8. Food and the environment
60 Minute Panel Sessions
This 60‑minute panel will be chaired by Diogo Veríssimo, who works at the interface of conservation, marketing theory and behaviour change. He also chairs the IUCN SSC CEC Behaviour Change Task Force, which acts as a connector across regions and organisations and a knowledge broker between behavioural sciences and conservation practice, helping to embed social marketing for nature conservation in global strategies and professional communities. Sharyn Rundle‑Thiele, Founding Director of the Social Marketing at Griffith University (Australia), brings extensive experience designing and evaluating large‑scale social marketing programmes across health, environment and other social issues, offering a cross‑sector view on what future‑focused, behaviour‑centred practice can be. João Neves, Director of the IUCN SSC CSS Behaviour Change - Zoomarine Portugal, contributes a practitioner perspective from visitor‑based conservation settings, using behavioural science to move from an environmental awareness focus towards the evaluation of concrete conservation behaviours and impacts. Together, the panel will use these complementary perspectives not to focus on any single sector, but to explore how social marketing can shape the next generation of conservation behaviour change across contexts.
If accepted, attendees will hear practical case studies and evaluation evidence from conservation-focused social marketing campaigns, including lessons from field experiments and practitioner partnerships. The session will combine theory with hands-on tools for designing, measuring and scaling behaviour change interventions for biodiversity, offering clear takeaways for researchers, practitioners and policymakers seeking evidence-based strategies to increase conservation impact.