"Let's do it!" said 50,000 Estonians as they collected and removed 10,000 tons of garbage from their country's forests in less than six hours on 3 May 2008.
This exceptional feat was accomplished through the efforts of roughly 4 percent of the Estonian population - an excellent illustration of the well-known statement by Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
In fact, it often does take only a small part of the population---the frontrunners or the 'cultural creatives'---to start a big campaign and bring about positive change.
It was this very powerful message that our speaker Else Boutkan, a self-employed sustainability consultant, brought to us at our final Sustainability and Growth seminar on the topic of Campaigning for While many of the campaigns cited in our reading assignment involved government-sponsored initiatives in the field of sustainability, Boutkan's presentation and her own work showed us the power of individuals and grassroots movements in challenging the 'old way' of doing things and introducing new modes of living and working that are at once more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible in their nature.
"Start with people who do want to change their behavior," Boutkan said, alerting us against the temptation to try to engage people who are already set in their ways and do not want to change their habits.
According to her, the best strategy for building a movement is to seek out the so-called 'cultural creatives'---people who are open to new ideas and are already active in social and environmental affairs---and let them know that they are not alone and that they should join the efforts of other likeminded activists.
Similar, somewhat counterintuitive, tactics were introduced in our readings for the seminar - for instance, the idea of inducing people to action through positive messages rather than through doomsday scenarios that only give rise to negative feelings of guilt, fear and hopelessness, leading people to apathy and inaction.
So as to prompt people to act, problems need to be presented along with small practical steps that people can take in order to address them.
At the same time, "[w]e need to make solutions sound more heroic, use grander terms, and make the scale of the solution sound equal to the scale of the problem." [1]
Moreover, in order to create a willingness to tackle big global problems such as climate change, these problems must be conveyed to people in such a way that they can see and feel how they and their loved ones are personally affected by these issues. In other words, big, vague concepts need to be brought closer to home.
Another counterintuitive campaign strategy is to "make good sound normal and bad sound rare" because "[b]eing good is important, but being normal is even more so."[2]
Thus, "[e]very time we say that 'most people' aren't climate friendly, we've tipped the balance towards the wrong behaviours."[3]
The final part of our seminar focused on putting these lessons into practice. Equipped with powerful communication tools and inspirational real-world examples, we were divided into teams and challenged to come up with a strategies to induce people to save energy, conserve water, stop littering, etc.
The ensuing presentation and evaluation of ideas created ample space for more discussions regarding environmental issues and the most effective ways to tackle them. The sustainability campaigns that we came up with ranged from creating a shower radio which would limit people's shower times (through playing enjoyable music for a given time followed by ear-piercing sounds once the shower time was up) to using fairy tale games to encourage children (and their parents) to switch off the heaters and the lights in their house and installing garbage bags in cars to prevent people from littering.
Overall, it was one of the most thought-provoking and lively seminars of the semester. If there is one lesson we learned, it is that saving the planet does not require gigantic efforts, but simple steps that can be easily incorporated into anyone's daily routine. Furthermore, inspiring others to do the same may be only a matter of locating and linking likeminded activists and telling them "Let's do it!"
Tatevik Manucharyan
[1] Futerra "New Rules: New Game" report
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
No comments:
Post a Comment