Moving the dial on climate change and international development
8 June 2022
Professor Jennifer Hudson explores the transformative power of empathy and collaboration
This interview originally appeared in the MyAV·¶ Policy Lab magazine.Ìę
âThe world feels out of control to people right now,â says Professor Jennifer Hudson, one of MyAV·¶âs leading thinkers on international development. âThere are really big problems we hear a lot about, whether thatâs Covid-19, climate change, gender inequality, racism.â Together, they âfeel like big, intractable problems and a lot of people we need to inspire are feeling the weight of these big problems.â
And what is worse, no one in authority, including leading experts and researchers, appears to be presenting people with very clear answers. Hudson gives an example from her own area of expertise. âWe are not good at giving people menus or recipes to say: âif you want to engage with sustainable development, here are the five things you can do as an individual that add up in this way.â Thatâs not our narrative.â Instead, âwe say that if the temperature goes below 1.5 degrees Celsius, then the world will burn. And with that mindset, they feel a lack of control.â In part, this is because the problems are very big and are each driven by immense structural issues, which no individual can hope to address by themselves.Ìę
But even so, Hudson explains, there is no reason to be fatalistic. One of the chief roles of academic experts, she argues, is to âfigure out how to convince people that individual behavioural change is important and that collectively, it adds up to something,â she says. At the same time, we need to âpersuade them to look at the bigger picture, motivating governments to take up the big structural changes without making people feel that this is out of their control or a lost cause.â
That is no easy task, of course, and taking on the challenge requires academics to learn new skills and develop fresh techniques.Ìę
âPeople can be moved,â Hudson outlines, âbut attitudes and behaviours are hard to change. In the environment, weâve seen this unfold in the last 10 years with increasing polarisation. We can shift people, but we are working against entrenched beliefs about what is right and what is good.â
âI was brought up as a traditional academic and all my thinking and all my engagement was with other academics,â Hudson continues. She says that learning how to help âmove the dialâ on the politics and policymaking of sustainable development demands something else altogether.
âWe need to be better at talking to people where they are at. Academics have their own language; we exist in our own kind of bubbles and the public are very distant from that, by and large. And you canât come to the public with a communications piece or a message that isnât their starting point, because they will immediately reject it. You have to engage people at the point where they are willing to listen, because you are saying stuff that validates their experiences.â
The answer, she insists, lies in real partnership, sustained collaboration and, most of all, empathy. âWe need to be empathetic to people and their positions. You are not going to move people by browbeating them into something. You really must put yourself in their shoes and ask whether you can have a conversation that is meaningful and move people along.â
And that, Hudson explains, is the very heart of a new research practice.Ìę
If we want to do better research and also contribute to change in the world, then there are clear guidelines about what to do. âItâs vital to sit and talk with external partners, to understand their constraints and what theyâre thinking about. Then you have to figure out how to do the research part of it, and bring it back to them to keep the conversation going.
Jennifer Hudson is Professor of Political Behaviour, Dean for the Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences and Chair of the MyAV·¶ Policy Lab Steering Committee