MAHB

MAHB (Millenium Assessment of Human Behavior)  has been developing since 2004 (see the story below).  MAHB involves a network of researchers committed to addressing the sustainability challenge by mobilizing and engaging scholars in the humanities and the social sciences as well as natural sciences, politicians and a broad spectrum of stakeholders. This will be done through major conferences, workshops, research projects, and the construction of a behavioral observatory as well as a human dimensions portal and other outreach initiatives, using a toolkit of advanced ICT options.

Human Behavior refers not just to the values, attitudes, and behaviors of individual human actors, but to the structures of institutional arrangements, cultural formations, and collective actions and their long-term consequences.  The choice and emphasis of the word "human" in MAHB is to underscore the very apparent truth that the cause of, and the only hope for a solution to, the global environmental predicament is in human initiative: plans, policies and action. But to be effective planning and action will need to take place at every level of human action: individuals, organizations, institutional, and internationally.  This means encouraging and nudging citizens in pro-environmental behavior, directing organizations to adopt full-cost accounting measures, founding or reforming institutions that locate concerns for sustainability at the forefront of their responsibilities, and enhancing or creating international bodies with authority that can establish environmental goals and enforce environmental regulations and restrictions (e.g., as WTO does today).

Thus, MAHB stresses that the major need for knowledge is clearly not for more natural science (although in many areas it would be helpful) but rather for better understanding of human behaviors and how they can be altered to direct humanity onto a course toward a sustainable society before it is to late. That’s why a group of natural scientist, social scientists, and scholars from the humanities decided to inaugurate MAHB (pronounced “mob”).  It emphasizes that it is human behavior, toward one another and toward the planet that sustains all of us, that requires rapid modification. The idea is that an MAHB might become a basic mechanism to expose society to the full range of  population-environment-resource-ethics-power issues, and sponsor broad global analyses and discussions involving the greatest possible diversity of people. MAHB will launch (together with its international collaborators) in 2011 a major international conference  as well as an extensive programme of research, policy, and outreach.