What environmental behaviour change campaign is urgently needed by the UK?
Having spent most of my professional career creating environmental behaviour change campaigns there is one which I believe is urgently needed and could make a significant impact.
When people are asked what difference they can make in their daily lives to improve the environment saving water is way down the list. This is unsurprising. The UK is perceived as a wet country with more than adequate amounts of rain. Many believe that their efforts won’t make any difference compared with the vast amounts lost through burst pipes or used by industry and agriculture. Water companies lack public trust with people sceptical about the validity of their messaging.
Yet the reality is different. Over the past decade, many of the UK’s water companies have been playing Russian Roulette with our water supply. Restrictions have been narrowly avoided due to intense periods of rain replenishing depleted supplies.
We are on a similar path this year. Exceptionally low river flows are predicted across the UK this summer as a drought becomes more likely. Hosepipe bans and other forms of water rationing are on the cards the longer the country goes without significant rainfall. Dwindling reservoir levels put rivers at risk as farmers and water companies abstract more water from them when other sources run low increasing pollution levels and resulting in large-scale fish deaths.
Despite the early warnings, there has been no concerted effort to encourage people to use water more efficiently yet results from around the world show how effective public behaviour change campaigns can be alongside technical fixes.
In 2018, Cape Town South Africa announced that after a prolonged drought the city was just 90 days away from turning off the taps – Day Zero as it became known. The crisis was averted by increasing tariffs on heavy users, prohibiting non-essential use and an excellent behaviour change campaign including advertising on electronic signs showing how long the water supply would last and releasing a citywide usage map allowing people to compare their usage to neighbours. Alongside the citywide efforts, community action was equally important. People traded water-saving tips on social media, hotels encouraged tourists to take shorter showers and only flush toilets when necessary whilst restaurants changed cooking techniques.
California has also managed to avoid the worst impact of water shortages through creative behaviour change initiatives including a humorous social media #droughtshaming campaign, imaginative use of data and practical guidance for households.
These initiatives were introduced at a point of crisis and perhaps this will only happen in the UK if we face a similar situation. But we could avoid the need for extreme action and reduce environmental damage by starting to act now.
The lessons from other countries show what needs to happen:
There needs to be concerted action from a diverse range of organisations working together for the common good. This collaboration needs to win the trust of the public and cannot be led by a water company due to the way most are perceived.
Accurate and live data is essential to enable people to see the scale of the challenge and understand the role that they can play.
Technical and legislative fixes need to be introduced alongside a behaviour change campaign providing added financial incentives for people to act.
Humour and hard-hitting messages are required to build momentum and engage with all residents.
Community engagement is essential to reinforce any messaging from public and private organisations.
It is likely that the UK’s strategy will continue to be ‘let’s cross our fingers and hope’ but sooner or late our luck will change. Hopefully someone will have the courage and foresight to take the plunge and start to instigate a new collaborative approach to this looming challenge.