Digital Summit
Land Use Change Needs Behavior Change
We know we have to change. We know the time is now. The question is: How?
Driven by agricultural expansion and the conversion to cash crops and monocultures, the past decades have seen rapid changes affecting landscapes in the tropics – coming largely at the expense of intact forests and other critical ecosystems.
Ultimately, most if not all of these changes are attributable to human behavior – within producer as well as consumer communities. Yet, the most prominent responses to these land use challenges such as REDD+, or more recently, the global large-scale restoration agenda have focused on a limited array of tools designed to shift human behavior, namely financial incentives and legal restrictions.
While other policy fields like public health have a longer history in putting people and their real motivations at the center, concepts from behavioral psychology and economics are now gaining traction in environmental policy. And they did already shape conservation practice for decades, lessons from which solutions are now being distilled.
Following a session at the Global Landscapes Forum in December 2017, we will convene a group of renowned experts from conservation, development, behavioral design and community-based action to discuss with you the Importance of Behavior Change for Land Use Change. We look forward to an exciting debate that will shed light on how practitioners, scientists and professionals can draw from the wealth of insights that behavior economics and psychology have surfaced.
Our Speakers
Benjamin Kumpf
Benjamin Kumpf leads the Innovation Facility of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in New York. He manages UNDP’s Innovation Fund, a pooled funding vehicle created to support and scale innovations that address challenges related to poverty, governance, climate change and gender equality across the globe. Benjamin advises internal and external clients on innovation and on achieving impact at scale. Benjamin has worked on social change, innovation and development for multiple years in Rwanda, Nepal, India and Jordan. He has a Master’s Degree in Political Science and Psychology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
EstefanÃa Baldeón Clavijo
EstefanÃa is the coordinating gastronomy administrator at CanopyBridge. She helps to build a sourcing network that connects businesses, producer associations and community groups buying and selling natural products. Their aim is to contribute to improved livelihoods, social empowerment and healthy ecosystems. For her, gastronomy is one of the most important pillars of Ecuadorian culture. She values and respects the products and traditions that make up Ecuador’s rich origin and history. For a year, she was part of an international group of students at the University of Gastronomical Sciences in Italy, where she received a Master’s degree in Food Culture and Communications. The program aimed to train professionals in the robust subject of Food Culture and Communications by visiting producers, regions, and restaurants that stand out and that are influencing society through policies or style of production. She believes working directly with producers on organic certified farms in the region of Cremona (Italy) was her most valuable learning experience. She was able to experience first-hand how innovation and tradition can go hand in hand with regard to production systems and culinary methods. Between experimentation and research studies, she is currently working to position Amazonian sustainable products in the supply chain of important restaurants. This involves talking to stations and working with local producers, as well as associations promoting fair trade and social development in various communities.
Kevin Green
As lead of Rare’s Center for Behavior & the Environment, Kevin works closely with Rare’s leadership, staff and partners to integrate state-of-the-art science about human motivation and decision-making into the execution of conservation programs worldwide. He has trained practitioners across the U.S., Latin America and Asia in qualitative and quantitative social research methods and behavior-centered design of conservation campaigns whose success hinges on communities adopting new, sustainable norms and behaviors. Kevin is a faculty member of the Kinship Conservation Fellows program and a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. Prior to joining Rare, he held fellowships with the Nature Conservancy and Worldwatch Institute, and taught at a small university in rural Cambodia. He holds an M.A. in Economics and International Development from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from Washington and Lee University.
Fiona Lambe
Fiona currently leads the SEI Initiative on Behaviour and Choice. This research programme seeks to understand what drives people’s behaviour in the context of small scale technology adoption to support sustainable development in low-income settings. Much of her work focuses on exploring and prototyping innovative methods and approaches for understanding behaviour change over time. Previously, Fiona led research on the socioeconomic and policy aspects of scaling energy access for low-income communities and the links to national and global processes and structures, including international development agendas and global climate policy.
Daniel Vennard
Daniel is Director of the Better Buying Lab within the World Resources Institute. He works with food companies and experts in behaviour change and marketing to develop, test and scale new ideas that can help shift diets to more sustainable options. Daniel has worked for the last fifteen years at Mars Incorporated and Procter and Gamble in corporate strategy, sustainability and marketing. He has written and presented on how consumers can be shifted towards buying more sustainable products. Daniel holds a first class degree from Sheffield University in Plant Sciences.
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