The internal and external dimension of Sustainable Living: An Interview with Eva Schonveld and Mariana Nicolau
Our internal world has a big influence on how we engage with our external world, but a whole host of external factors shape our habits and behaviours. Where does sustainable behaviour change start? What should we focus our attention on as we aim to foster lifestyle change? In line with our relational and conversational spirit, we invited two Boundless Roots members that work on this topic from different angles to have a conversation.
Eva Schonveld is a community activist and facilitator. Based in Scotland, she has spent the last 15 years focusing exclusively on developing and supporting interventions on climate change at local, national and international levels. Most recently she initiated and facilitated a process enabling people from many sectors in Scotland to think collaboratively about how to approach their work on climate change more radically, and is part of a new initiative to connect and promote the approach of those working on the inner dimensions of social change.
Mariana Nicolau is currently based in Germany. Her expertise lies in understanding lifestyle patterns and impacts in different cultural settings, and in developing tools to foster stakeholder dialogue and more sustainable ways of living. Sustainable behaviour and behaviour change is an important component of Mariana’s work. Project manager at the Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP), Mariana currently manages the Academy of Change, a capacity building programme on sustainable behaviours designed for leaders working on sustainability and climate change in the NGO sector.
Thank you for joining our conversation today! Eva, you have been part of the Boundless Roots power inquiry asking about privilege, colonialism and collective trauma. In your work, you look into topics of health and wholeness as conditions for deep mindset shifts, which in turn can lead to sustainable lifestyle changes. How do the inner and outer dimensions of change interact in your view? How do you understand the link between sustainable living and trauma?
Eva: The inner and outer dimensions are clearly interrelated. The inner dimension is where we all start from — our personal experience of the world. If that is healthy and in balance we have full access to empathy for other people and the world. If we have that, we are concerned about what is happening to others and connect with the need for a healthy planet. When trauma comes into play, it makes us stuck around particular issues. It can affect us in small ways or affect a massive part of our life, depending on our personal background, the system we are part of and our resilience. Trauma tends to make us shut down when we are faced with situations that trigger it. It closes down our ability to empathise and curtails our ability to see other realities — which in turns sends us into a vicious downward cycle in terms of how we feel about the world.
Mariana, from your perspective of looking at behaviour change — what aspects of come up for you when you hear Eva?
Mariana: I love hearing what Eva is sharing and I’d like to learn much more about it. We can end up only scratching the surface when we work on behaviour change. In my work we are looking at our habits, actual behaviours and mechanical reactions to the world. The key question we ask is, how can there be such a big difference between people’s values and their behaviour? We are trying to understand the relationship between both and explore the gap. We look at how to support the process of changing behaviours and to connect them back to intentions and values.
But we also see the challenges of this approach in rebounds or inconsistent actions — for example, when you see people who eat less meat for environmental reasons, but who still fly a lot or still don’t eat healthy. We need a more holistic take on this. This is where systems change and the inner dimension come in, but they can be more challenging and take more time. What we are looking into right now is how to add a third element to working with the inner and outer dimension: engagement. We want to see if people can consciously engage with their values and behaviours, and if this can then help to connect the two and help build a more consistent relationship between them. We are working more and more on the neighbourhood or city level and looking at how pioneers can bring new behaviours into schools or companies and find different ways of letting people engage with their behaviours and discuss their connection to values. I am curious what comes up for you, Eva, when you hear this?
Eva: The Scottish Government is very strong on fostering behaviour change and I have seen the ways in which that doesn’t work. Like you have been pointing out, people can change behaviours to do something for a while and then slip back — or good behaviour in one area doesn’t mean they are also behaving well in other areas. I do see the challenges in tackling things on the inner level: it’s both slow and countercultural. We are asking a lot more of people in some ways.
But I also feel the inner dimension doesn’t just have to refer to what is within me, it can include the people I trust, am close with, friends. People are quite different and present different parts of themselves when they are in a place where they feel really safe. And my sense is that there is a discomfort around how we curtail ourselves and our behaviours according to what we feel is socially acceptable, and that there is a yearning to be ourselves more. Getting older often means gradually getting over the fear of speaking out in public or standing up for others and the pain we internalised as children. Within everybody there is a trajectory towards growth that happens consciously or sometimes unconsciously, as it’s condoned socially to think of ourselves as beings that grow. So I feel there is a seed of wanting to have more space to be ourselves, to be more empathetic, in people because it nourishes our hearts to care for others and the places that we are in. I can’t tell you what the key is, but it feels like there is an open door in our natural inclination to grow towards more wholeness. And there are things that can support that — some of which are behaviours, for example in meetings when we can share more of who we are — that might not initially be about sustainability, but they can bring people closer and allow them to be more in touch with their sense of care for each other and the wider world. I haven’t articulated that before, it’s a really interesting question.
