Tim Chatterton has just been awarded a prestigious placement fellowship working with the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The Fellowship is in partnership with the Research Councils Energy Programme (ESRC and EPSRC) and DECC.
The aim of the Fellowship is to provide social science input regarding the energy behaviour of individuals and communities into the policy development process in DECC in order to help enable ‘the public’ to more readily take up ‘low-carbon’ patterns of behaviour. Climate benefits of adopting low-carbon behaviour are not clearly experienced by individuals, families and other groups in the UK, as the majority of climate impacts will occur in other parts of the world, some time in the future. However, evidence suggests that many elements of low-carbon lifestyles can be seen to have direct ancillary benefits to those adopting them (such as economic or health benefits). The successful development of policies to encourage climate orientated behaviour change is likely to have to rely on being able to ‘sell’ these policies to the public on the basis of these direct ancillary benefits, in addition or alternatively to making a moral case for altruistic behaviour change.
The Air Quality Management Resource Centre has worked closely with Defra and the Devolved Administrations, and with Local Authorities in order to shape air quality policy in the UK over the last decade. This, along with Tim’s work as Chair of the UK Public Health Association’s Special Interest Group on Health and Sustainable Environments, will help him to bring a wide range of policy experience into DECC to address the issue of behaviour change.
If you are involved in any research in this area, Tim would be very interested to hear from you. Please send him a short description of your work at t.chatterton@uwe.ac.uk
