Transitions to sustainability, lifestyles changes and human well-being: cultural, environmental and political challenges ((Transiciones hacia la sostenibilidad, cambios de estilos de vida y bienestar humano: desafíos culturales, medioambientales y políticos))

Abstract

In this paper, we present a special issue of PsyEcology that contains a selection of papers submitted by registered participants to the 25th IAPS Conference, held in Rome, Italy, from 8–13 July 2018, under the theme ‘Transitions to sustainability, lifestyles changes and human well-being: cultural, environmental and political challenges.’ The theme of the 25th IAPS 2018 Rome Conference was chosen to ensure a continuity with the previous IAPS Conferences, held every two years in Lund/Alnarp, Timisoara, Glasgow and Leipzig between 2010 and 2016, respectively. The choice of this theme was meant to purposively underline the importance of the everyday life contexts to understand people–environment relations in present-day human societies. In the Rome 2018 Conference, which saw the participation of more than 500 registered participants, a large number of scientific works that were presented in the symposia, thematic oral sessions, poster sessions and key-note speeches went further along this thematic stream, and many of them focused on the structural, social and psychological processes needed to achieve a transition towards a more sustainable human society at the global level. As was highlighted during the conference, and as coherently reflected in the selected papers that compose this special issue, to achieve a significant shift towards a more sustainable relation between humans and their daily life environments, the need for radical lifestyle change is increasingly recognized, at the scientific, political and public opinion level. To many extents, the transition to a low-carbon, inclusive and open society has already started, under the push of different driving forces. Among these, we can mention different intergovernmental initiatives, such as the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25 (Madrid, Spain, December 2019), the UN 2019 Climate Action Summit and Youth Climate Summit (both held in New York, USA, September 2019), or the launch in December 2019 of an European Union Green deal by the European Commission, under the lead of the newly appointed EC President Ursula von der Leyen, or other political initiatives that hit the attention of global media communication, such as the ‘Green New Deal’ legislation proposed by USA Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In addition to these important institutional steps, we cannot omit to mention many other bottom-up and