders need to be mindful of these place-based
differences.

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v. Focusing on behaviour hotspots

Globally, the wealthiest 10% of the world’s
population is responsible for roughly halfof all greenhouse gas emissions, while thepoorest half is responsible for less than 10%(Gore & Alestig, 2020). Moreover, while two
thirds of the top 10% are in OECD nations,the bottom 40% of the population in the
United States emit more per capita than therichest 10% of people in countries such as
China, India and Brazil
Targeting the polluter elite
The ‘What’
While it’s true that the climate crisis
requires all of us to change our
behaviours, some need to change morethan others. Globally, the wealthiest 10% of theworld’s population is responsible for roughly halfof all greenhouse gas emissions, while the poorest
half is responsible for less than 10% (Gore & Alestig,2020). Moreover, while two thirds of the top 10% are
in OECD nations, the bottom 40% of the populationin the United States emit more per capita than
the richest 10% of people in countries such as
China, India and Brazil (Oxfam, 2015). Of greater
concern is the fact that lifestyle emissions of therichest in society are actually increasing, with any
curtailment of lifestyle emissions being driven byshifts in behaviour amongst the lower and middle
classes (Gore & Alestig, 2020). Moreover, there is ahuge range in the size and distribution of carbon
emissions within the wealthiest 10% of the global
population. As Gore and Alestig (2020) show, theestimated emissions from the top 0.1% of earners
is around 217 tCO2 equivalent - many hundreds oftimes greater than the average emissions footprintof the poorest half of humanity.
As emphasised throughout the report, relying on
conscientious individuals to ‘do their bit’ will neverbe enough to put society on a sustainable pathway
without substantial shifts in the behaviour of thepolluter elite (Kenner, 2019; Wiedmann et al., 2020).
Indeed, the ability to persuade people to adopt new
behaviours is undermined by widespread perceptions
that the greatest polluters - the most affluent citizens
in the world - are not pulling their weight. Not only
does this cement feelings of individual impotence(“what I do won’t make a difference”), but it also
damages the perception of fairness in the fightagainst climate breakdown, as if there is one rule forthe rich and another for the rest of society. We haveseen how damaging this sentiment can be in thecontext of sustaining behaviour change in the face ofCovid-19, where politicians setting rules on behalf ofsociety are then caught flouting them (sometimes on
multiple occasions).

The ‘How’
Strategies that specifically target
the behaviours of the richest would
have vast implications for emissions(Druckman & Jackson, 2009; Anderson, 2018;
Kenner, 2019; Fouquet & O’Garra, 2020). Enacting
such policies, however, would prove politicallychallenging as the polluter elite have sway andinfluence within policy making circles, as wellas substantial resources to pay for the privilegeof polluting (which can undermine the effect ofincremental taxes, for instance, as noted below inrelation to frequent flier levies). But shedding lighton the vast inequalities in carbon emissions - both
between the Global North and South, as well as
within nations too - is crucial for advancing notionsof fairness in our collective response to climate
breakdown, as well as creating a sense of social
cohesion and interpersonal influence, which can
act as an important precursor for scalable change,
both now and in the future.
While further work is clearly required, initiatives
such as the Frequent Flier Levy (FFL) emphasise
how policy can be tailored to rein in the emissionsof high-income, high-mobility polluters (Fouquet& O’Garra, 2020), while instigating a publicconversation about the irregular polluting
behaviours of the most affluent that could
ultimately shift norms around frequent flying(Gössling et al., 2020). The Rapid Transition
Taskforce report noted that a FFL could,
neutralise most public opposition to increasing
taxes on air travel by maintaining access to
low levels of affordable air travel for peopleof all incomes, while concentrating fiscalpressure on ‘problem flyers’ at the highest
end of the emissions spectrum - including
putting an end altogether to ‘hypermobility’
amongst the richest 1%. New tax revenue
could be hypothecated to support low carbon
alternatives to air travel such as high-speed railand video conferencing, as well as industrial
R&D to help decarbonise flight itself (2019:24).

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66However, a FFL on its own would not be enough todeliver substantial mitigation and it would need tobe combined with supply-side measures, such as
curtailing airport expansion and ending favourable
tax regimes for kerosene. What’s more, the superrich have shown their ability to avoid such levies
if implemented, as seen by the surge in private
jet use during the global pandemic (Georgiadis &Hancock, 2020).

