Growing an applied science of cultural evolution for a sustainable future

Applied Working Group

Open Online Meeting #1

December 5th, 3pm-5pm UTC (GMT)

on Zoom (sign up below)

Purpose

This meeting will refine a set of frontiers on which cultural evolution can contribute to applied sustainability efforts and environmental policy. But what can cultural evolution science practically offer sustainability practitioners in governments, NGOs, activist groups?What distinguishes cultural evolutionary efforts from other tried and true approaches? How can we communicate these advantages? How can we demonstrate their value? 

Frontiers

As a starting point, we have drawn up 5 frontiers in which cultural evolutionary science can provide novel insights to sustainability programs and policy. These are:

1. The transmission of environmental traits
2. The adaptation and cumulative evolution of environmental cultural traits
3. The cultural niche construction of cultural systems with environmental systems
4. The group-level cultural evolution of sustainable human systems
5. The process of large-scale societal-environmental transformation

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