| Type: | Chapter |
| Year: | 2025 |
| Title: | Who is responsible for tackling our environmental and wider social challenges? Participant data and reflections for community psychology |
| Author(s): | Miles Thompson, Live-Anett Jønholt, Sarah Nevin, Ilhaam Selih |
| Outlet: | Community, Psychology and Climate Justice |
| Abstract Summary: | The climate and ecological emergencies are advancing quickly. Community psychology has been relatively slow to turn its attention to this area, but is now carrying out valuable research. At the same time, a persistent concern remains that despite its aspiration’s, some outputs from community psychology can remain too individually focused and accidentally serve existing power structures and the status quo. Outside of psychology, some now refer to the multiple challenges we face as a ‘polycrisis’. Against this backdrop, we present new data to aid community psychology’s reflections and action. This study builds on previous research that produced participant generated lists of the environmental and wider social challenges that communities face. It asks a new set of participants to rate these challenges according to the degree to which they see: i. Individuals; ii. Businesses and Corporations; or iii. Governments as being responsible for tackling them. More than 200 participants rated a limited subset of these 31 environmental and 31 wider social challenges in terms of who is responsible for tackling them. The results section explores the data in several ways. Looking at average responsibility scores across challenge types, making statistical comparisons and describing patterns of data across individual challenges. The results are consistent, while individuals and businesses are seen to have some responsibility – participants consistently report that most responsibility sits with Governments. The discussion notes that while community psychology has long highlighted the importance of structural and systemic issues, it has been less able to make inroads into holding wider levels of power of account. It asks: at what level does our action currently sit, what levels of success are we currently having, and what things might we need to do, to do better in the future? Realising that community psychology cannot hold all the answers, the discussion highlights one political scientists’ expertise on effective political strategies to kick start government action on climate change. It also highlights how other fundamental changes may need to take place in terms of capitalism and neoliberalism to tackle the polycrisis we all face. |
| Keyword(s): | Responsibility; Levels of change; Environmental challenges; Wider social challenges; Polycrisis |
| Reference: | Thompson, M., Jønholt, L.-A., Nevin, S., & Selih, I. (2025). Who is responsible for tackling our environmental and wider social challenges? Participant data and reflections for community psychology. In B. R. Barnes, M. Fernandes-Jesus, C. D. Trott, & G. Barnwell (Eds.), Community, Psychology and Climate Justice (pp. 45-62). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-99223-0_3 |
| Online Access: | Authors’ accepted manuscript here. Chapter on publisher’s website here (opens external site). Research group blog related to this research, see here. |
| Other Access: | If you are unable to access a copy of the publication through the web link(s) above, get in touch. |