[Music]

Hello and welcome to this short course -

Changing Behaviour for Sustainable
Development.
I'm John Thwaites and i'm chair of the
SDSN association which is a network of
more than 1,000 universities
launched by the Secretary General of the
United Nations
for universities and knowledge
institutions to promote the sustainable
development goals and sustainable
development. I'm also the chair of Monash
Sustainable Development Institute
which is preparing this short course.
Before my current role at Monash I was a
politician. I was a government minister
and in that role i learned the vital
importance of understanding behaviour.
If we're going to promote well-being and
better lives for all,
governments can make decisions, they can
introduce legislation and policies but
it's not enough.
Very often it's the behaviour of people
that make the big difference
and that's what this course will focus on.

Hello my name is Anette Bos and i'm the

Director of Education at Monash
Sustainable Development Institute.
I'm actually very excited about this
massive online open course
which is really focusing on gaining
behavioral insights
to change practice
in which behavior is considered,
addressed and changed.
This MOOC is also exciting because it's
really an opportunity for us to deliver
in an
inclusive
and equitable way of education and
that's the premise of SDG 4.
As a practitioner
I've got a hybrid background in
engineering
and social sciences
and I've worked for many years in what
sector in Africa and have done that with
great pleasure,
but I've also seen great facilities
being built - water and sanitation in many
different places
that didn't actually deliver the impact
and outcomes that were hoped for.
During my career I've learned that to
achieve sustainable development we need
joint effort and collaborative action
between stakeholders
what I've also learned
is that it's people's behavior
that determines how different knowledge
is included
and our problems are acted upon.
We need communities and practitioners
working together collaboratively across
disciplines.
We need to create a culture of
sustainability
with its aligned behaviors.
[Music]
The international community has come
together
with an agenda for change - the
sustainable development goals.
These goals provide targets that we
want to achieve by 2030 to reduce
poverty, to reduce inequality, to improve
the environment and to have healthy
communities.
Very often when we face these big
sustainability challenges
we focus on the technological or the
infrastructure solutions.
They are important
but we also need to look at the human
perspective - at the behaviours that will
make a difference to whether we can
successfully meet these challenges.
We need to bring the two together.
We need to understand that the
technological and infrastructure
solutions
need also to be informed by behavioural
science and the behaviors of people.
The sustainable development goals are
the big challenge of the next decade
and so for scientists for policy makers
for engineers we need to build a
capacity to understand what drives
behaviour
and that's what this course aims to
deliver.
[Music]
in 2016 the united nations development
program
in their guidance for behavioural
science said

how people make decisions and act on them,

how they think about influence and
relate to another and how they develop
beliefs and attitudes
is fundamental to achieving the
sustainable development goals.

Hi, I'm Liam Smith and I'm the Director and

Co-founder of BehaviorWorks Australia
which sits inside the Monash
University's Sustainable Development
Institute. For decades behavioral science
has been trying to understand human
behaviour and how to influence it.
The more we know
the better we are to facilitate change
whether it's about getting people to use
public transport,
wear face masks or vote
we need to understand more about the
tools we can use to get change in
behaviour.
We need people to put behind their old
habits and take up new behaviours in
order to help achieve the sustainable
development goals.
You have made the right choice in
signing up to this course. There are many
reasons why behaviour science can be
really helpful in achieving the
sustainable development goals and they
are a good
choice of tool for change. One of the
great benefits of behavioral science is
that it works -
behaviour change works.
We've seen on countless occasions where
changes in behavior have helped solve
problems

These include issues like road safety

or even the pandemic and keeping us safe
from COVID-19 where behaviour change for
much of the last two years has been the
predominant tool to dealing with the
outbreak.
Countries that have adopted behaviour
change tools and citizens that have
adopted
different new behaviours
have been traditionally safer from
COVID as a result.
A second reason why behavioural science
can be really effective
is that the change can be immediate in
some instances. A policy or a new
engineering solution might take time
whereas if the audience adopts the
behaviour immediately we can get the
effect immediately.
Again, COVID-19 provides us with a great
example of this where face mask wearing
or isolating from others when
contracting the disease have proved very
effective at reducing transmission of COVID.

a third reason why behavioral science

can be very useful in achieving the SDGs
is that it's inexpensive.
If we can
use behavioral sciences to encourage
people to act it may prevent us having
to adopt technological or engineering solutions.

A greater example of this might be

around water shortages where there are
technology solutions such as
desalination plants,
but reductions in water
consumption can actually be just as
effective and much cheaper to implement.
A final benefit of behavioural approaches

is that they can potentially lead to

other changes.
When someone acts
we watch our own behavior and we learn
about who we are
and there is evidence that's emerging
that says that the act in the first
place might lead to subsequent actions
that are in line with a greater purpose
or in line with the same
cause or the same issue that the first
behavior is trying to address.
One of those particular benefits that
you might think about is support for
policies.
Indeed there is some research that shows
people who act are more likely to
support policies than those that don't.
Even among people that care the same
about the issue.
No doubt many of you are already working
on behaviour change programs and that's
why you're interested in this course.
What you're essentially trying to do is
get someone to do something differently
and perhaps you're relying on education
or past experience or even some
behaviour change investigation tools to
help you make those decisions.
But the question is how equipped do you
feel to design and deliver and evaluate
a behaviour change intervention that's
likely to work?
Projects that you are delivering
and others like you are delivering can
be improved through the use of
behavioral science and at scale can help
address the sustainable development goals.

[Music]
This course provides you with a unique opportunity

to reflect on your own capacity and your

own behaviors.
It also provides you with behavioral
insights to address complex challenges.
We are very excited that you're on board
for this journey.
MSDI is the only dedicated
sustainability institute
that has a research unit focused
entirely on behavioral insights.
BehaviourWorks Australia
works very closely

on real life problems

with clients from industry, government
and non-for-profit and all this
experience is underlying this course.
Our educators will provide you with an

accessible insight into behavioral science

and they will work
with you
to gain a first understanding of how
behavioral change can be important for
achieving the SDGs.
This course has actually three main objectives:

So firstly you will gain

key behavioral insights that will help
broaden your lens when you consider
problems and challenges that involve
people doing something differently.
You will also understand human behavior
and what actually drives it
and you will identify some of the tools
and methods that are available to change
behavior to achieve environmental social
and financial benefits.
While we share with you what we do in
our small part of the world the tools
and methods that you actually gain can
be applied to where you are within your
context but of course
you need to consider the context
and stakeholders and the environment you
work in.
The way we view learning is that it's a
two-way process. We hope that in this
course you will share your experiences,
communicate with your peers
and tell us about your challenges and
how you've overcome them
and how you may struggle with them.
We also hope that you really see this as
a platform where we can share rich ideas,
where we share knowledge and when we're
here to learn and to grow.
Over the next weeks we hope to have a
time where we share rich experiences,
where we build the knowledge
and where we really all learn together
about behavioral change
and where we really hope to find
new solutions or different solutions to
achieving a sustainable development goals.