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BeChange: Sustainability education and leadership development : Assessing the links between inner development and outer change for transformation
- 2022
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This report presents the assessment of a six-week online course offered by BeChange, which was given from April to June in 2022. Through a total of five online sessions, an interactive learning platform, diverse practices and individual coaching, the course aimed to support participants in reducing their CO2 emissions, increase their climate engagement, and at the same time enhance their wellbeing. The topics covered were sustainable food, consumption, living, mobility, and engagement. The course participants were 41 residents of the Swedish cities of Umeå, Luleå and Huddinge, including 20 municipal employees. To assess the course, we systematically analysed the participants' reported inner developments and outer changes and the associated interlinkages between these. Inner development was assessed by looking at participants’ change regarding their relationships to i) self, ii) others, and iii) nature. Outer change, such as climate-related behaviour and engagement, was examined regarding i) participants' private life, ii) their work, and iii) their wider socio-political context. Our analyses show that the course has helped the participants to develop a range of inner 'transformative capacities' that are crucial to support wellbeing and more sustainable engagement across individual, collective, and system levels. Examples are increased self-awareness, self-compassion, sense of agency, emotional regulation, optimism, hope, and intrinsic motivation, together with reduced feelings of being overwhelmed and climate anxiety. Reported changes regarding people's relationships with others include being less judgmental and more trusting. Many participants have also rethought the way they communicate and how they want to bring about change. The latter manifests in their changed understanding and action-taking: from being purely cognitive and information-based to more intrinsic and embodied, and thus becoming the change they want to see. For several participants, the inner capacities they developed have also led them to move from a technical understanding of climate change to understanding that is more relational, i.e., from a focus on external solutions (such as technological innovation and ‘climate-smart’ consumption) to an increased emphasis on addressing and integrating internal and social dimensions of climate change in their climate actions.The identified changes relate, amongst other things, to the fact that the course focused on two aspects: i) giving the participants new tools and perspectives on climate change and engagement that emphasise the importance of inner dimensions of climate change, and ii) working practically with each individual's current conditions and abilities. The tools and practices included diverse self-reflection, perspective-taking, meditation, communication and visualisation exercises. They provide important examples of how approaches from different fields (such as psychology and contemplative science) can be adapted to the context of sustainability, to support transformation.Through the content, practices and perspectives it provided, the course has helped the participants create a more sustainable source of motivation and engagement based on positive (rather than negative) emotions. But the course assessment also shows that capacities such as perspective-taking and critical, complexity and systems thinking could have been strengthened further. In particular, an important opportunity was missed for the participants to learn more about how they can tap into their inner potential to support collective and systems change through systematically integrating both inner and outer dimensions of sustainability in their work and engagement to ensure transformation.
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- Gerhardt, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Nog nu, politiker – ta klimatkrisen på allvar
- 2022
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Ingår i: Aftonbladet Debatt. - 1103-9000. ; -:-
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- 1944 svenska forskare och anställda i forskarvärlden: Vad är det ni inte förstår?
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- Libertson, Frans, et al.
(författare)
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Inre omställning är minst lika viktig som den tekniska utvecklingen
- 2023
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Ingår i: Sydsvenskan. - 1652-814X.
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- Företag och organisationer behöver se över sina visionsplaner, projektledning, arbetsstrukturer och kommunikation för att främja inre hälsa och engagemang för naturen, skriver Frans Libertson och Gustav Osberg, doktorander inom industriell miljöekonomi.
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- Moberg, Christina, et al.
(författare)
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De unga gör helt rätt när de stämmer staten
- 2022
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Ingår i: Aftonbladet. - 1103-9000.
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- 1 620 forskare och lärare i forskarvärlden: Vi ställer oss bakom Auroras klimatkrav
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- Osberg, Gustav, et al.
(författare)
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Toward a post-carbon society : supporting agency for collaborative climate action
- 2024
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Ingår i: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 29:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Current post-carbon transition trajectories are primarily focused on external solutions, while citizens’ inner lives and roles in collective transformation and system change processes are largely overlooked. To address this gap, this study aims to explore the potential role of citizens as active agents of change. Specifically, it examines how citizens perceive and address climate change, the factors that can empower and motivate them to act, and how they imagine future transformation pathways and their own role within them. Based on a combined SenseMaker and Grounded Theory methodology, we explore citizens’ perspectives and discuss their implications for improving current approaches and discourses, such as lifestyle environmentalism and post-growth. Our findings provide important insights into the interplay between people’s motivation, sense of agency, and social paradigms, with direct implications for policy and practice. They show that the materialistic growth paradigm under which most people act does not support motivation and engagement in sustainability transformations. Secondly, although intrinsic motivation, along with values such as care and community, increase engagement and transformation, they are seldom reflected in current policy approaches and discourses. Thirdly, a sense of agency is key for lasting individual and collective engagement. Put together, the results indicate that empowering individual and collective agency requires challenging current societal and systemic values that lie at the root of today’s crises. Supporting conditions that allow the emergence of new social paradigms through targeted actions at individual, collective, and system levels is thus crucial to tackling climate change and meeting policy targets.
