Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change: Proceedings of a Workshop (2023)
Chapter: 1 Workshop Background
1
Workshop Background
Responding to climate change will entail massive socio-emotional and behavioral changes. Translating policies, investments, or built infrastructure-reshaping mandates1 into real and sustained local impact that incorporates accountability and culture change will require hands-on work. Adaptive societal responses to climate change will succeed or fail based on the attitudes, behaviors, social cohesion and capital, organizational and emotional strengths, and collective impact and input of all stakeholders.
Both reduction of greenhouse gases to maintain global temperature rise below 2°C over preindustrial levels and the ability of communities to sustainably adapt to the growing impacts of environmental change are considered technologically feasible. However, in 2021, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System found that restructuring toward net zero by midcentury, including energy grids and sources, manufacturing and agricultural practices, and building and transportation systems, is unlikely to occur in a timely fashion without significant social change and mobilization. In addition, the report described that the social climate and capacity for responding to environmental change are likewise critical and can be addressed in a similarly holistic and integrated way to build capacity for the transition to net zero in feasible, humane, healthy, and just ways.
In 2022, another National Academies report for the National Science Foundation, Next Generation Earth Systems Science,2 detailed how funding research in atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, geologic, polar, ecosystem, social, and engineering-related processes has advanced understanding of earth’s systems over the past several decades. Earth Systems Science increasingly incorporates human systems in analyses of climate change, but human social, behavioral, and social sciences have yet to align internally in terms of prioritizing and addressing the range of challenges faced by individuals and communities in responding to the stresses and opportunities posed by climate change. Recent work from the National Academies and other entities suggests that the human sciences could integrate in a similar fashion, to bridge gaps and establish solidarity between practitioners, researchers, and community members as pathways are built to respond to climate change.
The Billion Minds Institute, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Science Foundation sponsored this 2023 workshop, entitled Committee on Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal
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1 More information on build infrastructure is available at https://circle.cee.illinois.edu/built-infrastructure/
2 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2022). Next generation earth systems science at the National Science Foundation. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26042
Responses to Environmental Change: A Workshop, to consider how to integrate, align, and converge the broad mix of social, behavioral, and cognitive sciences to produce new insights and inform efforts for enhanced human responses to environmental change. Moreover, the workshop was intended to investigate ways to accelerate and deepen conversations within the social sciences and to focus on synthesis, especially for the purpose of increasing community capacity to understand and effectively respond to climate change-induced environmental changes—at scales ranging from the individual to the household to the community, and all the way up to the levels of state and international governance.
The Planning Committee for Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change was appointed to plan the workshop.3 The workshop planning committee’s charge is shown in Box 1-1.
This proceedings has been prepared by the workshop rapporteurs as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. The planning committee’s role was limited to planning and convening the workshop. The views
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3 More information on the committee can be found at https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/integrating-the-human-sciences-to-scale-societal-responses-to-environmental-change-a-workshop
contained in the proceedings are those of individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all workshop participants, the planning committee, or the National Academies. The workshop agenda and biographical sketches of the committee members and presenters are in Appendixes A and B, respectively.
WORKSHOP INTRODUCTION
The May 4–5, 2023, virtual workshop4 entitled Committee on Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change: A Workshop featured invited presentations and discussions with panelists including researchers, academics, policymakers, grassroots organizers, advocates, and other stakeholders. Panelists explored their own experiences, case studies, communities, cultures, international relations, policies, and research with implications for strengthening community resilience; and they addressed such topics as environmental justice and equity, historical perspectives, institutional and community-based collaborations, climate change, and community engagement.
The workshop began with a welcome from the Planning Committee Chair and Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science at The Ohio State University Robyn Wilson, Board on Environmental Change and Society Director Thomas Thornton, Director of the Billion Minds Institute and workshop sponsor representative Gary Belkin, and Assistant Administrator of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and workshop sponsor representative Chris Frey. Wilson highlighted and thanked the planning committee and National Academies staff responsible for developing the workshop. Thornton emphasized the vital role of human and behavioral sciences and the importance of the workshop for advising the upcoming initiative.
BILLION MINDS INSTITUTE
Belkin expressed his satisfaction at seeing the workshop’s evolution from an idea to a reality. He spoke about the germination of the project and thanked the planning committee for taking his ideas to fruition. Belkin emphasized the interdependent relationship between people and the transformation of earth and its climate, explaining how people connect, nurture, and empower each other to enhance sustainability and equity. He discussed the interweaving paths linking a “climate package,” such as the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,5 to greenhouse gas emission-reduction targets. Finally, he stressed the need to improve, enable, and empower attitudes, behaviors, and emotional well-being, which form loops that can enhance collective impacts, decision-making capabilities, social cohesion, and power building for the human sciences.
Belkin highlighted that social climate building has been a decades-long global movement, with local coalitions often driving change by brokering land use, resource shifts, and lifestyle changes. However, he advocated a need to “supersize” or expand those experiences on the ground. Belkin broadly inquired about the state of the scientific establishment and the best ways for scaling. Additionally, he noted the need to consider the role of the scientific community and how to use, situate, create, share, and make pragmatic knowledge.