“Policies will be better received by the public
if they are equitably framed.”
Lorraine Whitmarsh

sectors such as aviation (Peeters et al., 2016), fearof lessening a nation’s competitive advantage on
global markets through interventionist policies(Bows & Anderson, 2007), or the fact that theseareas of our lives are integral to ideas of selfand status and are therefore likely to met withpushback (Dubois et al., 2019:152). The sheer scaleof the cumulative impact of these behaviours, andthe lack of substitutes available, makes behaviourchange essential. In the words of Commission
member, Leo Murray, “there are no feasible technofixes that can get rid of large sources of emissions,especially in high-impact sectors such as longdistance travel and diet”.

The ‘How’
Focusing on high-impact behaviours &ways of life
The ‘What’
When it comes to unsustainablebehaviours, not all human behaviours
are equal. Clearly, we need to address
all domains of lifestyles if 1.5 degree lifestyles is
the goal (Koide & Akenji, 2017; Mao et al., 2019). But
as Dubois et al. show, car and plane mobility, theconsumption of meat and dairy, and the heatingof residential homes make up the majority ofhouseholds’ environmental footprints (2019). Dueto the dominance of these high-impact behaviours,
or hotspots, Dubois et al. suggest that “rather thanfocusing mainly on household appliances, heat orelectricity provision, our results suggest researchand policy should deal with cars, air traffic andeating meat” (2019:152). Others have suggested
adding the size of housing to that list (Bierwirth &Thomas, 2019; Brown, 2018; Cohen, 2020; Ropke& Jensen, 2018). This is significant not least due
to the additional consumption practices that living‘larger’ facilitates (e.g. energy, water, maintenanceand domestic services, duplication of appliancesand furnishings, etc.). As Commissioner Sylvia
Lorek observed, “the constant rise of per capita
living areas is still a blind spot in the debate”.
Kuhnhenn et al. (2020), for example, assume a 25%
reduction in average personal living space will benecessary as part of their Societal Transformation
Scenario for Staying Below 1.5°C.
To date, policy has been ineffective at targetingthese high-impact behaviours for a varietyof reasons, including a failure on the part ofhouseholds to conceptualise these high-impact
behaviours as major shares of their footprints, thepromise of looming technological fixes in specific

There is a clear dilemma here in thatthose areas where interventions mightyield the most impact are controversial
to target or the hardest areas for policy to reach.
Around diet, if the entry point is health, as we haveseen with discussions around sugar taxes andrestrictions on advertising, there is often greaterpublic acceptance of measures. At the same time,
notions of fairness and equitability are essential
precursors to successful climate policy - in generalterms, but also specifically relating to policies
targeting high impact behaviours. For policies to be
seen as legitimate amongst the general population,
they must take into account issues of differentiatedresponsibilities within society, as well as issues
pertaining to justice. As Commission member
Nicole van den Berg put it, “poorer people shouldn’t
be told to give up meat and cycle to work. Equity isvital for this discussion.” The Rapid Transition Task
Force notes that while there may be value in “thestigmatisation of certain types of behaviour…wemust make sure it does not stigmatise particularpeople in the process” (2019: 49).
At the same time, relying on interventions that
only focus on the high-impact behaviours of therichest in society will not deliver the widespread
mitigation required. Other high-impact behaviours
are more ubiquitous than aviation, like car traveland diet, and therefore require interventions that
seek to shape choices and behaviours throughinfrastructures and the provision of services. Better
choice architecture and choice editing can, in thewords of Commission member Julia Leventon,
curtail “the capacity to live destructive lives”. For
instance, better active travel infrastructures, suchas dedicated and safe cycle lanes, can rapidly
decrease the need for daily car use and increase
the uptake in cycling (Aldred et al., 2020). Researchfrom Aldred et al. (2020) found that the 20-year‘health economic benefit’ in areas close to the mini-

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67Holland schemes in London is calculated at £724
million, while the cost is approximately £80 million
after three years’ of interventions.

and most marginalised in society who havedone the least to fuel the climate crisis. It is
important to identify interventions that will yielda high return in terms of near-term emissions
reductions, while being seen to be fair. Finally,
interventions must simultaneously target
both the demand and supply side of sectors todeliver the emissions reductions required. For
instance, a Frequent Flier Levy (demand-side)
must be combined with measures that seek tocurtail airport expansion (supply-side), avoiding
infrastructural lock-in and “air dependence”(Environmental Change Institute, 2006:34). To
thread aspects of justice and equity into policy,
an International Air Passenger Adaptation
Levy (IAPAL) may work in creating a stable andregular source of tax revenue that specificallyaids adaptation efforts in developing countries,
although such a policy may impact the
livelihoods dependent on the tourism industry indeveloping nations (Chambwera et al., 2018).