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- Wamsler, Christine, et al.
(författare)
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Linking internal and external transformation for sustainability and climate action : Towards a new research and policy agenda
- 2021
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Ingår i: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780. ; 71
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change is an increasing threat to sustainable development worldwide. However, the dominant incremental policy approaches have not generated action at anywhere near the rate, scale or depth that is needed. This is largely due to the fact that climate change has historically been framed as a purely external, technical challenge. There is an urgent need for a more integral understanding that links internal and external (collective and systems) approaches to support transformation. However, related knowledge is scarce and fragmented across disciplines. This study addresses this gap. Through a systematic literature review, we analyse how the linkages between internal and external change are portrayed and understood in current research. We assess the scope, perspectives and approaches used to understand why, and how, internal change relates to climate action and sustainability. Our results highlight patterns and gaps regarding foci, conceptualisation, methods, epistemology, ontology and ethics that hamper emergent solutions and progress. Starting from the status quo, we propose an integrated model of change as an agenda and roadmap for future research, policy and practice.
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| 9. |
- Wamsler, Christine, et al.
(författare)
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Meaning-making in a context of climate change : Supporting agency and political engagement
- 2023
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Ingår i: Climate Policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1752-7457 .- 1469-3062. ; 23:7, s. 829-844
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Responding effectively to climate change requires an understanding of what shapes people’s individual and collective sense of agency and responsibility towards the future. It also requires transforming this understanding into political engagement to support systems change. Based on a national representative survey in Sweden (N = 1,237), this research uses the novel SenseMaker methodology to look into these matters. More specifically, in order to understand the social and institutional prerequisites that must be in place to develop inclusive climate responses, we investigate how citizens perceive their everyday life and future, and the implications for their sense of responsibility, agency, and political engagement. Our research findings show how citizens perceive and act on climate change (individually, cooperatively, and by supporting others), their underlying values, beliefs, emotions and paradigms, inter-group variations, and obstacles and enablers for change. The findings reveal that, in general, individual and public climate action is perceived as leading to improved (rather than reduced) wellbeing and welfare. At the same time, climate anxiety and frustration about structural and governance constraints limit agency, whilst positive emotions and inner qualities, such as human–nature connections, support both political engagement and wellbeing. Our results shed light on individual, collective, and structural capacities that must be supported to address climate change. They draw attention to the need to develop new forms of citizen involvement and of policy that can explicitly address these human interactions, inner dimensions of thinking about and acting on climate change, and the underlying social paradigms. We conclude with further research needs and policy recommendations.
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| 10. |
- Wamsler, Christine, et al.
(författare)
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My Malmö – Climate Visions for Transforming the Future : Policy report by LUCSUS and Malmö City
- 2021
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Sweden and Malmö are widely considered forerunners of climate change mitigation and adaptation, both internationally and by self-proclamation. Political will, available resources, and public knowledge are fairly high. National and local policies and regulations are in place, and a dominant majority of Swedes is well informed about climate change and the associated obligations, seeing climate change as real and a risk for themselves and others in Sweden (Blennow & Persson, 2009).Despite this situation, progress remains slow, as for all advanced industrialised economies (IPCC, 2018). According to the World Wide Fund for Nature Living Planet Report (WWF, 2016; 2020) Swedes are living a lifestyle that would require the equivalent of around 4.2 Earths to sustain, which places Sweden close to the likes of the United States when it comes to its consumption footprint. The failure in current approaches to address climate change relates to the fact that they have mainly focused on external factors, such as wider socio-economic structures, governance dynamics and technology. Hardly any efforts have been concerned with the personal, inner drivers of change (Wamsler, 2020). This is unfortunate, as people’s mindsets lie at the root of sustainability challenges and are thus fundamental to the solutions. They involve people’s beliefs, values, worldviews and associated inner qualities or capacities, which can be both forces of change or reproduce current unsustainable paradigms. New approaches are urgently needed.
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