How can environmental grassroots initiatives encourage low carbon behaviours?

Abstract

People’s carbon footprints in rich countries tend to be unsustainably large. Reducing them is not an easy task. Milena will ask what environmental grassroots initiatives can do to help people cut their carbon footprints. Are people who regularly engage with an environmental initiative more likely to reduce their energy use? Which barriers do environmental initiatives encounter in engaging people on climate change & what could they do to increase their impact? Milena will report findings from two related ESRC funded projects, one of which was a field experiment that tested the effectiveness of involvement with an environmental initiative for reducing energy use, and the second that examined initiatives’ strategies to encourage low carbon practices.

Biography

Milena Buchs joined the Sustainability Research Institute in September 2016 as Associate Professor in Sustainability, Economics and Low-Carbon Transitions. With a background in sociology and social policy, her current research focusses on relationships between economic growth, environmental sustainability and health/wellbeing, as well as low carbon practices and practice change. Milena has led and collaborated on several major, interdisciplinary ESRC and EPSRC grants on these topics.

Prior to joining the SRI, Milena was lecturing at the University of Southampton since 2005. She received her PhD in Social Policy from the Humboldt University Berlin in 2005 and her under- and postgraduate taught training in Sociology, Political Science and Economics from the Free University Berlin in 2001. She also held visiting researcher positions at the DFG-funded Postgrowth Societies College, University of Jena; the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics; and at the Centre of Comparative Welfare State Research, University of Stirling (with a EU Marie Curie fellowship during her PhD).

Directions to the Venue

School of Earth and Environment Seminar Rooms (8.119). At the Earth and Environment Reception take the door on the right-hand side. The Seminar Rooms are immediately on the left. Campus Map