Mariana: That’s an interesting connection you make there. Behaviour might not be about sustainability straight-away but can hold a key to those important entry-points.
Mariana, you inquired into the topic of capacity building, on how to train and equip people such as teachers, NGOs and social media influencers, to in turn reach wider audiences for sustainable lifestyle change. Your work looks at lifestyle patterns and impacts in different cultural settings — what do you feel are the most promising ways in which we can build capacity and encourage sustainable behaviour change?
Mariana: I am not a huge fan of the word capacity building. It sounds like something top-down and like you are trying to teach people how to do things. This is not what we do in the Academy of Change. What we do is more like a networking and learning space. Now for the second time, we are bringing together 50 organisations for discussion rounds on various topics about sustainable behaviour change. In the past three years we have identified four things that that I think hold the most potential:
First, we work with what we could call a ‘menu of options’. This refers to a variety of behavioural models and tools that seem to hold potential and are evidence-based, which can help NGOs to better engage their audiences, talk to consumers, companies, and their membership base. There is never only one possible method or model — they are never perfect. They may have positive outcomes in one area but every tool also comes with drawbacks. So our participants test them and come back and tell us about their experiences. We work on different steps: gaining insights on how people are living, looking at what engagement tools and models are out there and evaluating our impact.
The second is diversity of backgrounds. We have a global programme, working with NGOs all over the world. In our current training round we have participants from 25 countries joining across 10 time zones. It is fascinating to see how tools from one part of the world get adapted to different contexts and how challenges are similar and different in those places.
Thirdly, we support pilot interventions to gather experience from practical projects around an issue that our members want to resolve.
And finally there’s a lot of potential in the multiplier effect. You might not need to scale your work yourself, but you could scale up your work through connecting with others and trusting in groups and networks. In this line we are investigating how people who already have participated in the course could act as catalysts to bring their knowledge back into their organisations and work towards organisational change.
What aspects come up for you and what thoughts would you add to Mariana’s answer? What do you find inspiring or challenging?
Eva: I am impressed by how much thought and work has gone into this. Those four points seemed really thorough. What Mariana shared tickled one of my frustrations with other behaviour change initiatives. My belief is that there is no one right way to do it. My frustration with the behaviour change label that has been pushed by the Scottish government is that it’s very top-down and that there is a lot of hypocrisy. Their leading piece is that it’s the people who should change and they are not attending to the other areas with the same amount of energy. They are not putting pressure on corporations the way they should be and they are also pursuing counterproductive policies themselves, building roads and airport terminals or supporting big oil. I can see from the work you are doing that your work is really thorough and evidence-based. It is absolutely clear that people need to change their behaviour and they won’t support government-induced change if governments are not consistent.
Mariana: It’s interesting to hear critical voices and the conflicts that the words ‘behaviour change’ create. It’s being applied very differently in different contexts. We should not be imposing the responsibility to change on people and taking it from governments and policy makers. We look at how behaviours are influenced by multitude of organisations, including governments and NGOs. And there is a question around whether it is ethical to enact any interventions at all. Certainly not without transparency and including people in the conversation. Our work is about understanding the drivers of behaviour change — the structure, incentive and environments — and tap into them.
Eva: I was really fascinated by your reflection that different things work and don’t work in some parts of the world. When looking at the global citizens assemblies that we are helping to organise via Extinction Rebellion, but also one to one conversations I’m having, we are speaking to people in India and Kenya and immediately find massive cultural differences and possibilities. And sometimes they are very different from what you would think. Kenyans for example have an amazing constitution that creates legal frameworks for them to be freer and much more directed by the people, than people in Scotland where we don’t have a constitution at all. This feels so complex in terms of dynamics within different countries and the interrelationships between Global Northern countries and the Global South. It’s kind of mind-boggling.
