Proactive community adaptation to climate change through social transformation and behavioural change

Project team

• Ann-Marie Nienaber, Professor in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour, Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations
• Kindy Sandhu, Research Fellow
• Siham Aboujanah, PhD Graduate, Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations

Collaborators

• Tero Monoprosopi Ike (lead)
• Atlantic technological University
• Institouto Synetairistikis Igesias Kai Synergasias Astiki Mi Kerdoskopiki Etaireia
• Universitetet I Bergen
• Universitaet Leipzig
• Norce Norwegian Research Centre AS
• Funacion Cartif
• Diputacion Provincial De Badajoz
• Uniwersytet Gdanski

Duration

1 January 2024 – 31 December 2026

Project overview

PRO-CLIMATE aims to investigate the drivers and barriers to behavioural change, explore pathways towards achieving effective governance and organisational improvements for example in processes and procedures, to enable and enhance climate resilience. The findings of PRO-CLIMATE will contribute to the development of effective strategies for achieving systemic transformations towards climate resilience.

The strategic objective of PRO-CLIMATE is to support communities to proactively adapt to climate change through social transformation and behavioural change. To achieve this, PRO-CLIMATE will identify social tipping points and policy actions that enable systemic transformation to be achieved across social systems. PRO-CLIMATE will adopt an approach guided by the concept of systems thinking, which views communities as complex systems that are interconnected and influenced by multiple factors, socioeconomic and environmental. By understanding and leveraging their dynamics, it will then develop strategies and interventions that promote social transformation and behavioural change. This will result in a robust framework for designing effective methodologies and tools to foster proactively adaptive behaviours and facilitate transformative changes. A set of diverse (in terms of climate change problems and socio-economic contexts) case studies across Europe will be an instrumental tool for the co-creation, validation, and upscaling of this framework by running living labs and bringing stakeholders together to understand community governance and institutional structures, and to also pilot and validate the project's behaviour change activities.

Project objectives

1. Develop a living lab framework to enable real-life environments across six (6) European countries for designing, implementing, testing, and monitoring systematic transformation to achieve climate resilience through behaviour changes and governance strategies;
2. Identify the key components of each climate adaptation system, their interactions, systemic interdependencies and trade-offs;
3. Increase the behavioural change capacity of the case study communities to design and implement sustainable, integrated, inclusive solutions to accelerate climate resilience;
4. To develop a develop a multi agent computer model (MACM) of key dimensions of the European socio-ecological system based on the data and knowledge generated from the other WPs; 
5. Provide concrete and tailored recommendations of operational nature, in cooperation with a wide spectrum of stakeholders, to accelerate systemic transformation in the six selected case studies and beyond.

Impact statement

The proposal recognises that addressing climate change requires more than just technological solutions, but also a shift in social systems, behaviours, and mindsets. By adopting a system thinking approach, the proposal seeks to understand the complex interactions and interdependencies among various components of the community system, including social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors, and how they influence community adaptation to climate change. This proposal recognises the need for systemic transformation, without which achieving climate adaptation goals is difficult. The goal of this project will be to study and understand the systemic root causes responsible for climate vulnerabilities and address them through innovative solutions that aim to inform adaptation policy.

This project will facilitate climate resilience across the EU. By addressing ethical issues, the project will create significant social value to reduce inequality in co-creation methods to climate resilience and eventually create a positive impact on the environment.

The development of a user-friendly web-based simulation platform for the experimental exploration of the ABM by stakeholders (e.g., civil society groups, policy makers, politicians) and to study the impact of relevant policies on the spreading of behaviours.

Outputs

The outputs of PRO-CLIMATE will include:

• the identification of key components of climate adaptation systems, their interactions, systemic interdependencies and trade-offs;
• the design, implementation, and evaluation of a living lab framework;
• the identification of social tipping points and leverage actions for policy makers;
• the development of a multi agent computer model for European socio-ecological systems to allow a realistic analysis of existing and future policy scenarios likely to produce systemic transformations; and
• policy recommendations to accelerate systemic change.