As global environmental crises mount, numerous policies have been proposed with a view to a more sustainable future. However, many of these recommendations are never implemented, in part due to a lack of citizen support.
In an article published in the journal Bioscience , a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore argue that greater public support for pro-environmental policies is needed, highlighting a very unexpected contributor to this equation: genes. Using a sample of more than 2,000 adult twins from the UK, the authors compared the results of a survey of monozygotic or identical twins with those of dizygotic twins, who share fewer genes.
“We found that monozygotic twins were consistently more similar to each other with respect to nature, environmental movement activism, and personal conservation behavior than dizygotic twins, suggesting genetic influences on these phenotypes,” the authors state. The results also demonstrated “moderate heritability (30% -40%) for concern for nature, activism within the environmental movement, and personal conservation behavior , as well as high genetic correlations between them, suggesting a partially shared genetic basis. “. According to the researchers, this finding is well aligned with evolutionary studies that describe the heritability of altruistic and cooperative behavior and the benefits of those traits for future generations.
Despite these surprising findings, the authors caution that high heritability does not imply that environment is unimportant. In many cases, they say, “environmental interventions, such as policies, can influence heritability,” pointing to the need for more studies to unravel these complexities.
