Environmental Studies and Sustainability

We live in times of drastic environmental changes triggered by human actions.

These changes have the potential to have a profound effect on the future of our species and countless others.

Our research group examines a wide variety of different policies and management tools that seek to mitigate the impact that human actions have on the environment. This research centres on three main themes: climate change mitigation, urban environmental sustainability, and human dimensions of biodiversity conservation.

Climate Change Mitigation and Urban Sustainability

Human-driven climate change is starting to disrupt our planet, and our research focuses on how to reduce that disruption, through mitigation policies. (For those more interested in adaptation, see the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute.)

We work with the our University's School of Government and other universities, especially as part of the NZ Centre for Sustainable Cities, on climate change mitigation research.

Wokje Abrahamse portrait

Dr Wokje Abrahamse researches human behaviour, specifically social influence and spill-over in environmentally friendly behaviours. The spill-over effect refers to the observation that engagement in one environmentally-friendly behaviour (recycling for example) may lead to other, similar, changes (composing food waste for example). Wokje is also a member of the NZ Centre for Sustainable Cities and is undertaking research on active travel behaviours.