Earth Day is an annual event organised by earthday.org who work globally to drive meaningful action for the planet. Since it was founded in 1970 after an oil spill in California, Earth Day is focused on raising awareness around climate change and global warming. It serves as a conscious reminder of how fragile our planet is and aims to inspire acts towards the protection of our environment. The theme of this year’s three-day summit is ‘Restore Our Earth’.
To mark Earth Day 2021, 3 participants – Sarah Tulej (Sustainability Consultant), Suzanne Maxted (Business Architect at Methods) and Hannah Pinnock (Design Strategist at Methods) – talk about using behaviour change to tackle the climate crisis. The UK government has used strong messaging during the pandemic to change people’s behaviour; our participants question why the same can’t be done for climate change. They discuss the importance of public sector organiations making it easy for citizens to make ‘the green choice’, and how companies ‘should’ pay for the impact they have on the planet. An inspiring listen! You can tune in to the podcast here.
Truly sustainable economic growth and development means recognising that our long-term prosperity relies on rebalancing our demand of nature’s goods and services with its capacity to supply them. It also means accounting fully for the impact of our interactions with Nature across all levels of society. COVID-19 has shown us what can happen when we don’t do this.
Professor Dasgupta, The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review
Podcast references:
- Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock https://design-justice.pubpub.org/
- The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review
- COM-B model https://social-change.co.uk/files/02.09.19_COM-B_and_changing_behaviour_.pdf
- Pavan Sukhdev http://corp2020.net/ https://www.gistimpact.com/
- Seaspiracy https://www.seaspiracy.org/