Connecting Global Priorities Biodiversity and Human Health

7. Shaping behaviour and
engaging communities for
transformational change
Human behaviour is central to the biodiversityhuman
health nexus: our actions, as producers
and consumers of energy, natural resources and
manufactured products, are prime determinants
of both the ability to conserve biodiversity and
to promote human health. Therefore, managing,
and benefiting from, the interlinkages between
biodiversity, ecosystems services and human
health increasingly demands broad-scale
interventions that effectively and sustainably
influence human behaviour (Freya et al. 2010;
Fulton et al. 2011; The Lancet 2015).
The social sciences can assist us to motivate
choices consistent with health and biodiversity
objectives and to develop new approaches through,
inter alia, better understanding of behavioural
change, production and consumption patterns,
policy development, and the use of non-market
tools (CBD 2013a). Accordingly, the development
of work on values, institutions and behaviour is
needed (CBD 2013b; Duraiappah et al 2014).² It
has been argued that intervention efforts that also
seek to modify the physical, social, political, and
economic environments in which people live and
make health and environment related decisions
can jointly deliver health, environmental and
social benefits (e.g. Allegrande 2015 and references
therein; Pons-Vigués et al. 2014).³ Core elements
to promote behaviour change on a global scale
include:
i) Understanding the drivers of human
behaviour and the role of micro- and macrolevel
processes (including political, social,
environmental and economic institutions and
structures) in mediating positive change;
ii) Recognizing that influencing human behaviour
can take many forms but that strategies should
be tailored to specific contexts and issues; and
iii) Addressing the significant gap in knowledge
on what works, how and why, in order to
develop evidence-based best practices that can
be scaled-up for sustainability.
Tackling these and other aspects of human
behaviour change can have far-reaching
implications for poverty alleviation, human health
and biodiversity conservation (Allegrante 2015;
Barrett et al. 2011). Each of these is relevant to
building a culture of health that is in line with social
and environmental objectives, including those
embedded in the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity
2011–2020 and its Aichi biodiversity targets, and
the emerging sustainable development goals.
Understanding the drivers of human behaviour
requires moving beyond rational individualistic
behaviour models in order to appreciate the
complexities of daily life, social and economic
incentives for change, and actual processes of
change (Hargreaves 2011; Pons-Vigués et al.
2014). Social, cultural and psychological factors
interact in complex ways with broader economic,
political and environmental processes (Marmot et
al. 2008; Waylen et al. 2010). Designing effective
and sustainable behaviour change interventions
also demands that we account for the perceptions,
needs, capacities, heterogeneity and constraints
of communities. Engaging with human behaviour
change also involves understanding complexity at
different scales, which requires multi-disciplinary
approaches. In addition to the need to further
strengthen the scientific base of a broad range
of issues at the intersect of biodiversity and
health, there is also a need for policymakers
and practitioners to draw deeply from the social
sciences (psychology, anthropology, sociology,
political science and other fields) in order to
inform strategies (Glanz and Bishop 2010).
Moreover, the traditional values of indigenous
and local communities can sometimes provide
critical foundations for positive behaviour change;
recognizing these values and working with these
groups to develop more sustainable production
² UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/17/INF/1
³ The effectiveness of such approaches in addressing ethical considerations or reducing health disparities has also been
questioned (Lieberman et al. 2013).
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