Supporting Behavioural Entrepreneurs: Using the Biodiversity-Health Relationship to Help Citizens Self-Initiate Sustainability Behaviour

Abstract

Techno-industrial societies face biophysical limits and the consequences of disrupting Earth’s ecosystems. This creates a new behavioural context with an unmistakable demand: Citizens of such societies must turn from seeking new resources to crafting new living patterns that function well within finite ecosystems. This coming transition is inevitable, but our response is not preordained. Indeed, given the complex, multi-decade-long context, the required pro-environmental behaviours cannot be fully known in advance. Furthermore, the urgency to respond will necessitate that whole clusters of behaviour be adopted; incremental and serial change will not suffice. Thus, a culture of small experiments must be nurtured. The process of change will seriously tax social, emotional and attentional capacities. Thus, priority is placed on emotional stability and clear-headedness, maintaining social relationships while stressed, pro-actively managing behaviour and a willingness to reskill. These aspects of coping share a common foundation: the maintenance of attentional vitality and psychological well-being. Changes also must occur in how pro-environmental behaviours are promoted. We must move beyond interventions that are expert-driven, modest in request, serial in implementation and short-term in horizon. New interventions must create the conditions under which citizens become behavioural entrepreneurs, themselves creating, managing and sharing successful approaches to behaviour change.