In response to Covid-19 restrictions of public
transport and fears of viral transmission, many
active travel schemes have sprouted up acrossEurope and have successfully increased the uptake
in cycling (Kraus & Koch, 2020). In the longer term,
as economies attempt to stimulate growth as partof their recovery efforts, there is scope to help
shape the upticks in consumer spending activity toensure that they do not rapidly induce emissions
growth. For instance, Kumar (2016) found thattax exemptions for domestic tourism in India
encouraged less carbon intensive forms of travel,
which could perhaps be emulated elsewhere aspart of post-pandemic economic recovery plans.
Beyond these types of infrastructuralinterventions, there is considerable
communications work needed to garner publicawareness around what is regular and irregularbehaviour in the realm of high impact behaviour.
Take flying, for instance. A combination of cheap
tickets, perennial advertisements encouraging
and normalising frequent flying, as well as thecultural romanticism that surrounds this mode oftransport, present an image of incessant flying as
not only normal, but desirable. This disguises thefact that the majority of citizens will not fly at all ina single year, while the richest citizens will take thelion’s share of flights and are responsible for thebulk of emissions (Department for Transport, 2014;
Gössling & Humpe, 2020). Strategies that seek tohighlight the irregularity of this behaviour, while
also discouraging it, will be able to leverage thehuman desire for conformity (Walzberg et al., 2019;
Leong & Lebel, 2020; Gössling et al., 2020).
The challenge for interventions in this area isthreefold:
1.	Setting the agenda around high-impact
behaviours so that interventions and initiatives
are seen as valid, equitable and necessary.
This could be achieved through awarenessraising initiatives, communications campaigns
and social mobilisation efforts centred aroundcertain high-impact behaviours, such as meatconsumption, aviation and car use. The processof setting the agenda will differ from nation tonation, and community to community, meaningthat efforts must be sensitive to both place andculture.
2.	Target high-impact behaviours effectively
and efficiently without punishing the poorest

3.	Balance issues of justice, carbon inequality
and lock-in in targeted interventions to ensurethat the responsibility of behaviour change
reflects the agency to enact it. Given the current
context of global economic hardships wrought by
the Covid-19 crisis, the importance of supporting
the poorest has never been more important- both in terms of justice but also legitimising
future sustainable behaviour interventions.

“We need to focus on impactful,politically difficult and messy
behaviour changes - things that areat odds with how we live today.”
Stuart Capstick

Engaging with foodThe ‘What’
Diet is a high-impact behaviour - or
hotspot - and consumption choices
within the realm of food can haveprofound effects on our per capita carbon
emissions. Globally, food production is responsiblefor 26% of global GHG emissions (Ritchie, 2020),
but what we eat - our consumption choices
and habitual food practices - can vary greatly(Aleksandrowicz et al., 2016). For instance, thecarbon emissions of the average European diet isaround 1,070kg C02 equivalent per year (Sandström
et al., 2018), but the consumption of meat, eggs

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68and dairy make up 83% of those GHG emissions(Ritchie, 2020). Unsurprisingly, reducing global
meat consumption is an efficient strategy for
mitigating emissions and other environmental
issues, such as biodiversity loss (Stoll-Kleemann& Schmidt, 2016). Hayek et al. found that current
dietary trends favouring meat and dairy incurreda ‘carbon opportunity cost’ as the land designatedfor meat and dairy production has significant
sequestration potential (2020). At this particularjuncture, where global meat production (whichroughly mirrors consumption) has fallen for the
past two years (FAO, 2020), strategies to reduce
meat-consumption could accelerate the moveaway from meat-heavy diets and food production,acting as a social tipping point.

The ‘How’
Within food systems, there are multiple
entry points that could be leveraged togalvanise further behavioural changes,
such as health, wellbeing, community, climatechange, environmental concerns and animal
welfare. As one member of the commission,
Nicole van den Berg, noted: “More sustainable
food choices are less dependent on external
actors (compared to decisions around housing
and transport), they are day-to-day choices that
individuals have control over.” The work of Tziva etal. (2020) highlights this phenomenon through the
emergence of the meat-substitute industry in the
Netherlands, where consumer norms surrounding
appropriate behaviours created niche markets
where innovation could accelerate without any
preferential fiscal treatment.
Beyond the research and development, as well as
the subsequent deployment, of lab-grown meat
(Chriki & Hocquette, 2020), the incentivisationof plant-based diets also has scalable potential(Citizen Assembly UK, 2020). Change, when it
occurs, can be rapid. In the UK, from the year
2016, the number of people identifying as vegan
has increased by 350%.51 For this change to besustainable, it will be critical to ensure increased
demand for plant-based diets is not principally
met through intensive industrial and monoculture
agricultural systems, but rather paralleled by shifts
in the organisation of the food system itself.

