A Better Future

Five E's Unlimited has joined with several other professionals commited to promoting permanent public behavior changes, reinforced by available scientific knowledge, that will help protect wilderness areas and create a viable, healthy future for the biosphere. The public communication campaign this group has designed ("A Better Future") expresses the rationale for sustainable development through coherent and compelling communications designed to make sustainability part of the daily behaviors and attitudes of all people.

Through their daily purchases, individuals hold considerable sway over the health and stability of the world’s most fragile ecological systems, according to the World Watch Institute. If alternative choices are presented to the consumer and enough demand is generated, entire markets can shift. Consider the great shifts over recent years in public attitudes about diet, exercise, fitness, preventive health, and wellness; or about pollution, global warming, and atmospheric ozone depletion. Such agendas have begun to sink in.

“A Better Future” is a national public communication campaign designed to help consumers embrace sustainability, and which will ultimately help transform sustainability into a national and international priority. The structure of our social marketing program is to change the ratio of benefits to barriers, so that the target behavior becomes more attractive to the audience than its alternative, and consumers will voluntarily change their own behavior. This project introduces or reinforces specific behaviors that support a more healthy, humane and environmentally sustainable world, whose wildland ecosystems are protected. Our campaign is designed to communicate relevant, scientifically-supported information that will motivate and empower consumers to make choices that are more sustainable without threatening their lifestyle, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of trying to “tell people what to do.” The campaign is coherent and compelling, leading to an outcome of increased mutual understanding and behavior change that will help create a better future for all.

According to Klaus Toepfer of the United Nations Environment Program, we can identify the underlying driving forces of consumption and use this knowledge to raise awareness throughout society of the importance for sustainable lifestyles. He believes that instead of “preaching” the environment message, we can use social marketing research to create a more informed consumer that is aware of the choices available and their impacts. Likewise, Roger Levett of the Fabian Society states in the report “Better Choice of Choice” that if information is provided to the public in a credible fashion about more choices they can make that affect issues like clean air, traffic congestion, and sustainable agricultural systems, consumers will opt for better quality of life and environmental choices.

"Interdisciplinary scientific information (like that required to promote sustainable lifestyles) will not serve the public unless the knowledge gained can be communicated effectively to policymakers and stakeholders at all levels of the social and political spectrums" ..... We need "to improve the process of information dissemination, from scientist to citizen and vice versa" (National Science Foundation Workshop "Nature and Society" - June 2000: http://lsweb.la.asu.edu/akinzig.nsfmeet.htm). The team working for “A Better Future” believes that our unique approach to communicating sustainability information to the public will be successful because we have designed a purposeful strategy that is beginning to:

• identify characteristics of target audience(s) to better communicate sustainability messages;
• craft messages that empower audiences to understand their ability to create change;
• link the sustainability and behavior change message with people’s core values;
• create messages that positively and effectively demonstrate connections important to people; and
• put an image to sustainability that relates to the day-to-day lives of people.

The mission of “A Better Future” (http://www.abetterfuture.org) is to promote specific behavior changes that are (1) necessary to achieve an environmentally sustainable world and (2) simple for consumers to understand and implement. The method being implemented for accomplishing our mission is to design and execute a national public communication campaign for environmental sustainability. Stay in-touch with our progress in this endeavor by regularly visiting the web site of A Better Future.

Check out the links in the left panel above for further discussion on our approaches to sustainability education and public awareness.