Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change

Responding to climate change will entail massive socio-emotional and behavioral changes. Translating policies, investments, or built infrastructure-reshaping mandates into real and sustained local impact that incorporates accountability and culture change will require hands-on work. Adaptive societal responses to climate change will succeed or fail based on the attitudes, behaviors, social cohesion and capital, organizational and emotional strengths, and collective impact and input of all stakeholders.


To consider how to integrate, align, and converge the broad mix of social, behavioral, and cognitive sciences to produce new insights and inform efforts for enhanced human responses to environmental change, Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine convened this 2023 workshop, entitled Committee on Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change: A Workshop. The workshop was intended to investigate ways to accelerate and deepen conversations within the social sciences and to focus on synthesis, especially for the purpose of increasing community capacity to understand and effectively respond to climate change-induced environmental changes - at scales ranging from the individual to the household to the community, and all the way up to the level of state and international governance. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.

Table of Contents


Front Matter
1 Workshop Background
2 Overview of Success: Bodies of Knowledge and Existing Toolkits
3 Overview of Challenges: Identifying Gaps and Needs That Prevent Real and Sustained Change
4 Best Practices Across Domains of Need from the Human Sciences
5 Reflections from Day One
6 Achieving Climate Action Through Community-Level Partnerships
7 Strengthening Community Resilience Through Environmental Justice
8 Achieving More Durable Solutions Through New Collaborations
9 Moving Forward: Improving Community Resilience
10 Workshop Wrap-Up
Appendix A: Workshop Agenda
Appendix B: Committee Members and Workshop Speakers