51

Engaging more directly with food systems andfood sovereignty (GRAIN, 2016) could be aneffective way of scaling sustainable behaviourchange by highlighting co-benefits, as foodconnects a variety of normative touch points
such as health and connection to nature, whileempowering individuals. Food can also be aneffective way of fostering norms and values aroundappropriate behaviours, which can then become
institutionalised and seep into other behaviouralareas, such as waste disposal or conspicuous
consumption. Specific strategies in this area could
look to create and expand place-based food andagricultural organisations, such as Community
Supported Agriculture (CSA) programmes, orinformation and communication campaigns
that encourage greater experimentation withfood. Empirical research found that CSAs cansignificantly impact food lifestyle behaviour andprovide a variety of sustainability and healthco-benefits including increased vegetableconsumption, less intake of processed foods,
consuming seasonally appropriate items and moremeals being eaten at home (Allen et al., 2017;
Russell & Zepeda, 2008). Both within and acrossorganisations, there is scope for strategies that
seek to introduce meat-free products into people’s
diets, such as the ‘Meatless Monday’ initiative
within the Norwegian army (Milford et al., 2019)
and the provision of vegetarian and vegan school
meals in 182 primary schools in the UK city of Leeds(Leeds City Council, 2020).
All of these interventions must, of course, be
conscious of navigating cultural and place-based
sensitivities. Though food might not necessarily bereliant on external actors, it is certainly subject todeep cultural influences, and social practice theory
would call for mindfulness in how we accommodate
these in behaviour change strategies. As Reisch etal. (2013:10) explain, “food habits and preferences
are shaped by cultural traditions, norms, fashionand physiological needs, as well as by personal
food experience and exposure to the consumption
context (i.e. foodstuff availability and accessibility).”In the UK, Europe and elsewhere, the rise of meat
substitutes has been one way of getting around thepractical concern of how to ‘fill the hole on the plate
where the meat used to be’, to paraphrase Paul
McCartney, who mentions this was the motivating
rationale for the introduction of his wife, Linda’s,
meat-free product range in the USA in 1994.52

https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/the-vegans-have-landed/

52 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/apr/29/foodanddrink.features4

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vi. Spearheading innovation: new
narratives, spaces and connections
Agenda setting & narrative shaping
The ‘What’In some regions and nations
sustainable behaviour change sits
relatively low on the political and social
agenda, with climate mitigation policies primarily
focused on decarbonising electricity and greening
large infrastructure. Even within countries where
sustainable behaviour change enjoys a reasonableamount of public awareness, the narratives shaped
around these issues can often obscure the scaleof action required, the urgency with which it mustoccur and where those transformations are needed.
Discourses of climate delay include redirecting
responsibility, pushing non-transformative
solutions, emphasising the downsides (of action,rather than inaction) and wholesale surrenderto climate change (Lamb et al., 2020). The key
features of all four of these delay discourses arethat they tend to misrepresent facts, raise adversity
towards climate action and imply the impossibilityof change (defeatism), further undermining climate
action. Correspondingly, the dominant narrativearound the climate crisis is primarily a technicalone, seen through the dissemination of scientificfindings, climate models and cost-benefit analyses,
which fail to connect and resonate with the
majority of citizens’ lives (Munshi et al., 2020).

The ‘How’
There is huge potential for funders andthe philanthropic community to take amore robust advocacy role in agenda
setting and narrative shaping strategies aroundsustainable behaviour change. Central to thesestrategies must be an intuitiveness for moments ofaccelerated change, which perhaps preconfiguresocial tipping points as discussed in Section 4.
For instance, the speed of the spread of the Black
Lives Matter or #MeToo movement across theglobe caught many by surprise, but were sparked
by particular moments that tap into deep veins ofsocial antagonism, a sense of historical injustice
and a desire for change. While we cannot anticipate
when these windows of opportunity present
themselves, we can prepare ourselves for when
they do.

