Moving Sustainability Forward
I’m a fan of the video’s produced by PeakMoment on YouTube. They have interviewed loads of interesting people and projects, but the latest one really hit home about the philosophy of extending the environmental and sustainability movement to a broader audience.
They interviewed Alan Seid of Bellingham Co-housing Community (in the USA). You can watch the YouTube video below, under which are some of my highlights.
Alan suggested that the word ’sustainable’ has different meaning to different people. His view is that sustainability is something that would enable man to survive indefinitely, and as such involves looking at the whole environment, but also looking within people and understanding where people are ‘at’.
In order to reach the goal of sustainability, we have to work collectively – creating mutual understanding without coercing people. Human consciousness grows from Ego-Centric to Ethno-Centric to World-Centric (where Ego-Centric is all about ‘me’, Ethno-Centric is about people ‘like me’ and World-Centric is a holistic view of all things and people).
Alan identifies that one of the problems in getting the average person to be aware of sustainability is a psychological one; for example, recycling helps with a small (5-10%) amount of solid waste flow, but helps with 75% of people’s guilt. In other words people feel they have done alot when they haven’t, but telling them this is not easy!
It is therefore important to reach people at the right level to match their own world view. The ‘message’ needs to be framed correctly to match the audience, and in some cases, this means re-framing the same message to target different audiences who are motivated by different factors.
Environmentalists also need to remember that they are not perfect. Everyone needs to be open minded and to learn and progress themselves – it is easy to the ego to take over!
Finally, Alan talks about the importance of information sharing and communication with all interested parties (stakeholders) regarding whatever issue is being discussed.
Related posts:
- Show the forests some love
- Wooden Bowls and the Heritage Crafts Association
- Greening the Desert
- Understand the trees
- Food for thought