Belkin stressed the need to reconceptualize collective thinking, use, and experience. Belkin mentioned Jürgen Renn’s notion of rethinking science to cope with the challenges of the Anthropocene, a period that critically depends on the development of a “knowledge economy” and involves changing conceptions of scientific knowledge.6 Belkin highlighted the task of empowering and using the “social climate to do this transformational work,” pushing scientists and institutions to translate knowledge into practice and policy decisions. He gave an example of his experience as New York City’s Mental Health Commissioner, during which the city implemented task sharing7 and created support infrastructure to strengthen mental health care, including expanding reach through daycare centers,
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4 The workshop video and presenter presentations are available at https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/03-23-2023/integrating-the-human-sciences-to-scale-societal-responses-to-environmental-change-a-workshop
5 More information is available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/cleanenergy/inflation-reduction-act-guidebook/
6 Renn, J. (2020). The evolution of knowledge: Rethinking science for the Anthropocene. Princeton University Press.
7 Stevens, C., Tosatti, E., Ayer, L., Barnes-Proby, D., Belkin, G., Lieff, S., & Martineau, M. (2020). Helpers in plain sight: A guide to implementing mental health task sharing in community-based organizations. RAND Corporation.
public housing, and resident councils. Belkin emphasized the need to change the “real estate” of where knowledge is centered and to establish horizontal relationships between knowledge makers and users, as exemplified by an initiative called ThriveNYC.8 He broadly inquired about ways that the social sciences can enable communities to seize climate-action initiatives and build the collective social capital needed to evolve them to an effective scale.
Belkin also spoke about the Thriving Earth Exchange,9 which visualizes the linkages between physical scientists (e.g., earth scientists, meteorologists, hydrologists, and agronomists) to determine the approaches needed to effectively connect knowledge with communities for climate change-related work. He recounted that he approached the National Academies to determine how to make this connectivity the “new normal” and to foster integrated, inclusive work between researchers, universities, and institutions. Belkin stressed the need for early conversations with activists, advocates, leaders, implementers, and scientists, to collectively map the scope of human sciences and determine pragmatic ways to bolster both the social climate and the collective impact of communities. He suggested beginning with a short list of use cases and capacities required for institutions to foster, grow, explore, and develop opportunities for connection, to eventually achieve a “new normal.”
Through this workshop, Belkin hopes to foster the eventuality of communities that can create effective driving paradigms to support the “new normal” in the face of the increasing impacts of environmental change. He emphasized that fostering such communities is “not about research; it’s about accompaniment.”10 Integrating the human sciences for this purpose may not require more research, but successfully aligning initiatives with community needs will necessitate using and advancing other types of skills.
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Frey expressed his appreciation for the efforts of Robyn Wilson and the planning committee in organizing the workshop. He provided an overview of the EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment, and how that mission relates to the workshop’s core themes. Frey outlined the four principles guiding the EPA’s work: following the science, following the law, being transparent, and advancing equity and environmental justice. ORD aims to develop and translate science to help the EPA’s mission by working with partners at the state, local, and tribal levels. Frey emphasized that the Biden-Harris administration is focused on climate change and environmental justice, noting a growing recognition and pivotal opportunity for integrating human sciences both within ORD and into climate change deliberations and interactions at the interagency level. Frey pointed out that the Fifth National Climate Assessment11 from the U.S. Global Change Research Program is the first report to dedicate a chapter entirely to the human sciences, indicating a growing recognition of the need to address those in vulnerable, underrepresented, and front-line communities.
Frey also discussed the importance of the humanities and social cohesion in responding to climate change challenges. He noted that a resilient climate future requires not only producing technical data but leveraging the imagination and creativity of the arts in the humanities. Frey highlighted ORD’s initiatives, which include hiring additional social scientists to better serve the needs of federal and state partners and vulnerable communities. He noted that ORD is establishing a climate sciences division that will integrate human, physical, and computational sciences, which will benefit from this workshop. ORD is also establishing a community-engaged research collaborative for learning and excellence in collaboration with EPA Region 2: New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. He noted that this collaboration would be located at the Edison, New Jersey EPA campus and will develop capacity and the associated methods and protocols to work with communities, understand their needs, and solve problems.
