CHE graduate and tutor Dave Key, and graduate and former director Sam Harrison have been working on an exciting new project. Dave writes: For the past six months, a diverse set of influential professionals have been participating in WWF’s internationally innovative Natural Change Project to create sustainable behaviour and attitude change.  Using a pioneering values-based approach to inspire the group, the project incorporated ideas from eco-psychology, personal development, outdoor experiences, mentoring and leadership skills.  

Launched 11th June 2009, the Project’s Action Research report, Natural Change – Psychology and Sustainability, reveals some exciting outcomes and recommendations for future behaviour change approaches and environmental campaigns.

Evidence from participants’ testimony shows the Natural Change approach has been extremely effective among the participants in stimulating deep thinking about sustainability and about their own lives. All participants expressed a clear desire to take actions that go beyond the ‘quick and painless’ changes advocated by many environmental campaigns and are now motivated to take practical action to realise this desire, both in their personal and professional lives. What is remarkable is the honesty with which they reported their, sometimes deeply personal, experience of the project, both in discussion and importantly in their blogs, touching others in a way that a mass-marketing campaign simply could not. 

As participant Louise Macdonald puts it “this project is making me think big, prompting questions far beyond ‘is my washing up liquid environmentally friendly?’” and it is obvious from today’s report, Natural Change – Psychology and Sustainability, that the Natural Change Project has reached deep into people’s lives in a way that an advertising or mass marketing campaign could not. This project and report has pioneered a replicable approach to building commitment to sustainability that should provide valuable approaches to behaviour change and environmental campaigns in the future.

The full blogs from the participants and facilitators, accompanied by beautiful photographs, are available on the project website www.naturalchange.org.uk  The  subject matter of the blogs reflects the diversity of participants with a range of professional perspectives including health and well-being, education, culture and psychotherapy.