Taking the complexity turn to steer carbon reduction policy: applying practice theory, complexity theory and cultural practices to policies addressing climate change
Achieving the Scottish Government’s carbon reduction targets requires not
only the decarbonisation of industry and electricity generation, which is now
largely underway, but also significant changes in the actions and decisions of
millions of individuals, whose carbon emissions fall outside the areas which
Government can control. Transport, much of it undertaken by individuals,
accounts for around 20% of Scotland’s carbon emissions. Policy aimed at
changing individual travel behaviours will therefore become increasingly
important. Commonly applied behaviour change strategies based on rational
actor theory face conceptual problems and cannot overcome the lack of
agency experienced by individuals buffeted by a range of influences in a
complex world. Practice theory relocates the site of analysis from the
individual to the social and helps to overcome these problems, but it is not
clear how to deliberately change practices to achieve the carbon reductions
required. Understanding practices as emergent properties of complex social
systems suggests that working to alter the complex social system may lead
to different emergent properties, i.e. more sustainable practices.
My research explored this approach by conducting an experiment in
Aberdeen that sought to influence the complex social system within which
audiences travel to a large theatre in the city. Emergent properties of the
system encouraged travel by private car: problems of (in)convenience and
insecurity were shaping individuals’ travel practices. Collaboration between
actors powerful enough to affect the system – a transport provider, a local
authority and the theatre itself – was needed to influence it sufficiently to
bring about a change in the main travel mode from private cars to public
transport.
Analysis of this case identifies the need to acknowledge the relevance of
complexity theory when developing carbon reduction policy. Perverse
incentives encouraging public organisations to focus on their own ‘direct’
carbon emissions need to be replaced with a duty to collaborate with others
to reduce society’s overall carbon emissions. Those making policy and those implementing it will therefore need to understand and apply complexity
theory, and will need highly developed skills in managing long-term
collaborative projects rather than ‘delivering’ one-off changes. These
attributes may be found in practitioners from diverse and less obvious fields,
including the cultural sector
