Abstract
Many of the most pressing issues in environmental and conservation sciences are caused by humans and our activities. Yet, our well-intentioned efforts to address these issues often fail to critically engage with the simple fact that effective conservation ultimately relies on understanding and influencing people’s behaviours. This is not always a simple or straightforward task (e.g., educating or raising awareness does not change behaviour), but decades of work in the human behavioural sciences can inform, guide, and force multiply our efforts to create meaningful changes in the ways humans interact with the environment. In this talk, I will debunk some of the most common myths around changing (environmental) behaviour, discuss how our inherent social wiring can be leveraged to create meaningful and rapidly scalable change, distil the most important takeaways from communication science, and explore how we can further leverage cutting-edge insights from the behavioural sciences to bolster conservation efforts.
A short biography
Dr Brock Bergseth has been working at the intersection of human behaviour and nature for more than two decades. Over the course of his career, he’s worked in philanthropic, governmental, consultant, and academic research sectors, combining human behavioural sciences with natural sciences to address some of the most urgent and pervasive problems in conservation including water quality and pollution, overfishing, illegal fishing, and poaching in protected areas. Brock’s most recent work has three themes: 1) strengthening the systems and approaches we use to manage human behaviours in protected areas; 2) understanding and leveraging the inherent social nature of humans to increase pro-conservation behaviours; and 3) writing a popular science book to turn the tide of doom and gloom about the future of our planet and ourselves. Brock recently finished a prestigious DECRA Fellowship through the Australian Research Council at James Cook University and is currently a visiting fellow at Oxford’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science.
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.
