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Ralph Horne, Director, Centre for Design, RMIT University
The Carbon Neutral Communities Project involves us in doing carbon
foot printing at, sort of local authority area also looking at renewable resource assessments,
so how many renewables in terms of photovoltaics or wind you could generate within the
local authority area and then also looking at the behavioural side, if you like, the sort of
energy using side of communities.
Susie Maloney, Research Fellow, Centre for Design, RMIT University
In looking at the social dimensions of change we were particularly interested in approaches
to changing behaviour. We developed a database of over 100 behaviour change programs,
particularly interested in targeting energy use in the home. We assessed a range of approaches
that a lot of these programs are doing and we found that there hasn't been very much
research at all around behaviour change programs and their effectiveness. So we were
interested in how people are actually going about working with individuals and
communities to try and effect change.
Our review of behaviour change programs across Australia really showed us that
these programs are generally focused around individual behaviour and while that explains
part of our current energy consumption patterns it doesn't get the whole picture.
A lot of the actions that are targeted are around turning off light switches, switching
off lights at the wall, washing in cold water, switching taps off while brushing teeth,
having a four minute shower. These were all very common actions that were identified
across a wide range of behaviour change programs. And what we found is that while quite a
number of people might take up these actions, the impact of those kinds of changes are
relatively marginal when we consider the types of social, or systemic changes that we're
really needing to effect if we're talking about significant change in the future.
So for example in the case of showering behaviour, an individual behaviour change program might
focus on the length of shower that an individual person is going to have and so on and so forth
wheras a social change program might take broader account of standards of cleanliness and ... to
expectations of showering more broadly across the community. And that requires a different way
of seeing how that showering behaviour is constituted.
Judy Bush, Coordinator, North Alliance for Greenhouse Action (NAGA)
The Carbon Neutral Communities was a fantastic research project that we undertook with RMIT,
there was a lot of focus on the best methods for community engagement and how community
engagement projects are currently being run and what methodologies we could apply to really
increase and expand the effectiveness of them, so looking at community engagement and the
capacity of local government and others to actually implement climate change programs.
Alan Pears, Sustainability Researcher and Adjunct Professor, RMIT University
I think what's exciting about carbon neutral communities is that they've recognised
the complexity of the situation when you're trying to achieve sustainability.
It's not just about information for individuals to make them change, it's not
just about technology and getting the technical people doing the right things,
it's looking at the context, the infrastructure, the culture, the common practices
and all of those elements have to be managed so that you can motivate people and empower them
to achieve outcomes.
Some of that work identified that it would be much more effective to engage with communities on
a, sort of, a society ... more of a group basis than focusing on individual behaviour change programs
and this finding has been really useful for the design of other projects
that we're now thinking about running.
We can already see local governments taking on board the outcomes of the research and
incorporating them into their plans for carbon neutral communities in the future and
we're very much hopeful that that process will continue. We're very keen as applied researchers
to see our research taken up by industry and also by government in policymaking.
The outcome of it has been a model that means you can go into an organisation and look
at the cultures, look at the barriers and look at the ways the organisation can capture
the opportunities that come with a drive towards sustainability and I think that
that model can be applied very well in business.