A sustainable future for me, my world and the world
The following provides a summary write-up of a panel session that Ipsos chaired at the Anthropy event held at The Eden Project at the beginning of November 2022. This provides an overview of the key points that were discussed and the main take-outs from the discussion.
Synopsis from the panel discussion
The decisions, attitudes and actions of people are broadly shaped by three elements. First, by the day-to-day demands that individuals are faced with; the immediate need to protect the welfare of their family through the provision of shelter, food, and healthcare – which we can consider as focussing on ‘Me’. Second is the local environment – the place where people live, work, and socialise, have access to facilities and the services that support, shape and enhance/enrich our lives. We consider this ‘My World’. And finally comes our place in the wider world. How important our actions, resources, knowledge and skills are to support others outside of our immediate environment – ‘The World’.
If we wish to create a more positive and prosperous (or sustainable) future for both people and the planet, we need to look at life through these three lenses and make decisions with respect to all three. Based on the significant research programmes that each of our panel has been involved in, they provided a perspective through these lenses. Digging deeper, they looked at how to bring these together, ensuring we drive a synergistic rather than a siloed approach to the future of Britain and its place in the world.
The importance of understanding the ‘Me’
Both the problems and the ultimate solutions to these problems all emanate from human beings, so investing in understanding individuals, or the ‘Me’, is vital. The panel discussed the need to have a nuanced and deep understanding of the people that government, business, and organisations are trying to reach and influence, so that those individuals can see their lives and values reflected back at them.
Lauren shared the work that the BBC has undertaken, looking at how to avoid the unconscious stereotypes trap. For example, although there have been improvements in the quantity of diverse voices and faces in broadcast media, people were often left feeling that it was stereotypical or tokenistic. Stereotypes are just one of many mental shortcuts that we, as humans, rely on, but a greater range of more varied portrayals, that individuals and/or groups of citizens can relate to, is necessary.
Research undertaken by the BBC1 identified five markers of identity which can be employed to shape more consciously inclusive outputs. These celebrate the things that make us different, underpinned by the power of shared experience:
- Personality traits
- Values and beliefs
- Their roles in society
- Their situation
- Shared culture and experiences
To engage citizens, representation matters. Seeing yourself included as part of society sends a huge message about inclusion and belonging.
Building up on this, Nina from PSI shared the experience of their work, funded by the Gates Foundation, to understand how HIV programmes could be more responsive to men confronting the disease in South Africa2. A fundamental part of the solution came from looking at the world through the eyes of these men, and co-designing solutions with them. To do this, it was necessary to understand the problem from the individual’s position and find out what it is about HIV that makes men so reluctant to engage with health services.
Deeply held stereotypes suggested that men are stubborn and don’t have health-seeking attitudes. But a deeper dive showed that many had grown up at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and most had seen family members die from AIDS. They’d been taken to AIDS wards in school, but nothing after that. This meant that men were very traumatised and scared, seeing HIV diagnosis as the end of life. ‘Me’ didn’t say ‘I have HIV’, for these men it meant ‘I am HIV’. Men saw social death on the other side of an HIV diagnosis.
The research looked at what it would take for men to get treatment (a pill a day). The answer was ‘show me someone who has done it’. This created an upgraded peer model for someone who is living with HIV. Not a doctor, but a ‘coach’ openly telling his story about being on treatment. This proved transformative for subjects, to have someone who can talk to them about HIV being ‘the next chapter, not the end.’
Rachel then discussed how work being undertaken for BEIS that came out of UK’s presidency of COP26 – climate science partnership for net zero – illustrates that without consideration of the ‘Me’, no policy intervention on its own will be enough to drive change. This program, which initially has brought together eight countries (Colombia, India, Italy, Seychelles, UAE, UK, Kenya, Jamaica) discusses how to develop climate policy and action that works – informed not just by science, but also by citizens. The idea is that if policy developers engage with science, they can better understand the issues and complexity of what needs to be overcome, to ultimately make improved policies. But if they also engage with people, they will additionally understand how people will act and therefore develop more salient policy.
All these projects really illustrate that to drive momentum and positive change people need to be properly understood and included. Without this, too many assumptions are made which result in some discord and lack of progress. Ultimately for success, people need to be engaged.
This was further illustrated by Josie through the work she has been doing at WWF to address the triple challenge - firstly, keeping temperature rises below 1.5c since pre-industrial levels, secondly, halting and restoring the loss of nature and thirdly, meeting the nutritional and food needs for the world population3. To address the triple challenge successfully, the project identified that land use needs to become more multi-functional. However, that involves significant complexity because it impacts multiple ‘Me’s’ – not just the people who need to deliver the land use change, but also the people who will be impacted by it. All voices need to be at the heart of the conversation to ensure everyone is aligned in moving forward.
