1. Systems Thinking as a Tool to Promote Human Health and Sustainable Behaviour Change
Katharine Zywert, PhD Candidate, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability

2. How social-ecological trajectories affect human health
The unintended consequences of traditional communication strategies
Systems thinking as a leverage point for encouraging behaviours with mutually-reinforcing gains for human and planetary health
Katharine Zywert, PhD Candidate, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability

3. Human health is tied to social-ecological systems trajectories
Transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene
Environmental implications of the Great Acceleration (Steffen et al., 2015)
Ecological changes as increasingly strong determinants of health
Katharine Zywert, PhD Candidate, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability

4. Mainstream communication strategies have unintended consequences
Terror management theory – we cling to dominant meaning frameworks to cope with fear of death
When messages about climate change make people fear death, it can paradoxically increase environmentally damaging consumption
The Anthropocene is an emerging scientific term for our current geological age. It marks a profound break with the Holocene epoch, a phase of climate stability which humanity has enjoyed since the end of the last ice age.
With the industrial revolution, humanity created the mechanisms of mass production and consumption, and consequently began to exert a stronger influence on the biosphere. Since 1950, there has been a tremendous speeding up of the impacts of human economic activity on the function of planetary systems (Steffen et al., 2015). These graphs from Steffen et al. show this “great acceleration” and demonstrate how growth in human population, GDP, and energy use are coupled with a rise in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, surface temperature, and ocean acidification. These and other effects of the growing human socio-economic sphere have produced the environmental signatures of the Anthropocene, including global warming, altered weather patterns, crashing biodiversity, and rising levels of pollution.
Katharine Zywert, PhD Candidate, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability

5. Systems thinking can promote sustainable behaviour change and improve health
Generates mutually-reinforcing gains for human and planetary health
Short-term: taps into dominant individualistic worldviews
Long-term: contributes to more systemic worldviews that will enable us to tackle global social-ecological challenges
Katharine Zywert, PhD Candidate, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability