I was interviewed for an article called 'The Inner Revolution' by Nick Kettles, published in July's Ecologist. The feature explores aspects of the psychology of environmentalism and what we might learn from our 'inner journey' about living more sustainably.

The Natural Change Project was developed by WWF Scotland as a new and innovative response to the challenge of sustainability and to the growing evidence that current environmental campaigns are not resulting in the depth of behaviour change necessary to address this challenge.

The project drew together seven diverse individuals from the business, charitable, arts, public, health and education sectors in Scotland. All were selected on the basis of being excellent communicators who were influential in their sector, but not particularly environmentally aware. 

The purpose of the project was to encourage this group to think deeply about sustainability, to communicate through their social and professional networks and to share the changes in their thoughts and attitudes more widely through the forum of internet blogging.

The slideshow we used as background media at the Natural Change Launch event is now available on YouTube in two parts:

Part ONE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALBHaQwLClc

Part TWO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCYtGIGwk9g

Download the Natural Change Report (pdf - 3.44 MB)

You can read the blogs for yourself at:
www.naturalchange.org.uk

This Responsible Leadership for Business Impact and Planetary Renewal course from The Wild Peak is being co-led by Footprint's David Key in September.

The course is designed to inspire and empower individual executives and leaders to take full responsibility for their impact on the world and their companies, and to create sustainable values-based change. 

The course, which combines outdoor-based learning and executive coaching processes, is run in a wild and beautiful location in the Spanish Pyrenees.

To book or find out more contact Stephen Lewis at The Wild Peak directly on +33 (0) 559 29 34 59, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To download a leaflet about the course click here.

We're really excited to announce that, after more than 18 months working with WWF on this pioneering approach to personal and social change, the final research report is now available.

The Natural Change Project was developed by WWF Scotland as a new and innovative response to the challenge of sustainability and to the growing evidence that current environmental campaigns are not resulting in the depth of behaviour change necessary to address this challenge.

The project drew together seven diverse individuals from the business, charitable, arts, public, health and education sectors in Scotland. All were selected on the basis of being excellent communicators who were influential in their sector, but not particularly environmentally aware.

The purpose of the project was to encourage this group to think deeply about sustainability, to communicate through their social and professional networks and to share the changes in their thoughts and attitudes more widely through the forum of internet blogging.

Footprint's Dave Key designed and led the process that the participants undertook throughout their six month programme.

Download the report here:

 

Read the blogs yourself, and join in by commenting, at the Natural Change website: www.naturalchange.org.uk

There is much evidence that dominant approaches to encouraging pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) do not result in long-term, large-scale social change. 'Shock and awe' campaigning - showing ecocide and social devastation - in the hope that awareness of issues will motivate people to act, is now suggested to actually make people less likely to take action.

The Natural Change process is complex, dynamic and operates on different psychological levels simultaneously. These include, conscious levels of awareness - comprising those ideas, values and beliefs which are relatively easy to access and explore; subconscious levels - including deep-seated assumptions about the world, which are accessible to us but often only after deliberate and sometimes challenging effort and; unconscious levels - which take us into the realms of dreams, symbols, myths, archetypes, images and transpersonal experience.

I’ve been asked quite a lot about the design of the WWF Natural Change Project programme. ‘What do you do?’, ‘Where do you start with such a big subject?’.

The programme is structured around six themes. These provide a progression of awareness from the individual - where the loci of concern usually starts when people are initially brought together into a new group - out into wider cultural, social and ecological contexts. From here the themes move into practical issues of culture change, for example leadership, and awareness of change processes.

While the content of these themes operate most obviously at the conscious level, the way they are explored - the context, methods, techniques and style of facilitation - allows engagement with deeper psychological processes.

The themes are designed as threads to follow into the massive and diverse web of our human ecology. They are:

Great graphs communicate important insights in compelling ways. An earlier version of this one apparently made a strong impression at the Scottish Parliament in June last year.

Three things you need to know:

1. Each bar is a set of actions to reduce carbon emissions.
2. Every bar below the line saves money, every bar above the line costs money.
3. The wider the bar, the more carbon saved.

Back in November I wrote about my secondment to the Active Earth Foundation. To cut a long story short, the financial support that was assured the project when I took the secondment didn't come to fruition and I left at the end of February, very relieved to be out of an increasingly stressful and difficult role.

Mary-Jayne (www.mjrust.net) and I have just returned from our annual Ecopsychology Course residential at Doune on the wild Knoydart peninsular (www.doune-knoydart.co.uk), in the north west of Scotland.

The film ‘The Age of Stupid’ has been enjoying the patronage of Ed Miliband. Apart from the inconvenient fact that the government’s policies don’t square with the message of the film, this is a good thing.

But perhaps Ed Milliband could answer this question: ’since you are so aware of the drastic nature of the problem with climate change, why are you not telling it like it is?’

In other words, why is there no serious attempt to alert the public to the scale of the climate change problem?

This is dangerous because most people reason that, if there were a serious problem, the government would tell them about it. But since the government is silent (other than saying ‘please insulate your roof’) the problem can’t be all that bad…

Most people aren’t stupid. So, Ed Miliband, what about some leadership from the government?

The good news is that 14% of Scots are 'deep green' according to the Scottish Government's latest research. They believe climate change is an immediate and urgent problem and say they know a great deal or a fair amount about it. (Don't blame me, that's how the survey defines 'deep greens', nothing to do with the deep ecology movement).

The bad news is that 'deep greens' are no more likely to fly less or drive less than others.