Article
Solve for more than the problem
Working with behavioral principles to give youth digital solutions to the climate crisis.
By Varsha Ashok
Following heatwaves in Europe, North America and Asia, and wildfires in Canada, Greece and North Africa, July 2023 is officially the hottest month ever recorded. As the UN secretary general António Guterres puts it, “the era of global boiling has arrived”. By continuing to burn fossil fuels, failing to protect CO2-regulating forests, and farming using nitrous oxide fertilizers, we have pushed the planet beyond mere warming– we are on track to set the world on fire.
Governments, plagued by present bias and their various political agendas, continue to fund drilling for oil and support industries that produce greenhouse gasses, leaving the work of developing and supporting a sustainable and resource-efficient society to the next generation. Today’s youth, faced with the very real consequence of irreversible environmental damage and a rapidly shrinking window to act, need to be equipped with the skills and tools necessary to meet this task. So much so that the UN’s theme for International Youth Day this year was ‘Green Skills for Youth.”
Skeptics would ask, ‘why now?’. We’ve had the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Accords, and COP21, 24 and 27. If we’re still faced with the same environmental concerns after all these years, why is anything going to change now?
Technology.
Advances in digital technology give youths and Indigenous People and Local Communities (IPLCs) – who are the primary caretakers of the Earth’s biodiversity – the ability to counteract environmental damage. However, simply designing digital solutions for natural resource management (NRM) does not guarantee their use among intended users. Our research with the GSMA Climate Tech Programme identifies four reasons why digital solutions for NRM fail to see adoption among intended users:
Today’s youth are faced with the very real consequence of irreversible environmental damage and a rapidly shrinking window to act
- Structural barriers, such as poor internet connectivity, limited smartphone access in communities or costs associated with access to technology, impact the digital solutions available, and who in the community benefits from them. It is common, for example, that smartphone access is concentrated among young and male members of communities. As such, solutions designed solely for smartphones have the potential to exclude harder-to-reach groups and risk reinforcing existing inequalities.
- Technical barriers from the limitations of the technology or digital solution itself can pose problems both for the tool’s performance and its perceived value among users. If the user considers the technology to be overly complex or confusing, they are unlikely to maintain interest in it. Moreover, it should not be assumed that ‘high tech’ is always the best solution; ‘low tech’ can be equally successful. Both the technological infrastructure and enabling environment influence the extent to which different types of solutions should be considered.
- Social barriers reflect how communities interact among themselves and the prevalent social norms. Existing power dynamics can pose challenges to inclusive and equitable outcomes. For example, women in the community may have less mobility, a limited role in NRM decision-making or lower digital literacy, which could be further exacerbated if such factors are not considered carefully within the digital solution’s design.
- Motivational barriers are a result of human tendencies to behave in certain ways. The uptake and continuous use of a digital solution will always be balanced against individual factors such as limited attention spans, personal circumstances or resistance to change. If the end user does not feel the solution is directly and tangibly solving a problem in their daily lives, then they likely will not use it for very long.
Behavioral science principles can help address these barriers by looking at the interplay between their environment, their community and social circles, as well as their individual tendencies to behave in certain ways. We identified a few phenomena that may be at play in the Global South when it comes to leveraging digital solutions for Natural Resource Management.
- People are interested in short-term, salient rewards
The rewards from any pro-environmental activity are long term and for everyone to enjoy. For example, planting trees today will benefit a whole community in the future. In the present, however, trees often need care, watering and pruning at a young age. The promise of a possible benefit to the community in the long run is not a strong enough incentive to nudge individuals into taking action.
This is present bias, and it also drives youth to participate in the online gig economy. The income from doing singular tasks is more frequent and youth prefer these short-term payment structures over monthly paychecks from traditional employment. Even those who are employed choose to take up gig work on the side to supplement their incomes. They do this so they have extra funds to keep up with the lifestyles of those in their immediate social circles.
FairTree has created a Pay-to-Grow system that leverages present bias and social networks to increase reforestation. Community leaders are appointed to generate interest in the app and onboard users. Community leaders are individuals identified to have influence and trust in various social circles. Once onboarded, users download the Treetracker app, which allows them to upload pictures of the trees they plant. A tree’s progress is monitored at the backend by FairTree, and users get immediate payments for planting and keeping the tree alive directly into their digital wallets.
- Youth want to take charge of their futures
“The whole world is embracing technology. This will be one of the things that will be generating income for this generation,”
- Juma (name changed) 23, West Nairobi
“In the future the youth really need to be creative and innovative. One must be passionate, self-driven, and work hard,”
- Mary (name changed) 25, East Nairobi
Juma, a respondent from West Nairobi, uses various online platforms to earn a livelihood. He enjoys the flexibility of being his own boss. Initiatives like the GEO Indigenous Alliance offer this meaning and agency that youth seek in their work in the form of a ‘hackathon’. The event is a platform where indigenous groups produce solutions to crowdsourced challenges developed through a process of co-design. Participants often include young professionals, researchers and even high school students interested in solving the challenges of their communities using technology. The Namunyak app is one product of these sessions, and is designed to help the Samburu tribe in Northern Kenya create culturally relevant maps.
- People prefer the familiar
Involving end users in the design process additionally ensures their buy-in when the digital solution is ready to use. Articulating the environmental challenge and working through designing, testing and redesigning means that they see the final solution as their own.
In contrast, simply designing a solution without involvement of the local community may cause it to be met with skepticism. This is because individuals are naturally negatively biased against people who are not a part of their group. By involving users from the get-go, they become familiar with those developing and disseminating the digital solution and cultivate a preference for the solution as a result of mere exposure.
Online self-directed work platforms targeted at youth leverage mere exposure by investing in training youth on technical skills. Youth engage with trainers and online content while learning how to use and/or develop digital tools. They become familiar with people who work for the platform and, as a result, the platform itself, leading them to continue using the digital solution.
What does this mean for youth and the environment?
The time to address the climate crisis is now, and the tool is technology. We need multidisciplinary research that tells us what we must do – at the individual level – to reverse climate change, which technologies we can use to achieve this at scale, and how we must develop and disseminate digital solutions in a way that will encourage youths to adopt them. Behavioral science plays a key role in the latter – it is imperative that we understand how youths think, feel and behave as a demographic so that we can create solutions that work for them.
