Conservationists’ eco-footprints suggest education alone won’t change behaviour

A new study shows that even those presumably best informed on the environment find it hard to consistently "walk the walk", prompting scientists to question whether relying solely on information campaigns will ever be enough. While it may be hard to accept, we have to start acknowledging that increased education alone is perhaps not the panacea we would hope - Andrew Balmford Conservationists work to save the planet, and few are as knowledgeable when it comes to the environmental pressures of the Anthropocene. However, the first wide-ranging study to compare the environmental footprint of conservationists to those of other groupings - medics and economists, in this case - has found that, while conservationists behave in a marginally 'greener' manner, the differences are surprisingly modest. Researchers say their findings add to increasing evidence that education and knowledge has little impact on individual behavior when it comes to major issues such as the environment and personal health. Conservation scientists from the universities of Cambridge, UK, and Vermont, US, gathered data on a range of lifestyle choices - from bottled water use to air travel, meat consumption and family size - for 734 participants across the three groupings. They found that fellow conservationists recycled more and ate less meat than either economists or medics, were similar to the other groups in how they travelled to work, but owned more cats and dogs. The combined footprint score of the conservationists was roughly 16% less than that of economists, and 7% lower than the medics.