Morals and climate decision-making: insights from social and behavioural sciences

Abstract

Decisions about climate change are inherently moral. They require making moral judgements about important values and the desired state of the present and future world. Hence there are potential benefits in explaining climate action by integrating well-established and emerging knowledge on the role of morality in decision-making. Insights from the social and behavioural sciences can help ground climate change decisions in empirical understandings of how moral values and worldviews manifest in people and societies. Here, we provide an overview of progress in research on morals in the behavioural and social sciences, with an emphasis on empirical research. We highlight the role morals play in motivating and framing climate decisions; outline work describing morals as relational, situated, and dynamic; and review how uneven power dynamics between people and groups with multiple moralities shape climate decision-making. Effective and fair climate decisions require practical understandings of how morality manifests to shape decisions and action. To this end, we aim to better connect insights from social and behavioural scholarship on morality with realworld climate change decision-making.

Cap. 31. Adaptación. En: La Quinta Evaluación Nacional del Clima

“…ej., el acceso a la educación como factor limitante de la seguridad laboral) 84,85,86,87 . Las razones específicas por las que las personas y las comunidades se adaptan de la forma en que lo hacen sigue siendo un área de investigación, pero existen evidencia sólidas y un elevado consenso de que los factores psicológicos, culturales, históricos, geográficos y sociales desempeñan un papel y que los valores individuales o comunitarios son impulsores importantes en el proceso de adaptación 95,96,311,312 .…”

Advancing procedural justice in conservation

“…For instance, ethicality may be associated with absence of bribery, deception, and invasion of privacy. Given moral standards differ with sociocultural context (Lau et al., 2021b), it is critical to consider situated ethical codes for decision‐making processes.…”

The forgotten ocean: Why COP26 must call for vastly greater ambition and urgency to address ocean change

“…The lack of a global inventory of total restored area is a current knowledge gap (Duarte et al, 2020) There are important lessons that can be applied from the COVID-19 pandemic to the global climate crisis, including the costs of delay, biases of human judgement, value judgements at the science-policy interface, and the multiple forms of international cooperation required (Klenert et al, 2020). It is increasingly apparent that as global inequality rises as a result of climate change and consequences are felt disproportionately, tackling this effectively and fairly will require a better understanding of social and behavioural drivers such as morals (Lau et al, 2021), ethics, and justice (Byskov et al, 2019). For example, the 'polluter pays principle' recognizes environmental and social injustices (Roberts & Parks, 2006), yet must itself be implemented fairly (Zahar, 2020).…”