Research into behaviour changes needed to achieve Scotland’s goals for biodiversity

Description

Section 1 – Introduction 4. The Scottish Government (SG), is seeking to commission a Contractor to undertake a high level review of national and international academic and grey literature to develop an overview of the key types of behaviour changes by households and the general public that will have the greatest impact in achieving goals for biodiversity. This research project is being jointly promoted by the Environment Strategy team and Biodiversity Unit in the Scottish Government. Section 2 – Background & Context 5. The research project will support: a) The development of the Environment Strategy for Scotland. In particular, it will play a key role in informing the development of a ‘pathway’ for achieving one of the strategy’s outcomes, which focuses on the societal transformations in Scotland needed to help tackle the climate and nature emergencies. b) Implementation of the Scottish Biodiversity Delivery Plan and wider policy development and delivery on biodiversity, including the consideration of statutory nature restoration targets relating to citizens and society (for policy context on targets, see Tackling the Nature Emergency - strategic framework for biodiversity: consultation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). c) The Environment Strategy is a statutory commitment under Continuity Act 2021, which requires Scottish Ministers to publish an ‘environmental policy strategy’ and to have due regard to it when developing policies. Lot 1: Section 3 – Scope /Statement of Requirement 12. The research project will involve the following 3 steps: Step 1 Undertake a rapid, high level review of national and international academic and grey literature to develop an overview of the key types of behaviour changes by households and the general public that will have the greatest impact in achieving goals for biodiversity (for example, this will include reviewing international published research on sustainability transitions; as well as behaviour change research and policy delivery undertaken by public bodies and Main Research Providers in Scotland ). The review should include evidence (where available) on key barriers and relevant socio-economic synergies and trade-offs associated with uptake/adoption of these key areas of behaviour change (e.g. impacts on health, wellbeing, inequalities, poverty etc). In addition, the review should also collate and review evidence on the effectiveness of policy measures undertaken to address structural/ systemic drivers that may constrain or enable adoption of these key behaviours. Step 2 Gather evidence to place these findings in a Scottish context, by exploring: a) The extent to which SG already has policies to help promote the behaviour changes identified in Step 1, and related gaps in policy delivery for increasing uptake of these behaviours. This should be undertaken via a desk-based review of existing SG policies. b) Stakeholder feedback via one or more workshops, representing views of diverse societal groups, and exploring the likely effectiveness and public acceptability of different approaches to promoting these behaviour changes. Step 3 Use the above findings to develop recommendations on how SG can best use the available policy levers to promote the key behaviour changes needed to achieve goals for biodiversity. This should focus on the behaviour changes identified in Step 1 which are not adequately addressed in SG policies (Step 2a). Recommendations should be designed to: a) take account of wider structural/systemic drivers influencing behaviour (Step 1) b) maximise socio-economic co-benefits (Step 1); c) take account of stakeholder views on effectiveness and public acceptability (Step 2b).