As such, shaping narratives around behaviourchange requires a more culturally-centred
framework in order to shift values and behaviours.
Munshi et al. (2020) advocate for such an approachto improve public engagement with climate action,
comprised of four domains, which can also be
applied to strategies seeking to scale sustainablebehaviour change:
1.	Values: The narrative framework must factor
in the values and beliefs of different groupsof peoples. Values are held individually but
when similar viewpoints are collectivised at agroup level, they can become a cornerstoneof group cultures (Smolicz, 1981). Values shift
from society to society, which means thatthe response to climate breakdown will too narrative strategies must reflect this.
2.	Place: The framework must be intuitive of thedifferent environments in which people live as
this is a decisive factor in determining what
information or policy feels prescient to them.
Culture, too, is place-based which means thatany narrative strategies must take this into
account, avoiding blanket strategies.
3.	Power: The framework needs to factor in the
dynamics of power that people navigate everyday. Narrative strategies must be aware of thewinners and losers of scaling up sustainablebehaviour change and seek to meaningfully
empower the most marginalised groups of society
who are least responsible for the climate crisis.
4.	Narrative: The framework should always
consider the existing and interwoven narratives
that guide the actions that people take, whether
pertaining to climate action or other areas.
Narratives are tools that we all use to steer us
through each day, help us assess risk and, inturn, what actions and behaviours are viable.
A framework that successfully integrates
narratives goes beyond the facts and figuresof technical discourse to the telling of stories,
which can be a potent means for instigatedshifts in behaviours and values (Hopkins, 2019;
Munshi et al., 2019).

“We need to set the agenda aroundsustainable behaviour to legitimise
future policy interventions.”
Ryu Koide

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Walking the talk: Leadership & Integrity
The ‘What’
There is growing evidence of theeffectiveness of leading by example
on scaling sustainable behaviours.
While research is still in its infancy, initial findings
suggest that leading by example on matters ofclimate change and sustainability can encourageothers to adopt greener behaviours or higher values
such as altruism (Avolio et al., 2009; Kraft-Todd etal., 2018). It can also challenge the norms, values
and assumptions that underpin unsustainablebehaviours or consumption choices. For politicians,
climate change leaders and the philanthropic
community, leading by example and acting withintegrity is crucial to marrying up the messageof urgency and scale with deliberate actions ineveryday life, helping to raise ambition on climate(Le Quéré et al., 2015). Extolling the need to curtailour consumption while engaging in unsustainablebehaviours, such as flying to international climate
conferences, has been shown to undermine theeffectiveness of climate-conscious messaging,with hypocrites viewed as worse than liars among
the public due to our aversion to false signalling(Jordan et al., 2017; Attari et al., 2016). The media
have played a key part in silencing activists withcharges of hypocrisy and amplifying perceptions ofa disconnect between words and deeds regarding
behaviour change. Gunster et al. (2018: 773)
identity three types of climate hypocrisy from theiranalysis of media coverage:
personalized (which attacks the moral characterof individuals based on inconsistencies between
their stated beliefs and behavior); institutionalanalytic (which identifies contradictions
between institutional rhetoric and ongoingpolicies and practices); and reflexive (whichdevelops sympathetic accounts of the struggles
individuals face in reconciling the tension
between values and actions).

The ‘How’
The majority of the Commissioners
endorsed the importance of leadershipand positive behaviour modelling; notonly to show that change is in fact possible, but
to create unified platforms for concerted actionthat cannot be undermined easily. Leadershipcan be performed through the multiple roles weplay allowing us to leverage our own networks
for change. Whether it’s a C-suite executive, apublic sector worker or a stay-at-home parent,
there is potential to provide leadership (Westlake,2017). Strategies for ensuring leadership andintegrity, both internally within organisations andexternally, can come in a variety of forms. This
gives individual organisations, funders and key
decision-makers the opportunity to think creatively
and with an overarching goal or purpose in mind.
Examples of ‘walking the talk’ policies include
no-fly pledges across organisations, such asuniversities, divestment pledges for pension funds
or organisations with significant assets undermanagement, remote home-working policies andmeat-free cafeterias. The quote from Gandhi that“happiness is when what you think, what you say
and what you do are in harmony” speaks to thedesirability of this alignment.
The impact of such strategies may differ fromorganisation to organisation, but all help match
rhetoric with action, which is essential forgarnering normative change and showing thatchange is possible. It is important, however, thatin the process of forging these new types ofleadership, organisations and individuals do not
reproduce outmoded forms of leadership thatbolster the inequitable distributions of power,
especially in terms of gender, race and class.
Alternatively, leaders must advocate for a culture ofaccountability that seeks not to iconise individuals
and their actions, but rather cultivates collective
responsibility. Such a culture of leadership would
be a novel venture and requires holding ourselvesto new standards, making integrity a foundational
element of this process.

