Topic 6: Sustainable Behaviours PDF

 Topic 6: Sustainable Behaviours sustainable future for all. They address the When you have completed this topic, you will: global challenges we face, including poverty, understand different aspects of ine...

 Topic 6: Sustainable Behaviours sustainable future for all. They address the When you have completed this topic, you will: global challenges we face, including poverty, understand different aspects of inequality, climate change, environmental sustainable consumption, and why it’s degradation, peace and justice.” These goals difficult to achieve. range widely in scope, from 1: No Poverty and have explored the impact of food 2: Zero Hunger to 5: Gender Equity and 16: production and consumption on the Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. For the environment, and identify possible ways purpose of this Topic, we’ll be focusing on 12: of reducing this impact. Responsible Consumption and Production, but a number of the goals touch on the importance of understand common barriers to pro- environmental behaviour, and potential sustainable consumption. There are different ways to overcome these barriers. ways that one can define sustainable consumption, but for now, we’ll refer to that of Ruby et al. (2020, p. 10), “Doing more with less Like other animals, humans’ well-being is tightly … [via] fair and equitable systems of production, linked with the natural environment, but distribution, and consumption”. compared to other animals, humans cause unparalleled damage to the very environment we need to survive. From depleting natural resources, polluting the air, soil, and waterways, and driving other species to extinction, humanity is not exactly endearing itself to our non-human neighbours (e.g., Leviston et al., 2018; IPCC, 2019). As such, there is a rapidly growing push for humans to live more sustainably, on an invidivual and societal level. In this sixth topic, we will explore the idea of sustainable consumption— what it is, why it can Sustainable Consumption be so hard to achieve, and recent interdisciplinary work on how to promote it. We Doing more with less is particularly important in will then examine a number of identified barriers the wealthier, developed world – if everybody to pro-environmental behaviour, and some of lived like the average resident of the USA or the most common actions that people take to Australia, it would require more than five Earths help the environment. The activities for this to produce the required material resources. week will take a bit longer, so to keep the Although the world’s wealthiest consume the overall workload sustainable ( ), this Topic most, people living below the international PDF is on the shorter side. poverty line (currently about AUD $2.50 a day), are most vulnerable to environmental changes. The United Nations Sustainable Development Take a few minutes to calculate your own Goals ecological footprint here (when you reach the Established in 2015, the 17 United Nations end of the exercise, the website will give you the Sustainable Development Goals are meant to be option of entering your personal details, but just “the blueprint to achieve a better and more skip over that). The goal here isn’t to cause discomfort, but rather, for people to better understand how different facets of their own This may sound simple, but actually following it consumption contribute to their overall can be tricky. ‘footprint’. What do you think of your results? Did anything particularly surprise you? You may have noticed that some things measured in the last exercise are largely beyond the individual control of any individual. Taking public transit is generally more sustainable than driving, but for those who don’t live in an area with a good public transit system, this isn’t really an option. On the other hand, household food waste is a major environmental issue, over which most people have more direct control. This is one of the tricky things about sustainable consumption– it relies on both individual behaviours and society-level systems and structures (Romero-Canyas & Hiltner, 2020). Source: https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recovery-hierarchy In an interdisciplinary team that includes a psychologist, nurse, environmental engineer, anthropologist, food scientist, and engineer, Deborah Saber and Linda Silka (2020) have been working for many years on the problem of food waste. They recently published a case study that focused on this “wicked problem” in hospital settings (by “wicked problem”, they mean one that is “interconnected, multifaceted, ill-defined, and dynamic, and thus calls for solutions that are themselves interconnected”; Source: “Market food waste” by Foerster p. 115). CC BY https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GI_Market_food_waste.jpg In addition to feeding an enormous amount of Eating Sustainably people every year, Saber and Silka note that Although household food waste may be hospitals face several unique challenges in relatively easy to tackle, industrial food waste is managing food waste— many patients have a very different beast. Recent estimates from the reduced and variable appetites due to illness, Australian Government (2017) are that making it difficult to prepare the right amount Australian consumers throw away 3.1 million of food on any given day, which leads to more tonnes of food every year (roughly 17,000 food waste than in many other settings. In many jumbo jets), and another 2.2. million tons of hospitals, uneaten food is often disposed of in food waste per year comes from the commercial the sink, so it can be difficult to know exactly and industry sectors. In many parts of the world, how much food is being wasted. Furthermore, a common way of dealing with food waste is to steps that encourage the re-use of food (e.g., follow the Food Recovery Hierarchy of the donating uneaten meals) are not well- United States Environmental Protection Agency supported. (EPA, ND). The basic idea is that it’s ideal to first Even when food isn’t going to waste, producing stop overproduction, then feed excess food to it can come at a heavy environmental cost, and hungry people, then feed non-human animals or not all foods are created equal. In 2019, a group convert food for industrial use, followed by of 37 scientists from across the world came composting and incineration