Titanic can teach us how to protect nature

In the article "Titanic lessons for Spaceship Earth to account for human behavior in institutional design", the researchers explore how institutional designs for global environmental cooperation must consider human behaviour to be effective.

Drawing parallels with the Titanic, the authors identify behavioural barriers and opportunities that were present on the Titanic journey and need to be considered when addressing environmental challenges today.

Barriers include for example a lack of imaginative capacity, over-confidence, and a misalignment of value prioritization leading to a failure to recognize the urgency of the problem and an unwillingness to take necessary action.

Behavioural opportunities include the ability for large-scale coordination, signs of empathy and willingness to take altruistic action.

Steering capacities

The authors then propose public goods—such as standards, coordination mechanisms, and information curation—as tools that can enhance positive behaviours while mitigating negative ones.

By examining nine international organisations that provide one or more of these critical public goods, or ‘steering capacities’, the researchers draw valuable lessons that can be applied to existing international environmental organizations like UNEP, UNFCCC, and the Paris Agreement.

“While it may be easy to dismiss organizations like the UNEP because they currently fail to adequately protect Earth’s life-support systems, our analysis highlights that these entities are essential for providing these steering capacities. However, there also analysis also reveals that there is room for improvement,” explains lead author Therese Lindahl who is a researcher at the Centre and programme director at The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Behavioural rules

Improvements include for example changes to funding models, increasing transparency, enhancing the status of organizations to mitigate issues like corruption and inequality, and providing ‘behavioural rules’ that are cognitively easier to follow. These changes could make institutions more resilient and responsive to global environmental needs.

The authors also argue that current international organizations reflect the lowest common denominator of global values, supporting the need for diverse organizational forms providing different public goods at various scales, supporting local initiatives and committed actors who can drive change.

In conclusion, the authors encourage rethinking organizational design by accounting for the interaction between structure and human behaviour, and exploring alternative forms that can support local solutions and operate beyond traditional mandates. They propose a thought experiment: reimagining the organizational design of the Titanic voyage as a way to better understand how to navigate Spaceship Earth towards a sustainable future.