Climate justice and behaviour change: examining the role of the individual in climate adaptation and water security

This blog post written by Will Ingram and Kate Gannon was originally published as a commentary on the Grantham Institute’s website.

Communities in Sub-Saharan Africa are among the least responsible for climate change, yet many are experiencing its impacts through water insecurity. To be effective, climate action needs to be fair.

Interventions that aim to change the behaviour of individuals and communities to address climate adaptation and water insecurity can have unexpected consequences at different scales that risk amplifying inequalities and negative outcomes for the most vulnerable. To avoid further exacerbating climate injustice, it is crucial to account for the complex nature of the climate–hydrological–social system and its entrenched inequalities, and the diverse needs of marginalised communities. The BASIN project is working to overcome these challenges.

Criticisms of behavioural research

There are several criticisms of the application of behaviour change techniques, which often emphasise individual decision-making processes and behavioural science techniques such as ‘nudges’, incentives and information campaigns. These criticisms include: undermining people’s autonomy, agency and self-efficacy (including infantilising them if interventions are paternalistic); being based on assumed positions of superiority; blaming or stigmatising people for their choices or perceived attributes; the high reversibility of desired behaviour change; or interventions not working in the first place.

Furthermore, behavioural science’s focus on the individual has been challenged for advancing the notion that societal problems can be addressed effectively and cheaply at the level of the individual without modifying the systems in which they operate. As well as being misleading, it is suggested that this focus shifts responsibility onto individuals and away from the fundamental structural issues that shape individual choices.

It is therefore worth asking: is there a risk that focusing on behaviour related to water insecurity and climate vulnerability inadvertently adds to a shifting of the responsibility to adapt to climate change onto poor and marginalised individuals? Could this even come at the expense of targeting structural factors such as governance and finance, which could themselves address the root causes of certain behaviours?

For example, if water users do not behave ‘perfectly’ in relation to water resources or climate risks, or make judgements that may not immediately appear rational, as all humans do, could they be unfairly blamed for the water insecurity that they are experiencing? This problem becomes more pertinent when it comes to making difficult decisions around the allocation of scarce resources, and might contribute to low-cost behaviour change interventions receiving greater political attention at the expense of more costly and difficult options that would make changes at the structural level.

At its worst, this focus on the individual might reinforce paternalistic attitudes towards marginalised communities, bolster an over-emphasis on individual responsibility for adaptation to climate change (akin to the attention placed on personal ‘carbon footprints’ rather than climate mitigation by large emitters), and undermine arguments for providing funding to compensate for loss and damage.

Strengthening policy and practice

This risk is not only theoretical: it has already been illustrated to some degree in the case of previous dominant attitudes towards ‘community management’ of rural water supply in Sub-Saharan Africa. This decentralised approach came to dominate policy and practice from the 1990s, and its potential for simultaneously shrinking the state and giving power to local people was celebrated by many at the time. However, the following decades saw unsupported communities with resource and capacity constraints as not well-placed to deliver water services. One-quarter of rural handpumps now silently sit broken at any one time, for example. Criticism has since been levelled at states and donors for ‘offloading’ or relinquishing responsibility onto communities, and a shift away from community management towards a water supply ‘service delivery approach’, where services are better supported, formalised and regulated, is now underway.

Caution is needed when applying behavioural science to climate adaptation and water security, to avoid mistaking systemic issues for problems of individual responsibility and designing maladaptive interventions that reinforce current inequalities.

The following considerations can strengthen the application of behavioural science in this context, and help researchers, stakeholders and decision-makers to enhance positive outcomes:

• Behavioural problems behind water insecurity and vulnerability to climate change should be framed in systemic rather than individual terms, given that behaviours happen in a particular context, as part of multi-layered systems. This means that behavioural approaches are only part of the solution – albeit an important one.
• Research and practice that works across different levels – i.e. individual, community, regional agencies, national policy – will contribute to a better understanding of broader structures of power and responsibility, where certain behaviours fit within these influences, and which key actors and points in the complex climate–water system can be targeted to most effectively leverage change. For example, in some cases, focus might be placed on the behaviours of community advocates or decision-makers rather than on marginalised populations.
• Researchers should contribute to the decolonization of research and eliminate researcher bias through participatory approaches in which local partners co-design and lead research activities, and all parties contribute their expertise to the partnership. Done well, participatory research approaches give voice to communities. Addressing power imbalances inherent in research processes includes considering project teams.
• Behavioural science interventions should maintain a rigorously evidence-based approach to mitigate the risk of harmful and misleading assumptions. This involves using credible information from legitimate entities in research design, and experts, who are prone to their own biases, listening to local communities.
• Building gender, equity and inclusion into project design can support outcomes that benefit everyone, align with other development goals, and help reach the most vulnerable. Examining the multiple and interacting forms of social differences, and how these compound water insecurity, will help to develop a greater understanding of the adaptation needs of the most vulnerable.

With governments moving towards the adoption of climate adaptation strategies that place more responsibility on individuals and households, discussion and communication between authorities, communities, and other stakeholders around individuals’ responsibilities could be a key step in ensuring that water security and climate adaptation strategies are effective and inclusive.

Further information

The authors are part of the BASIN project, which aims to synthesise, assess and test the potential of applying multi-level behavioural and psychological science perspectives to climate adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa to enhance water security for the most vulnerable. BASIN works with multiple partners, led by the London School of Economics, Water Witness International and WaterAid Canada, in Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Malawi.

The authors would like to thank Declan Conway and Ganga Shreedhar for reviewing this article, and Natalie Pearson and Georgina Kyriacou for their editorial input.