Big Life Changes
What if moments of change could be key to creating more sustainable futures?
People are looking for ways to live that strengthen our connection to each other and to our planet. Big Life Changes focuses on an overlooked opportunity: the moments when lives, behaviours and systems are already changing.
Science shows that lifestyle and behaviour changes could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40–70% by 2050, with the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place.
The opportunity is to meet people where they are, and reshape systems at the moments when change is already underway.
An Underleveraged Opportunity
Every year, more than a billion people experience a major life transition: moving home, starting university, changing jobs, becoming a parent, migrating, retiring and more.
These moments disrupt routines, create new needs and decisions, and bring people into contact with systems, services and businesses that shape everyday life.
We already know that moments of change can influence people’s actions and habits. But they haven’t been leveraged at scale to accelerate sustainable living.
Big Life Changes brings people and systems into the same frame, exploring how life transitions create openings to shift lifestyles and behaviours through enabling systems that make sustainable ways of living more accessible, desirable and achievable.
Moments of change shape lives.
But we haven't leveraged them for sustainability, at scale.
Until now.
From Moments of Change to Systems Change
Over two successful decades, OneEarth Living has been building the evidence and strategies needed to turn this opportunity into action, with global partners including IKEA, C40 Cities, Hot or Cool Institute and University of Bath.
Our work with Big Life Changes leverages a people-centred, systems approach that honors the emotional and practical realities of the human journey, and the changes we need now, more than ever.
Our approach is built on:
Transforming support systems
Providing evidence-based guidance for cities, businesses, advisors and service providers to design and prototype around moments of change that make sustainable living easier.
Changing narratives
Creating narrative strategies and multimedia approaches that shift the stories and expectations surrounding life's transitions through media, communities, groups and everyday influencers.
Testing and scaling
Developing real-world projects with partners including IKEA and C40 Cities, turning research into practice and building a model that others can use and scale.
Developing the Scalable Model
Over the next two to three years, we will build on our expertise to:
Research
which moments, audiences, behaviours and systems offer the strongest opportunities for change.
Test
approaches with a variety of key audiences, collaborators and real-world practitioners.
Build
the evidence, tools and guidance needed to apply what works.
Scale
through partnerships, training and resources that enable others to advance the approach.
Help Create Big Life Changes
We’re looking for funders and partners to help build the evidence, test the approach, and create the infrastructure for scale.
Funders can support research, framework development, testing and scale.
Partners can bring real-world systems, audience, channels and expertise to apply and test the approach.
Together, we can turn moments of change into opportunities for lasting systems change.
Imagine What's Possible
Cities design mobility and housing services around the moment people relocate. Businesses make sustainable offerings the default when people furnish a home, start a job or enter a new stage of life. Advisors, communities and media centre sustainable living as part of the story of life's next chapter.
Big Life Changes is developing the actionable model to make those possibilities real.
Why OneEarth Living, and Why Now
Big Life Changes builds on OneEarth Living’s 20 years of expertise, experience, influence and warm-hearted partnerships in advancing sustainable ways of living.
Our work brings together research, policy and practice, backed by a global network of 175+ organizations and collaborations and experience engaging more than 100 cities, reaching half a billion urban citizens. For Big Life Changes, we are bringing together an unprecedented coalition across climate, research, cities, business and behavioural science, including C40 Cities, IKEA, Canadian Geographic, Hot or Cool Institute, the CAST Centre at the University of Bath, the CUSP Centre at the University of Surrey, and the Behaviour Lab at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in Japan.
Now is the time to turn this collective expertise into action.
Over the next three years, we will strengthen the evidence base, launch visible demonstration projects, develop compelling narratives and practical tools, and grow a network of partners and practitioners. Building on OneEarth Living’s track record of bold partnerships, rigorous research and real-world experimentation, Big Life Changes is designed to move from insight to action and help make sustainable ways of living easier, more affordable and more attractive at scale.