In the light of the current Covid-19 pandemic, what is coming up for you when you reflect back on the conversations you had with BR over the past months? Does this health crisis change the work that you’re doing? What are new challenges and opportunities?
Mariana: At the level of our work, it became clear that change is possible, and that it can be achieved relatively quickly. We realise how important others are to us and focus on our connections. For example I am concerned about how my family is doing in Brazil, how my colleagues are, and what’s going on in the news. Let’s see what the “new normal” we are talking about means. I am curious to see what changes will last. There is a lot of potential around the possibilities of working from home, focusing on local connections and interconnection with the world. We are discussing now how to keep that momentum.
Eva: I echo a lot of that. In the UK a lot of people’s expression of care for one another is done through the NHS and quite rightly so in some ways. People are coming out on their streets to clap for the NHS every week. I feel a level of discomfort around that. It’s great that we are clapping, but what about putting pressure on the government to properly fund our health system? Nonetheless it is a way of expressing care and I think there is something essential in the brush with mortality that we all had collectively in a way. It puts us in touch with what is important, the people we care about and our heart-connections. I also resonated with your point on the local, and even hyper local level. Like the Whatsapp groups that seem to have sprung up amongst residents along streets, through which people are swapping seedlings or toys. Suddenly you can see more recycling, reusing, sharing, gardening. The number of Instagram pictures of sourdough is extraordinary! And when you know that you can make your own bread with your own yeast, that’s something you can never un-know. Seeds and even chickens are suddenly sold out. Overnight people are thinking about local resilience like never before. I find that really heartening and some of that might stay after the lockdowns.
My own work for Starter Culture almost hasn’t changed at all. Although the funding landscape has changed a lot. Much of the funding now only goes towards Coronavirus recovery and we have to think about how we can frame our projects in those terms. That’s a lot of work for a small team.
However we were stopped in our tracks with setting up citizens assemblies. We had wanted to talk with people and engage them through door-knocking or meeting at football matches. It is difficult to bring that online. Going online can bring people who are far aways a lot closer but people who are physically close can feel further away. Our conventional ways might not work for a long time, so we are focusing much more on online events. They have pros and cons. On the upside they allow us to include more remote communities but they can be much more tiring than physical meetings and pull you out of yourself.
Mariana: I am interested in the other ways of engagement you will find for the people’s assemblies!
Eva: I can keep you posted!
Boundless Roots is getting ready to dive into the next cycle of inquiries. What are the most burning questions you are holding at the moment? Where do you see the most potential in the Boundless Roots community?’
Mariana: I am interested in the connection between the inner and outer dimension in terms of behaviour and whether there is a gap between values and behaviours. I am also curious about how to multiply action with the necessary speed and depth. And whether we are dedicating the necessary time and are building the connections that are necessary.
In regards to the current situation, my questions are around what changes will stay. Will we go back to old models or can we seize the opportunity to become more resilient and sustainable? Another challenge I’d like to explore is the one of finding alternatives for certain conflicts — conflicts of interests and between different immediate needs. If you shut down airlines, people lose jobs. We need to address the need for a just transition. People are engaging in behaviour we find desirable, like driving less cars or spending more time locally, but at the same time a lot of people are losing out. We need to address that, otherwise chances are big that we will go back to our old ways.
Eva: We have been holding interviews to ask people what main challenges they see in the world and how these can be fixed. Their answers fall into three main categories: The first group basically says, it’s “them”, the others’ fault; the second group says humans are inherently flawed and we can’t live sustainably; and the third group says it’s the fault of the system. We need more testing to confirm these findings, but I find that fascinating. There is a question around our sense of human nature and of who we really are. Not if people are willing, but if they are actually able to change. If we no longer operate from the belief that we can’t change, a whole lot of things suddenly become possible. What really is human nature? I believe we have the potential to be creative and regenerative.
We just witnessed a massive and rapid change. It has been done in a rushed, panicked and chaotic way and a lot of people have been left behind. I have a question around what would happen if we could plan for rapid change. Could a society spend two years on planning and then enacting a move to low emissions and sustainability? Until this lockdown this seemed a pie in the sky. But if we say that the climate emergency has the potential to be much more lethal than Corona — why aren’t we considering planning for change without leaving anyone behind?
Thank you both for joining us today!
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