Psychologists and human behaviour experts are being enlisted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to advise on how to make it more "cool" to be environmentally-friendly.
UNEP's executive director, Mr Klaus Toepfer, said messages urging the public to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and purchasing habits are too "guilt-laden" and disapproving.
He said people "are simply not listening" to messages urging them to drive their cars less or admonishing them for buying products that cause environmental damage.
"Making people feel guilty about their life-styles and purchasing habits is achieving only limited success." Studies indicate that only 5 per cent of the public in developed countries are embracing sustainable lifestyles. "So we need to look again at how we enlist the public to reduce pollution and live in ways that cause minimal environmental damage", Mr Toepfer said.
Announcing that psychologists were being drafted in, he added: "We need to make sustainable life-styles fashionable and 'cool', as young people might say. We also need to make it clear that there are real, personal, benefits to living in harmony with the planet."
Sustainable consumption patterns and how governments, industry and the public can play their role in delivering these are among the key issues being discussed this week at UNEP's 22nd Governing Council meeting taking place in Nairobi, Kenya.
