Underpinning themes: Environmental sustainability

 

Project aims:


The aims of this strand are to:

  • explore the overlap between activities that encourage wellbeing and those that are sustainable
  • investigate the relationship between sustainability and wellbeing in four service areas
  • produce a scoping paper setting out how current activity to increase sustainability related to wellbeing in the three areas
  • understand ways to promote behavioural change by demonstrating that changing habits to sustainable behaviours is in the interests of personal and local wellbeing

 

Wellbeing has become established as a key element of the sustainable development agenda, internationally and in this country. ‘Securing The Future’, the UK Government’s sustainability strategy, states that the ‘goal [of sustainable development] will be pursued in an integrated way through a sustainable, innovative and productive economy that delivers high levels of employment; and a just society that promotes social inclusion, sustainable communities and personal wellbeing’.

One of the key challenges of sustainable development is finding ways to change individuals’ behaviour. Behaving sustainably is popularly perceived to involve denial – for example of long- haul holidays, car use or consumer luxuries. Behaviour change is unlikely to become embedded unless ways can be found to change this perception and create awareness that pro-environmental behaviour can increase personal wellbeing.

This project will explore how initiatives that promote pro-environmental behaviour change can simultaneously increase wellbeing. This is a field where local agencies – such as schools, GPs or housing providers – have enormous potential to act, for example to promote walking, cycling and public transport use; locally source foods; or to increase the quality and use of green spaces and outdoor activities.

The work on sustainability will directly underpin existing practical work in five strands within the project:

Neighbourhoods – how neighbourhood working improves public space, greening, increasing community involvement in allotments, encouraging healthy eating

Parenting – how parenting programmes encourage parents/carers and children and young people to take responsibility for community space, and their relationship to initiatives aimed at increasing healthy eating, understanding of food miles and issues around consumption

16-19 year olds – promoting an understanding of sustainability as a key ‘soft’ skill for the future workforce, and encouraging the ‘harder’ skills that deliver sustainability, including business reduction of CO2 emissions and the importance of sustainability in developing products and services

Older people – involving older people in sustainable activities that also enhance their wellbeing, such as using allotments and recycling

Measurement – a key element will be to focus on how the measurement of wellbeing at the local level can be aligned with national sustainable development indicators and local agencies’ efforts to measure their sustainable development activities

 

As part of the development of the environmental sustainability underpinning thme the Young Foundation will host a meeting of experts in November 2008. 

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