Understanding the importance of place and ‘My World’
The work of WWF also emphasised the importance of context, and how it is necessary to understand ‘My World’. Even across the UK, the needs, wants, concerns and environmental challenges and opportunities are very different from Pembrokeshire to the Humber to Aberdeenshire. It was possible to see that people and place are interconnected – our identity tends to be bound up in the places we come from and live in. As we ask people to adopt new behaviours and get behind new policies, it will need champions from within the community to lead the charge and to represent the need to act in terms of ‘My World’.
The work of BEIS extends this principle but considers the differences between markets with very different economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental contexts. Within each of the four countries initially involved in the project (Kenya, India, Columbia, Seychelles), each country created a steering group formed at government level and identified a particular policy challenge or issue related to low emissions food systems. The groups worked to engage groups of experts (practitioners, academics, scientists), as well as conducting deliberative engagements with citizens in the countries.
The result was a set of recommendations and a global toolkit or framework of principles that can be customised to each country, focussed on adaptation (due to the countries involved). One such example was climate-proof technologies for food production in the Seychelles. The project also illustrates that working collaboratively on a global basis (‘The World’), can reap huge benefits and a greater understanding and appreciation of each other’s needs and opportunities.
So, both this project and the research undertaken by WWF show that it is possible to create successful frameworks and toolkits to drive positive change. Having input from different stakeholders (the different forms of ‘Me’) and to combine that understanding, whilst also taking account of local differences and context (‘My world’) delivered the most positive outcome.
The consequences for ‘The World’
This then naturally took the panel on to discuss ‘The World’ in more detail. Actions taken at a local level have ramifications for the wider world – the ripple effects which cumulate to have a significant impact. This is illustrated well by both the work of BEIS and WWF when we think about food security across the world. The same is true for healthcare and the need to develop medicines and interventions to protect the whole world. The work of PSI provides a great example of how understanding the ‘Me’ and ‘My World’ is vital for the take up of programmes to treat and halt the spread of AIDS. Crucially, the impact goes beyond men and their world, because when people are on treatment and achieve viral suppression, that reduces new infections at a wider population level. And because South Africa has one of the larger HIV epidemics in the world, reducing incidence there has a global impact – ‘The World’.
A similar analogy can be drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic. When the virus took hold, people immediately thought of protecting themselves, friends, and families (Me). Then taking action to protect the local community (My World) by social distancing, mask wearing and only going out when needed. Later, the arrival of vaccines and encouraging people to get vaccinated for the good of themselves, the community, but also ‘The World’ as the virus and its variants spread rapidly across the globe.
But the same principle can be applied when we think of the social elements of sustainability and specifically, diversity and inclusivity. Returning to the work of the BBC, if we can better represent the diversity of individuals that make up the global population, then we can start to retrain our minds beyond the entrenched stereotypes. Discrimination and exclusion of groups is the cause of much suffering and tension, but by having better and truer representation of all sectors, inclusion can be improved as we invest in better understanding the different ‘Me’s’.
In summary
The challenges we face to create a sustainable future are immensely complex. Now, more than ever, we need all stakeholders (government, business, science, technology, experts etc) to come together. We need to embrace this complexity to address the challenges systemically, rather than in silos, to minimise trade-offs and maximise co-benefits. And the ‘Me’ needs must be truly at the centre of everything.
Simplicity and clear action are key but informed by the detail and the complexity. For communication to be effective, we need to feature people I relate to in worlds I feel part of, and this comes through the power of social learning – the watching and hearing of others acting. But also, to appreciate that a one size fits all solution rarely works. Consider all the people whose behaviour you’re trying to change and adjust for their needs.
As we design solutions, our processes and approaches need to involve leadership from the outset, ensuring that we’re designing to address individuals’ pain points and providing evidence that is credible to them. This is slow, but ultimately more successful than piloting great ideas that go nowhere because decision-makers aren’t bought in. It is also necessary to design tools for effective communication delivery, bringing evidence to life and collectively building a vision for what a sustainable future can look like. The WWF triple challenge tool is a great example of this in action4.
Everyone agreed that people want to engage with policy, particularly when it impacts their local environment, but mechanisms for this are often lacking or inadequate and even if they are in place, it is too often piecemeal rather than embedded and ongoing. Clearly there is much more scope to put people at the heart and consider what it means for their world and our world.
References
More insights about Energy & Environment
