The Environment Movement At A Crossroads
The author of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, “Weathercocks and Signposts: The Environment Movement at a Crossroads,” believes the environmental movement is at a crossroads. According to WWF, the report:
… critically reassesses current approaches to motivating environmentally-friendly behaviour change. Current behaviour-change strategies are increasingly built upon analogy with product marketing campaigns. They often take as given the “sovereignty” of consumer choice, and the perceived need to preserve current lifestyles intact. This report constructs a case for a radically different approach. It presents evidence that any adequate strategy for tackling environmental challenges will demand engagement with the values that underlie the decisions we make – and, indeed, with our sense of who we are.
Pro-environmental strategists often employ techniques that encourage people to change incrementally. Market segmentation results in the tailoring of messages to fit with particular values rather than engaging those values directly. For example, individuals may be encouraged to change for social status reasons or financial self-interest rather than environmental benefit.
This report presents evidence suggesting that approaches that create behavior change on an incremental basis may actually serve to deter or even undermine more far-reaching, systematic behavioral changes. In summary, this report reviews arguments that the consumption of ever more goods and services is an inherent aspect of consumerism, and that the scale of environmental challenges we confront demands a systemic engagement with this problem.
While alternative patterns of consumption (for example, car sharing, or keeping and upgrading computers rather than replacing them) are important, these models cannot be properly disseminated, and seem unlikely to lead to change on the scale required, without first engaging the underlying motivations for consumerism. Car sharing, for example, may not lead to net environmental benefits if the money that an individual saves by selling their own car and joining a car-share scheme is spent on buying into a time-share apartment in Spain.
Motivating a person to part from their car for environmental reasons rather than financial reasons brings society closer to the overall end goal. An alternative approach suggests that any successful movement must be “unequivocal in articulating what it stands for.” Appeals to individualism are inadequate and materialistic values cannot form the basis of motivating systematic pro-environmental behavioral changes.
Intrinsically motivated people (those who have goals of personal growth, intimacy, etc) are more highly motivated for pro-environmental behavior than those who are extrinsically motivated (financial goals). Consequently, it is important that pro-environmental campaigns should reflect values that underscore the overarching goals rather than peripheral objectives.