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8 More information about ThriveNYC is available at https://www.nyc.gov/site/operations/projects/thrivenyc.page
9 More information about Thriving Earth Exchange is available at https://thrivingearthexchange.org/
10 “Accompaniment (psychosocial, environmental, transspecies, and earth)—these interrelated types of accompaniment require a reorientation of the subjectivity, the interpersonal practices, and the critical understanding of the accompanier so that (s)he can stand alongside others who desire listening, witnessing, advocacy, space to develop critical inquiry and research, and joint action to address desired and needed changes.” Watkins, M. (2012). Accompaniment: Psychosocial, environmental, trans-species, earth. Plenary Panel for Psychologists for Social Responsibility. https://www.mary-watkins.net/library/Accompaniment-Psychosocial-Environmental-Trans-Species-Earth.pdf
11 More information is available at https://www.globalchange.gov/nca5
Finally, Frey noted that the Biden-Harris administration prioritized environmental justice, which has heightened the need to develop science to inform this goal. ORD is continuously looking for methods to address the cumulative impacts of environmental change, the totality of exposure to chemical and nonchemical stressors, and the combined effect of health and quality of life at the community level. Frey emphasized the need for actionable science to inform environmental justice-related decisions and interventions, to improve action. Last, Frey focused on making community-engaged frameworks and research more justice-oriented and sustainable, using insights from local projects and knowledge of place-based needs to inform state- and federal-scale policy and the practical development of theory.
PLANNING COMMITTEE GOALS AND INSIGHTS
Following the introductions, Wilson started the workshop’s first session by discussing how the committee planned the two-day workshop and introducing the key points to be discussed. First, the Statement of Task (SOT) was referenced, which outlined the workshop’s goals. The SOT was described as initially overwhelming, due to the broad mix of human sciences the workshop would attempt to integrate, align, and converge to produce new insights to inform and enhance human responses to environmental change.
The framing thus focused on the importance of understanding the role of the human sciences in addressing the significant environmental issues and problems humans face in a rapidly changing world. Wilson explained that the human sciences encompass behavioral, social, moral, political, economic, and cultural phenomena. She advocated that the arts and humanities are crucial for communicating about these phenomena, and that the human sciences promote understanding of both the drivers of human action and interaction and the results stemming from these coupled systems. Integration and feedback amongst biological, social, and cultural phenomena were also discussed; Wilson called for a shift in the way science is traditionally conceptualized: “Works of the spirit and human experience cannot be reduced to the realm of causal science and require different methods.”12
Wilson prompted workshop participants and panelists to consider why the human sciences are essential and the implicit consequences of their exclusion, noting that most environmental problems are caused by human behavior; therefore, addressing environmental change requires initiating behavioral changes. Despite their essential role, Wilson explained that the human sciences are underrepresented and underfunded. Nevertheless, she noted a gradually growing push to invest in integrated work. She argued that global environmental change research should encompass coping with changes and the associated perceptions of these changes within the natural- and built-environment contexts. Wilson noted that the workshop would consider both mitigation (i.e., actions to reduce emissions that induce climate change) and adaptation (i.e., managing the risks of environmental impacts and building resilience in the face of global environmental change). Finally, she urged workshop participants to discuss engagement successes, mobilization, and scaling up, noting that the complexity of adaptation and system transformation—in both scope and scale—make this a time-consuming challenge.
Wilson described diverse, collaborative partnerships that can effectively support these transformations, including small-scale and bottom-up approaches, and she urged participants and panelists to consider the critically acclaimed work of Elinor Ostrom. Wilson identified effective strategies for enhancing resilience by fostering community-driven mobilization and strengthening social ties, including boundary spanners, culturally competent data collection, and values-driven framings and engagements. She also mentioned bridging successful community-engagement and social science approaches to motivate future research and implementation work.
Most instances of deteriorating environmental conditions are caused by human behavior. Although there are certainly instances of such environmental conditions developing from natural processes, most are largely the result of human activity. Drivers of phenomena such as climate change, loss of species’ habitats, and ocean acidification rarely are the result of malicious intent, but rather the consequence of the lifestyles of billions of humans. Accordingly, efforts to promote conservation must change behavior.13
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12 Turner, S. (2015). Human Sciences, History of. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed.) (pp. 380–385).
13 Schultz, P. W. (2011). Conservation means behavior. Conservation Biology, 25(6), 1080–1083.
Wilson also urged participants to consider improved ways of mapping and synthesizing knowledge in the human sciences. She discussed the importance of identifying areas that lack both support and priorities for future research and engagement. Additionally, Wilson noted several other important practices to consider, including accounting for feedback to minimize “downstream” impacts, understanding the priorities of historically underrepresented communities, translating science for action, striving for inter/transdisciplinary approaches, integrating justice and equity considerations, and continuously reflecting on privilege.
Finally, a question arose from a workshop participant regarding learning from international development, urging panelists to speak on this topic. Wilson acknowledged the question and noted that examples of successful approaches are prevalent internationally.
STRUCTURE OF THE PROCEEDINGS
Following this introduction, Chapter 2 provides an overview of successful bodies of knowledge and existing toolkits. Chapter 3 reviews major challenges, in terms of identifying gaps and needs that prevent change. Chapter 4 addresses best practices across domains of need from the human sciences. Chapter 5 highlights themes from day one. Chapter 6 describes case studies about achieving climate action through community-level partnerships; and the panelists’ exploration of case studies that illustrate strengthening community resilience through environmental justice is covered in Chapter 7. In Chapter 8, case studies delve into achieving more durable solutions through new collaborations. In Chapter 9, presenters explore ways to improve community resilience moving forward. Workshop themes are summarized in Chapter 10, along with closing comments from participants.
