Page - 300 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

300 return to normal (Greer 2008). In contrast, predicaments have no solution; instead, they must be endured. Society can respond, but even an effective response does not eliminate the predicament. A useful response does not alter but rather accommo- dates the new situation. This is adaptation in a classic sense: to change behaviour into new forms that better fit a new reality. If we faced a problem (e.g. emergency, crisis) then we might be advised to weather the storm until we ‘get back to normal’. However, even a functional response to a predicament is unlikely to get us back; accommodation is about ‘get- ting to a new normal’. The new behavioural context is also different in another sig- nificant way. Responses will need to be broadly applied across one’s entire behaviour pattern, then maintained and even expanded throughout a lifetime. Unfortunately, society has little familiarity with the long-drawn-out behavioural planning and man- agement needed to respond in this way. For while we know behaviours adequate for addressing short-term challenges to health and well-being, there exists little guid- ance for behaviour change necessary for addressing a many decade- or century-long predicament. 13.3.2 Changing Multiple Behaviours Early conservation research focused on promoting one or a small suite of behav- iours (Hamilton et  al. 2018). We designed interventions to promote household recy- cling, mass transit use and water conservation (see, for instance, Geller et  al. 1982). Most early studies focused on either providing information (e.g. environmental edu- cation, enhancing procedural knowledge) or motivation (e.g. economic incentives, token rewards). More recently, the focus has shifted to using social norms (e.g. injunctive norms, declarative norms) and team-based interventions (e.g. eco-teams). However, seldom was the focus on promoting clusters of behaviours. Other research explored not how to promote a specific behaviour, but what we know about people who already practice conservation behaviours. Research on long-term participants in environmental stewardship programs report two consistent motivations: the opportunity to do something meaningful to benefit the environment and the chance to learn something new (Ryan and Grese 2005; Ryan et  al. 2001). Later, Stern and colleagues made sense out of the huge array of available behav- iours by suggesting we concentrate on those with the greatest environmental signifi- cance (Gardner and Stern 2002; Stern 2000). This logic prioritised high-impact behaviours, those with the highest achievable reduction in carbon emissions or resource consumption. The choice is based not only on a behaviour’s technical potential (i.e. degree of impact if adopted) but also upon the social scale of its adop- tion (i.e. realistic adoption rate across an extended time-scale;  Stern 2011). Unfortunately, this approach still easily defaults to the serial adoption of behav- iours given the individual costs and efforts involved (e.g. upgrading heating sys- tems, buying fuel-efficient vehicles). If circumstances allow us to be patient then we benefit from their joint effects over time being significant (see Stern and Wolske’s (2017) perspective on Wynes and Nicholas (2017)). Implementation principles are R. De  Young