Solutions, not solution

How behavioral science can help reveal the many ways to address a climate crisis.

By Wendy Chamberlin

When a drought hits, what is the solution that people most impacted are looking for to address their immediate concerns? Is it a single product? Is it government services? Do we ask people what they want or do we assume because of the type of event that occurred that what they want is a solution that is directly associated with that event?

In 2012, after a drought in Mali, Djoudi et, al. found that men preferred solutions that would protect livelihoods in response to future droughts while women saw the long term advantages of prioritizing access to education for their children. While they had experienced the same climate event, their responses pointed towards different solutions.?

Sometimes, the unintended consequence of applying solutions creates even more complicated problems.

When severe heat waves struck wheat farmers in Rajasthan in 2022 , the implications for farmer’s incomes and their ability to invest in rice farming for the next season were devastating and went beyond the local community to India’s broader decision to halt wheat exports. This then pushed global wheat prices up by 6%, literally, overnight.?

Action bias drives us to face each new challenge in the climate crisis by doing something. In the development sector, this same bias gets us caught up in applying solutions. Rather than take the time to understand the experiences of those who bear the largest brunt of climate shocks and stresses and support their existing adaptation approaches, we find ourselves using? external solutions that have little or nothing to do with what the people living in the worst of the crisis are experiencing.?

Even while we try to navigate the severity and serious complexity of the climate crisis (I’m thinking about the wildfires in Maui as I write this), there are some lessons that we cannot afford to ignore if we want our work to do the work it is supposed to do.?

1. Context matters and this gets in the way of short funding timelines, short funding attention spans, and momentary fanfare. There is a graveyard of well-intentioned solutions to prove this. ?What works as a solution in Nigeria in response to a drought may not be the same solution that supports resilience building in Bangladesh in response to a cyclone.?
2. Those most impacted by climate events should not be treated as monolithic.?This is where some understanding and application of segmentation matters to ensure product design is grounded in the understanding of the distinct needs of those most impacted.?
3. The same obstacles such as; literacy, consumer awareness, infrastructure, and gender norms, that were impeding access and uptake of solutions before are still getting in the way because they take time to address.?

Insights from behavioral science can play a vital role in ensuring solutions are grounded in customer insights. Behavioral science prioritizes the how and why of the decisions people make and uses those insights to inform solutions. During the COVID pandemic, for example, we, at Busara, learned about the challenges of misinformation and how to get people to assess and act on information in the DRC, Kenya and Somalia . We have also learned what agency means to women who belong to the Indian upper class will not translate to an urban migrant population working in a garment factory , meaning expected outcomes should always be contextualized to account for these differences. We have learned multiple of these lessons . The question is - do we remember?

As we look back on the Africa Climate Week, before we make any bold commitments, maybe we should start by talking to those most affected by climate shocks and stresses and asking what they need.?

Better yet, let’s find out what they are doing.

We may find that some people are unaware that climate change is the cause of the erratic rainfall or droughts they experience. We may find that what people want first in terms of solutions is not necessarily a “climate” branded product but rather an assurance that they can pay for school fees or recover lost wages or have access to clean drinking water. We may find that branding something “climate smart” for now excludes women from accessing solutions designed to benefit them. We may discover robust social solutions grounded in community insights that have endured these events before.? We may discover that, by working across sectors and with those most impacted by these events, we finally find what we’re all looking for – lasting and sustainable impact.?