Communicating Climate Change Globally

Climate change communication addresses a range of issues relevant to the communication of climate change and climate science to lay audiences or the public.

In doing so, it approaches this particular challenge from a variety of different perspectives and theoretical frameworks. This climate change communication, theory, and practice; includes the cultural and social context for attitudes and beliefs around climate change and intersections between development communication and climate change communication.

The main findings support previous development communication research that suggests the distribution of information is not enough to generate sustained engagement with either climate change advocacy or individual behaviour change. Climate change communicators are most effective when they focus on positive solutions and appeal to specific local communities.

Climate Science

Science–policy communication around climate change is complicated. Climate science communicators would benefit from a synthesized list of messaging strategies that is accessible and practical, but still supported by robust theory. The interviews were conducted with participants in partnerships between climate scientists and climate policymakers in Canada. This revealed a number of favoured messaging techniques, which were then analyzed through the lens of communication.

The scientific community has come to the conclusion that global climate is changing, but the existence of climate change continues to be rejected or doubted, creating communication challenges for professionals. Scientists and governments around the world largely accept the scientific conclusion that the climate is changing and that climate change has been accelerated through the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing. The current United States administration announced plans to reduce net emissions of carbon by over 120 million metric tons by 2025.

What Can Science Tell Us About Climate Impacts?

In terms of communicating how the future climate will affect a specific area, and what those changes will be, it can be difficult to match people’s information needs to scientific projections of the future climate. Communicators need to keep this distinction in mind.

Communicating about climate change has its own unique challenges: from cutting through the scientific jargon in order to represent climate impacts simply and faithfully, to opening up conversations about climate solutions to be inclusive and accessible. In spite of its unique challenges, the job of communicating climate change can also borrow much from other sectors. Climate communicators can adopt campaign and social marketing strategies used in other areas of science and the public interest, such as campaigns to eradicate deadly diseases or get children into school.

Why Public Engagement is Important?

Public engagement can fuel a dynamic where a perceived strong mandate leads politicians to adopt transformative climate policies, where people are supported and motivated to adopt low-carbon lifestyle changes, and where businesses are incentivized and compelled to build a green economy.

Reflecting on what the core challenges for climate communication are at the moment, it is suggested that two aspects deserve special attention: First, how to effectively speak to new audiences, that is people that have not been addressed properly by climate communicators so far; and second how to turn concern into action.

Developing a Good Communications Campaign

Communication framing is increasingly being used to influence the way individuals perceive climate change and to encourage sustainable behaviour. Since the 1980s, the term ‘global warming’ has been used to describe the impact of increasing levels of greenhouse gases linked to human activities. Global warming may describe the concept of global risk and capture the attention of the public, but it obscures the complex and potentially devastating range of effects resulting from what scientists refer to as climate change.

 Awareness affect, and knowledge largely vary among the public depending on whether the term climate change is used in communication. The choice of terminology also impacts how the public understands and evaluates the issue. The terminology used by communications professionals, educators, and agricultural producers has expanded beyond the use of global warming and climate change.

It is important to realize that individuals perceive climate change in a variety of ways and prioritize different values, making it clear that climate change cannot be responded to in a single way. Efforts in voluntary climate change initiatives should consider framing climate change impacts and behavioural goals. Framing climate change in this way can also overwhelm individuals causing them to disengage from the topic.

Messages on climate change that use scare tactics can create barriers to an individual’s engagement. Messages addressing an individual’s personal beliefs, environment, and experiences are more likely to create engagement.

Social media has been identified as one way for organizations to interactively communicate and build relationships. Climate change organizations in the United States that promote their social media pages on their websites use Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, most often. Researchers credit failure to identify key publics as the main challenge for climate-change organizations working to relay climate-change information between experts and the public.

Framing Specific Mitigation Solution

For too long, policymakers have been reluctant to acknowledge the costs to human health, the economy, and the environment of burning fossil fuels and deforestation, the greatest sources of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Many argued misleadingly that there was a choice between jobs and the environment, or that we had to burn fossil fuels and cut and convert forests irreversibly in order to deliver prosperity.

In recent years, this has been revealed as a false choice. Former heads of state and finance ministers from across the world formed the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. The Commission establishes the case for why environmental protection and specifically, cutting greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate change are the foundation for strong economies and people’s well-being in the future. Meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement would save a million lives per year through reductions in air pollution alone.

Conclusion

Responding to climate change requires accelerated action across the world, at all levels of society. There is no simple, off-the-shelf blueprint for how this will be achieved.