When the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, it included a pledge to limit long-term global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and was seen as a major turning point in the fight against the climate crisis. But progress has been slow since then and it’s not time humanity can afford to waste. The frequency and intensity of natural disasters such as droughts, hurricanes and floods continue to increase – 95% of the Arctic’s oldest and thickest ice has already disappeared and wildlife populations have declined by 69% since 1970.
In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that a “fundamental societal and systems transformation” is needed to tackle the looming climate crisis.
Part of the problem is a lack of attention to the importance of social change, says Daniel Welch, program director of the new master’s degree in social change, environment and sustainability at the University of Manchester. “The author Amitav Ghosh claims [in his book The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable] ‘the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture and therefore of the imagination’. What we have discovered is that people can imagine a society of sustainable consumption. But they really have trouble imagining the social processes needed to get us there.”
There is broad and deep public support for living more sustainably. A recent survey by global social organization the Behavioral Insights Team found that 88% of Brits would like to make more sustainable choices if they could, and 86% would like to see government and business do more to help others make more sustainable choices. Another report from Deloitte – which surveyed 23,000 people in 44 countries – found that 55% of Generation Z and 54% of Millennial respondents research a brand’s environmental impact and policies before taking a job. Among Gen Alpha (born since 2010), interest is even greater, with nearly seven in ten (67%) saying they want saving the planet to be central to their career.
While there are increasing opportunities to work in this field, there is a real skills gap that needs to be addressed, Welch says. “There is a huge demand from organisations, NGOs, governments and think tanks. There are psychologists, there are behavioral economists, but there is very limited supply from the social sciences [perspective]. And there is a deep irony in that, because this is what the social sciences do. An enormous contribution can be made by people who specialize in understanding these processes of social change and how they can help shape them.”
The launch of the new master’s degree at the University of Manchester is an attempt to bridge that gap. Students will cover a range of relevant topics, including theories of social and behavioral change, the politics of global climate change, understanding big data for social research, and key issues in sustainable consumption and environmental sustainability. While some students may have a social science background, the offers have also been extended to individuals with various undergraduate degrees in the humanities, such as history, English, marketing and other related fields, provided they demonstrate a strong interest in the social sciences .
The university itself is home to the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI), which focuses on understanding and mitigating the negative impacts of consumerism on the environment, society and the economy, while striving to promote positive changes in towards a more sustainable life.
The University of Manchester is ranked first in Britain and Europe (and second globally) for impact on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and is the only university to consistently rank in the top 10 over the past decade stood. As an institution, the University aims to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2038 and is the only one in Britain to have social responsibility as one of its three core strategic goals.
Kevin Gillan, one of the university’s senior lecturers in sociology and a researcher at SCI, will teach a new module on environmental activism and advocacy as part of the master’s course, covering the history of environmental movements from the 1960s onwards. He says the climate emergency is now at a tipping point, but the increased level of awareness among students gives him hope for progress.
“The speed at which we become aware of new issues has increased. Plastic in the ocean, for example – the period from the scientific discovery and measurement of the problem to widespread social awareness of it was very short. If you compare that to how long it took for us to get good at recycling… it took decades for us to consolidate this.
“A lot of scientific knowledge is obviously required to meet the various environmental challenges,” he says. “It’s about technological development and innovation… but that doesn’t mean change will happen. People don’t necessarily adopt [those measures]. Governments do not follow this. So that’s where we see the sociological angle coming in… how can we anchor these changes? When I started teaching an undergraduate course called global social challenges in 2016, students were aware of climate change, but did not have much knowledge. Now they come in with the motivation to do something and the recognition that doing something might be their job, not something they do on the side.”
Welch agrees: “The human race has a tremendous imagination for cultural change. Lessons from history show that radical social and cultural change does happen, and that it can happen within a generation. But we need to understand those processes so that we can help shape them.”
Find out more about studying at the University of Manchester and the new Masters degree in Social Change, Environment and Sustainability