Bringing in new allies
The ‘What’
The range of behaviour change
necessary, at the scale needed to put
humanity on a sustainable pathway,means that new allies must emerge to facilitate
and accelerate shifts and transitions in all aspectsof society, with effective coalitions forming aroundthem. Several Commissioners also encouraged
funders to go beyond the usual suspects(white/wealthy/middle-class/European/North
American, conflict-averse and more technocraticorganisations), and build relationships withimmigrant and tenants’ rights groups, informal
workers, indigenous and black sovereignty
movements. Seeking non-traditional allies who
have strong critiques of the status quo and provencapacity to mobilise people and change policies
could be a powerful way to scale change.

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The ‘How’
While these new allies may take many
forms, and can appear in a multitude ofroles, the following were highlighted byCommissioners as having potential toscale sustainable behaviour change by acting as
nodes in broader networks of change:● Intermediaries: Identifying and leveraging

the impact of transition intermediaries canhave profound impacts on consumption
pathways and emissions lock-in. In the caseof housing, for example, urban planners canintegrate sustainable practices into the built
environment (Capstick et al., 2019). Similarly,
a car salesperson who advises a customer topurchase an EV is helping to prevent further
emissions lock-in within the mobility sector(Sovacool et al., 2020). Intermediaries cancommunicate the opportunities and obstacles
to sufficiency solutions by working with clients,
customers and communities (Spangenburg& Lorek, 2019). Furthermore, as detailed in
Section 3, institutional entrepreneurs can beviewed as “important brokers for connecting
people and networks…providing leadership,building trust, developing visions, and sensemaking” (Westley et al., 2011: 771). Utilisingintermediaries is by no means a substitute forpublic policy interventions, which can be far
more targeted, but they provide opportunities toaccess and shape key junctures and momentsof change within all of our lives. For them to playthis role more effectively, different incentive
structures around targets and rewards need tobe put in place.

● Cultural leaders: Our behaviours are neither

spontaneous nor isolated individual actions as
they are intertwined with and shaped by wider
strategies and structures of economic growth,
power and culture (Koch, 2019). Culture’s
undeniable impact on shaping our behaviours- both the sustainable and the unsustainable make leveraging the reach and power of cultural
leaders essential. Whether they are celebrities,
religious leaders or sports stars, these allies
can play a pivotal role in engaging, enticing andeducating segmented audiences in the processof change. There are a plethora of available
methods for cultural leaders to galvaniseand enable change, but their ability to shapecultural narratives could be decisive in scalingsustainable behaviour change.

● Unusual allies: Reaching out to and engaging

powerful and influential sectors with significant
scope for behaviour change, but which havebeen neglected so far, provides a key pointof leverage. For example, around global sport
where travel related emissions are high, masscatering often unsustainable, waste an issue andadvertising revenue from fossil fuel industries(especially airlines) very high there are a growing
number of civil society initiatives emerging.
Examples include Pledgeball, Spirit of Football,and Equal Playing Field. These encouragecommitments from fans to change their own
behaviour with pledges, as well as put pressure
on their clubs to improve their environmental
footprints. These can tap into the popularityof sport and the significant media attention
it receives to raise the profile of sustainablebehaviour change.

● Facilitators: The act of facilitation is an art

that requires much greater attention within
behaviour change initiatives. Facilitators andguides will be vital in supporting the scalingof sustainable behaviours, working alongsidepractitioners to combine social learning andthe maintenance of collaborative cultures toenact and sustain change. These individuals
or communities are not necessarily behaviourchange or sustainability experts, but have‘facilitative capacity’ (Birney, 2020) to constructand maintain safe, reflexive spaces for collective
enquiry, self-learning and co-creation, whileembedded within broader networks of change.
Examples include the staff and organisers
facilitating citizens’ assemblies around the world,
as well as the Boundless Roots Community,
working to support sustainable behaviourchange practitioners.

Final word
We are all on a journey and the finaldestination is as yet unclear. There aremany contradictory road maps about
where we might want to get to and how,
based on different theories of value andpremised on diverse values. Promisingly, we have brought about positivechange before and there are at least
some positive signs that there is anappetite to do what is necessary to live
differently but well on the planet we callhome.unclear.

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Changing our ways?
Behaviour change and the climate crisis

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