United Nations Behavioural Science Week: Insights for Empowering Citizen-Centred Innovation

UN 2.0 and the Quintet of Change

The United Nations has acknowledged that it needs to evolve. UN 2.0 is its internal transformation agenda – an effort to upgrade the institution’s ability to respond to 21st century challenges. This initiative is driven by the stark reality that the world is significantly off track in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to the 2024 Sustainable Development Goals Report, only 17% of SDG targets are currently on track, with one third showing no progress or even regressing.

At the heart of the UN 2,0 reform is the “Quintet of Change”: Data, Innovation, Digital, Strategic Foresight, and Behavioural Science. These five pillars are seen as foundational to revitalizing the UN and its member states’ capacity to support the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This week, the UN hosted a Behavioural Science Week online conference over 5 days. ICI Canada’s Digital Strategist, Max Peacock, attended some of these panels, in part, to look for  insights that may be relevant to Canada, from the perspective of promoting citizen-centred innovation.

Behavioural Science: From Nudges to Systemic Leverage

Behavioural science has evolved from a primary focus on individual behaviour to that of the collective. The field is shifting from what Nick Chater and George Lowenstein call the “i-frame” (individual-level interventions) to the “s-frame” (system-level change). The goal is no longer just to help individuals make better choices, but to reshape systems so that desirable outcomes become default, equitable, and sustainable.

A current – and politically contentious – example of an s-frame intervention in Canada is the federal consumer carbon tax. Rather than nudging individuals through soft incentives, it changes the rules of the game by putting a price on emissions. As a market-based policy, it operates at the system level, influencing how goods are priced and what technologies become competitive. But its effectiveness still hinges on shifting individual consumption patterns at scale. Whether it catalyzes deeper structural change – like decarbonizing energy production or transforming industrial processes – depends on whether it’s supported by complementary regulations, infrastructure investments, and sustained political will.

This shift from i-frame to s-frame was central to the UN’s recent Behavioural Science Week conference. Panel speakers discussed how behavioural science is being used in their respective UN agencies to understand institutional inertia and guide participatory design of policy interventions.

Seeds for Needs: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence

One example that illustrates how the Quintet of Change can come together in practice is the “Seeds for Needs” project, part of the UNDP Accelerator Labs Network. Over 50,000 farmers, primarily in the Global South, act as citizen scientists, testing different seed varieties in their own field to identify which ones grow best under changing local climate conditions. What’s significant is how this knowledge is shared: not through expert-led dissemination, but through peer-to-peer networks built on trust and shared experience.

The project exemplifies a shift from top-down mandates to community-driven adaptation. Farmers evaluate and exchange data directly with each other, building a decentralized system of agricultural innovation. This trust-based model leverages social norms and local embedded knowledge – farmers are more likely to adopt new practices when they see others doing the same. 

The project also integrates other pillars of the Quintet:

• Data: Farmer-generated data on seed performance is standardized and shared across regions.

• Digital: Open Data Kit, a free and open source software is used by farmers on their phones. Data is aggregated and analyzed using ClimMob.

• Innovation: The model reframes R&D as a distributed, participatory process rather than a centralized one.

• Strategic Foresight: Insights from Seeds for Needs feed into longer-term planning for food security under climate stress.

Rather than treating smallholder farmers as passive recipients of aid, “Seeds for Needs” builds a distributed knowledge infrastructure that is low-cost, participatory, scalable, and resilient by design.

Implications for Canada

Canada faces its own complex domestic impacts of the polycrisis. The "Seeds for Needs" initiative exemplifies the power of community-driven, trust-based networks to foster systemic change. Canada’s policy landscape stands to benefit from this approach. Behavioural science, when integrated into system-level innovation, can inform how we design AI governance, digital public infrastructure, and climate adaptation strategies. Platforms and open standards—whether for health, housing, or sustainability—can be shaped to encourage collective intelligence sharing, not just individual compliance.

The Institute for Collaborative Innovation (ICI Canada) advocates for citizen-centred innovation. This means building policy from the ground up, in partnership with those affected. The UN’s evolving toolkit provides international validation and practical methodologies for advancing this objective.