More Like this

1. Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10124  

   Chan, Kai M. A. ; Boyd, David R. ; Gould, Rachelle K. ; Jetzkowitz, Jens ; Liu, Jianguo ; Muraca, Barbara ; Naidoo, Robin ; Olmsted, Paige ; Satterfield, Terre ; Selomane, Odirilwe ; et al ( July 2020 , People and Nature)

   Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goals.

   As a component of the IPBES Global Assessment, we conducted an iterative expert deliberation process with an extensive review of scenarios and pathways to sustainability, including the broader literature on indirect drivers, social change and sustainability transformation. We asked, what are the most important elements of pathways to sustainability?

   Applying a social–ecological systems lens, we identified eight priority points for intervention (leverage points) and five overarching strategic actions and priority interventions (levers), which appear to be key to societal transformation. The eightleverage pointsare: (1) Visions of a good life, (2) Total consumption and waste, (3) Latent values of responsibility, (4) Inequalities, (5) Justice and inclusion in conservation, (6) Externalities from trade and other telecouplings, (7) Responsible technology, innovation and investment, and (8) Education and knowledge generation and sharing. The five intertwinedleverscan be applied across the eight leverage points and more broadly. These include: (A) Incentives and capacity building, (B) Coordination across sectors and jurisdictions, (C) Pre‐emptive action, (D) Adaptive decision‐making and (E) Environmental law and implementation. The levers and leverage points are all non‐substitutable, and each enables others, likely leading to synergistic benefits.

   Transformative change towards sustainable pathways requires more than a simple scaling‐up of sustainability initiatives—it entails addressing these levers and leverage points to change the fabric of legal, political, economic and other social systems. These levers and leverage points build upon those approved within the Global Assessment's Summary for Policymakers, with the aim of enabling leaders in government, business, civil society and academia to spark transformative changes towards a more just and sustainable world.

   A freePlain Language Summarycan be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

    

   more » « less
2. Risk interdependency, social norms, and wildfire mitigation: a choice experiment

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-04037-1  

   Dickinson, Katherine L. ; Brenkert-Smith, Hannah ; Madonia, Greg ; Flores, Nicholas E. ( June 2020 , Natural Hazards)

   Wildfire presents a growing threat across the American West. We conducted an online choice experiment in Western Colorado to assess how social interactions affect wildfire mitigation decisions through two distinct pathways: risk interdependency (neighbors’ conditions affect perceived wildfire risk) and social norms (neighbors’ actions affect perceptions of appropriate mitigation choices). In contrast to key observational studies, we find that participants are less likely to choose to mitigate when they have more neighbors with sparse vegetation. This effect operates through the risk interdependency pathway: sparse vegetation on neighboring properties lowers participants’ wildfire risk perceptions and appears to be viewed as a substitute for one’s own mitigation actions. In this context, where neighbors are nameless and faceless, social norms do not counteract this negative effect. To reconcile this experimental result with observational studies, we discuss how both risk interdependency and social norms are influenced by geographical and social contexts and highlight how these insights can inform future research and policy action. 

   more » « less
3. Norm Enforcement with a Soft Touch: Faster Emergence, Happier Agents

   Tzeng, Sz-Ting ; Ajmeri, Nirav ; Singh, Munindar P ( May 2024 , IFAAMAS)

   A multiagent system is a society of autonomous agents whose interactions can be regulated via social norms. In general, the norms of a society are not hardcoded but emerge from the agents’ interactions. Specifically, how the agents in a society react to each other’s behavior and respond to the reactions of others determines which norms emerge in the society. We think of these reactions by an agent to the satisfactory or unsatisfactory behaviors of another agent as communications from the first agent to the second agent. Understanding these communications is a kind of social intelligence: these communications provide natural drivers for norm emergence by pushing agents toward certain behaviors, which can become established as norms. Whereas it is well-known that sanctioning can lead to the emergence of norms, we posit that a broader kind of social intelligence can prove more effective in promoting cooperation in a multiagent system. Accordingly, we develop Nest, a framework that models social intelligence via a wider variety of communications and understanding of them than in previous work. To evaluate Nest, we develop a simulated pandemic environment and conduct simulation experiments to compare Nest with baselines considering a combination of three kinds of social communication: sanction, tell, and hint. We find that societies formed of Nest agents achieve norms faster. Moreover, Nest agents effectively avoid undesirable consequences, which are negative sanctions and deviation from goals, and yield higher satisfaction for themselves than baseline agents despite requiring only an equivalent amount of information. 

   more » « less
4. Incentivizing household action: Exploring the behavioral wedge in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2024.113992  

   Caballero, Mariah D. ; Vandenbergh, Michael P. ; Gilligan, Jonathan M. ; Currier, Elodie O. ( January 2024 , Energy Policy)

   In the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the United States (U.S.) Congress placed a major bet on the importance of household actions, and the incentives for these actions may yield disproportionately large emissions reductions. Modeling estimates from Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Analysis Toolkit (REPEAT) suggest that the IRA's $331 billion investment can reduce carbon emissions by as much as 4% below a 2005 baseline by 2030, assuming a low-friction economic environment. To evaluate the role of household actions, we use a two-part method: 1) Policy analyses of the IRA and IIJA to identify household incentives; 2) Secondary data analysis of REPEAT's policy models to identify the potential for emissions reductions associated with household action. We find that $39 billion, or 12% of climate and energy funds in the IRA and $4.3 billion or 5.7% of clean energy and power funds in the IIJA, target voluntary household actions, and that these actions contribute 40% of the cumulative emissions reductions under the IRA and IIJA, assuming a mid-range scenario for uptake. The importance of household actions to achieving IRA and IIJA's emissions reduction goals suggests that actual impacts will likely vary by behavioral plasticity, and that program design should reflect social and behavioral science insights. 

   more » « less
5. Cooperating With “Open Cards”—The Role of Small Intermediary Businesses in Realizing Sustainable International Coffee Supply

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.663716  

   Weber, Hanna ; Wiek, Arnim ( July 2021 , Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems)

   Despite improvements, international food supply in general and coffee supply in particular continue to cause significant greenhouse gas emissions, economic inequities, and negative impacts on human well-being. There is agreement that dominant economic paradigms need to change to comply with the sustainability principles of environmental integrity, economic resilience, and social equity. However, so far, little empirical evidence has been generated to what extent and under which conditions sustainable international coffee supply could be realized through small intermediary businesses such as roasteries, breweries, and/or retailers. This case study reports on a collaborative project between a small coffee brewery and its customers in the U.S. and a small coffee roastery and its suppliers in Mexico that demonstrates how sustainable coffee supply could look like and explores under which conditions it can be realized. A research team facilitated the cooperation using a transdisciplinary research approach, including field visits and stakeholder workshops. The project (i) assessed the sustainability challenges of the current supply and value chains; (ii) developed a vision of a joint sustainable coffee supply chain; (iii) build a strategy to achieve this vision, and (iv) piloted the implementation of the strategy. We discuss the project results against the conditions for sustainable international coffee supply offered in the literature (why they were fulfilled, or not). Overall, the study suggests that small intermediary coffee businesses might have the potential to infuse sustainability across their supply chain if cooperating with “open cards.” The findings confirm some and add some conditions, including economic resilience through cooperation, problem recognition, transparency, trust, and solidarity across the supply chain. The study concludes with reflections on study limitations and future research needs. 

   more » « less