as the last resort. together to draft something known as the EAT- Lancet Report, to try and answer the question “Can we feed a future population of 10 billion one’s neighbours don’t sort their garbage, that people a healthy diet within planetary can lower motivation do so. This can work on a boundaries?” The full report is pretty dense, and country-level as well, where a (perceived) lack of 38 pages long without references, but action elsewhere in the world can create a race thankfully the commission also wrote a more to the bottom. user-friendly summary report. Take some time to Sunk Costs is the fourth category. In other read the first eleven pages of this report, paying words, if people have invested into something, particular attention to what it recommends as a they’re less likely to move away from using it, “healthy diet” on pages 10 and 11. Do you think like if someone buys a new car to commute to you’d like to eat like that on a daily basis? Do and from work, and then a highly efficient train you think that it’s feasible on a global scale? line opens up nearby. Sometimes people just The report has been extremely well-received by don’t believe recommendations about pro- some scientists and organisations, but very environmental behaviour or deny that strongly criticized by others. Take a few minutes sustainability is an issue even worth considering to read this article, which focuses on one of (Discredence), and sometimes the Perceived most common criticisms. Are there any other Risks of pro-environmental behaviour (such as major barriers you can think of that would getting injured in a bicycle accident, wasting prevent their recommendations being adopted money on ineffective technology, or being on a broad scale? We’ll revisit this in Weeks 6 labeled as a “soy latte-sipping greenie”) prevent and 8, when we take a closer look at the action. Finally, there is the issue of Limited psychology of farming animals for food. Behaviour, in which people may do the bare minimum to feel better (aka “tokenism”), or may Barriers to Pro-Environmental Action erase the benefits of their pro-environmental Just as the above article identifies some major actions by engaging in less environmentally- barriers to changing people’s eating behaviour, friendly ones (like going on a long road trip after a lot has been written about barriers to pro- buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle). environmental action more generally. One of the most well-cited papers is by Robert Gifford (2011). In this paper, he identifies seven categories of psychological barriers to change. The first one of these is Limited Cognition. For example, people may be unaware of the effect that certain actions have on the environment, or may be uncertain of what sources to trust. In much of the world today, people are flooded with information, and sifting the trustworthy from the questionable can take a lot of time and effort. Although this barrier-based model has been The second category is Ideologies. For example, popular for some time, some scientists argue people who strongly believe in free-market that it’s more effective to focus on how capitalism are less likely to believe in climate psychological and social process can enable, change. Some people believe that a higher rather than hinder, change. As the last activity in power (whether that be a God or Mother Nature) this topic (and the reason why this PDF is so will intervene before anything too catastrophic brief), read this journal article by Bloodhart and happens, whereas others are convinced that Swim (2020), who review the literature on advantages in technology will easily be able to gender differences in sustainable consumption, stop the effects of climate change. explore potential reasons for, and the consequences of these differences, and The third category is Comparisons with Other recommend ways of addressing issues of People. Humans often look to their peers for sustainable consumption and gender equity. cues as to what is appropriate behaviour, and if Topic Summary sustainable consumption includes many other areas (like energy production, transport, and In this topic, we explored the idea of sustainable waste disposal), we’ve focused on food given consumption, with a focus on food and eating. the major role that non-human animals play in We’ve briefly examined why people don’t the global food system. We’ll circle back to this engage in pro-environmental behaviours, and throughout the semester, particularly in Week 6 potential ways of changing this. Although and Week 8. References and/or supplementary resources: Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. (2017). Working together to reduce food waste in Australia. https://www.environment.gov.au/protection/waste/ publications/food-waste-factsheet Bloodhart, B., & Swim, J. K. (2020). Sustainability and consumption: What’s gender got to do with it? Journal of Social Issues, 76, 101–113. EAT-Lancet Commission. (2019). EAT-Lancet Commission Summary Report. https://eatforum.org/eat- lancet-commission/eat-lancet-commission-summary-report/ Gifford, R. (2011). The dragons of inaction: Psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation. American Psychologist, 66(4), 290-302. IPCC (2019). Climate change and land: An IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/ Leviston, Z., Walker, I., Green, M., & Price, J. (2018). Linkages between ecosystem services and human wellbeing: A nexus webs approach. Ecological Indicators, 93, 658– 668. Romero‐Canyas, R., & Hiltner, S. (2020). Scaling up and out: Psychological science in the service of promoting sustainable consumption. Journal of Social Issues, 76(1), 164-171. Ruby, M. B., Walker, I., & Watkins, H. M. (2020). Sustainable consumption: The psychology of individual choice, identity, and behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 76(1), 8-18. Saber, D. A., & Silka, L. (2020). Food waste as a classic problem that calls for interdisciplinary solutions: A case study illustration. Journal of Social Issues, 76, 114–122. United States Environmental Protection Agency. (ND). Food recovery hierarchy. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recovery-hierarchy Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., Lang, T., Vermeulen, S.,... & Murray, C. J. (2019). Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet, 393(10170), 447-492.