‘Deep Change Theory’ Could Pull Us Out of a Global Climate and Pollution Crisis, Scientists Say

A new U.N. report maps a path toward a more sustainable future and challenges society to question basic assumptions and values about the environment, consumption and waste.

A team of international researchers published a new U.N. report Wednesday that adds to the rising scientific call for transformative societal and economic changes to staunch critical environmental threats like global warming, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss.

“We are still headed towards catastrophe,” said lead author Caitlyn Eberle, an associate researcher at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, in Bonn, Germany. “This year, we wanted to understand why we are not changing course. Few people would argue for more waste in the environment, more destroyed ecosystems or more inequality.” 

But those are the trends right now, she added in an online press briefing about the report during which the authors said they examined why humanity is still stumbling down a dangerous path after decades of warnings backed by convincing research.

“The science is clear on what needs to change,” she said. “Stop using fossil fuels, respect and protect nature, use resources sustainably. So if we know what we need to do to change things, why aren’t we doing it?”

The research in the report shows that many of today’s sustainability projects are superficial because they focus on small changes within the system without changing the system itself, she said. A good example is recycling, which is valuable, but doesn’t get to the core issue of why so much waste is produced in the first place, she added.

“Donating to conservation efforts is great, but it doesn’t address the fact that we separate ourselves from nature and confine it to specific areas where it’s allowed to exist,” she said. “We cannot expect real change unless we examine the reasons behind our actions and question why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

The process may lead to some “uncomfortable” territory, said UNU-EHS deputy director Zita Sebesvari, another lead author of the report. Crises in Earth’s ecosystems, including the climate and human systems, require rethinking many basic assumptions and values, for example about consumption and waste. 

“If we bring this to our own life,” she said, “the question is, why do we think that convenience is more important than other values like nature and a pollution-free environment?”

There are case studies of how those values can shift, she noted, including research that tracks a 20-year effort to cut waste to zero in Kamikatsu in southern Japan. The town missed its 2020 zero-waste target but increased the rate of recycling to 81 percent, one of the highest in the country. Examining the successes and failures is helping to identify additional steps to completely eliminate waste.

Residents there “internalized a view” that enabled them to nearly “eliminate the notion of waste,” she said. “They see it as a resource that needs to be repurposed or brought back to life.” 

The new report uses a “deep change theory” to show the structural blueprint of the systems that cause the harmful environmental, social and economic outcomes in the first place, including mass production systems, the prevalence of single use items or planned obsolescence, she said.

“We then go deeper to the root of the problem and look at why these structures exist,” she said. “These are things like the goal of our society being to produce and consume as much as possible, based on the assumptions that new is better than old, or material consumption is necessary for happiness.”

Change Is Possible

Deep change theory encourages people to question whether those assumptions really serve them well, “or if they can be exchanged for something that would serve us better,” Sebesvari said.

In the waste example, this means challenging the concept of what is refuse itself so that no resource is seen as simply disposable.

“In this case, shifting our assumptions means changing the roots of that tree to grow something new and create a world where the concept of waste doesn’t exist anymore,” she said. “This is easy to dismiss as unachievable, because the problems seem too big to fix, or so deeply rooted in our societies that they seem impossible to overcome.”

But the report shows that is possible and already happening in some places. 

“Our societies were made by us, so human-made problems can be unmade,” Sebesvari said. “We limit ourselves when we focus only on preventing the worst, rather than striving for the best,” by shaping a world where “future generations do not just survive but thrive.”

Deep change only works when the inner and outer levers, or personal change and system change, work in tandem, she said.

“You may be thinking, ‘Is it really possible to create such shifts?,’ and the answer is yes, absolutely,” she said. “We have done it many times before.”

For example, attitudes about smoking have changed dramatically over time, from something that was glamorized to being increasingly shunned in many public places. Science-based public health campaigns shifted collective public opinion, and systemic changes included bans on tobacco advertising and increasing restrictions on smoking.

“Today, smoking is seen widely as something harmful, and fewer people smoke than before,” Sebesvari said. “We can tell that real change has happened when we look back and wonder how certain behaviors were ever accepted by society. “How could people possibly have smoked on an aircraft or in a closed car with a baby inside?”

She said it can be like this in the future for waste, or our relationship with nature.

“How could we think that resources can be wasted?” she said. “How could we ever think that we are separate from nature and have the right to tame nature and change it as we please?”

Eberle noted that the research identified foundations of the attitudes that have encouraged environmental exploitation. 

“Individualism and consumerism are two of the very prominent root causes that we found in our analysis of these disasters,” Eberle said.

“Deep change theory asks us to question if individualism is really something that is serving us well,” she said. “In a lot of cases, we can show very clearly that it’s not. Re-imagining values means understanding that consumerism is causing certain risks, like inequalities, like waste, like the destruction of nature, and it’s not serving us well anymore.”

Cover photo:  A truck unloads waste at the Bantar Gebang landfill in Bekasi, on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia. Credit: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images