A Conceptual Framework to Enable the Changes Required for a One-Planet Future

Abstract

We conceptualise a framework that incorporates psychological and non-psychological factors influencing pro-environmental behaviour. We conducted qualitative investigations in five sectors in South Africa, where individuals and groups are dealing with significant environmental issues, including climate change, biodiversity loss and land-use change. We found three fundamental elements necessary for behavioural change to be realised: awareness (A) is defined as an understanding that society and earth systems are connected; motivation (M) involves the personal and operational drivers that encourage an individual or organisation to respond to new levels of awareness; and pathways (P) recognise the practical solutions and opportunities that facilitate actual change. AMP was built up from 38 variables that cut across between three and five of the case studies, which were further grouped into 14 categories. The inter-connectedness of AMP suggests that for pro-environmental behaviour to occur, attention cannot be focussed on satisfying one of the elements in isolation. This is the first attempt to integrate theory from social psychology, sociology, organisational theory, and management in a conceptual framework for proenvironmental behaviour. The AMP framework is useful for supporting practitioners or change agents designing environmental sustainability initiatives.

Cascades of Violence: War, Crime and Peacebuilding Across South Asia

“…Social change needs more than a warning that induces awareness of a risk; it needs 'Awareness, Motivation and Pathways' (AMP) to change (Honig et al 2015). Indeed, most of Europe's powerbrokers acquiesced in, or even encouraged, the course Italy took in Libya.…”

“…The purpose of this book is to awaken sleepwalkers to look for the kinds of signals of cascade risks that the African Union leaders were signalling, but to which NATO diplomats were blind; though not all-NATO's preeminent stateswoman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, kept Germany out of the Libyan fray and Germany abstained from the Security Council resolution for a no-fly zone over Libya (Nelles 2011). Abstaining on the grounds of awareness of the problem and sympathy with the African Union's alternative diplomacy does not comprise all three elements of AMP-Awareness, Motivation and Pathways to change (Honig et al 2015). Instead of abstaining, Germany needed to mobilise its Awareness to Motivate other states to help lay that alternative Path of the African Union to a bloodless resolution.…”

“…They also have a task of mobilisation more complex than the massing of armies to send hawks' preferred message. Doves must ask who has the 'Awareness, Motivation and Pathways' (AMP) to prevent war (Honig et al 2015). Chapter 2 argues that, in 1914, the two most powerful nations, Britain and Germany, had awareness of the peril, had the realist motivation of less to gain and more to lose by war than lesser powers that were cascading the world to war and they could have forged a path-British-German détente-if only they had had the diplomatic imagination to do so.…”

“…In sum, our policy conclusions are about the importance of redundancy in local and global prevention of cascades of all forms of criminal and militarised violence, disruption of those cascades once they start and restoration of 'Awareness, Motivation and Pathways' (AMP) (Honig et al 2015) to nonviolent dissent. And we must likewise prevent cascades of domination and militarisation, strengthen alternative paths to them and strengthen checks and balances that humble their power.…”

Criminology and the Anthropocene

“…Our research has been pragmatic (and opportunistic), as the choice of projects undertaken have been shaped by access and funding opportunities. To date this work has involved projects that have engaged municipalities (see, for example, Froestad et al, 2012; Pasquini and Shearing, 2014), the insurance industry (see, for example, Herbstein et al, 2013; Nel et al, 2011), the marine industries and agriculture (Honig et al, forthcoming; Petersen et al, 2015). What has integrated these projects has been a set of cross-cutting analytic questions, that AMP references, focused on understanding the institutional conditions that shape human engagements with earth systems.…”