How to Fix Climate Change Communications: Strategies for Awareness and Breaking Silos
There's a communication gap between great research and solutions, and poor reach. With the 1.5° climate clock ticking, Climate Comms 2.0 can help organisations with impactful outreach.
If there’s one skill that years of intense 24x7 journalism can teach it is probably the one-liner. Not a cheeky repartee but a pitch. The pitch that a reporter makes to their editor, an editor to the newsdesk, a producer to an anchor. But they’re only the conduit to an audience. The pitch is what headlines, video descriptors, or even thumbnail images may eventually be based upon; it may evolve, and it may change. But having one brings clarity to telling a story by setting the goal - clearly and unambiguously - at the start.
Think about the last few times you dived into an article or a video (beyond those hyper-addictive reels!) Chances are that it’ll probably have caught your attention based on just a snippet of information. Maybe it was a few seconds of video or a short sentence or teaser blurb or some personality or maybe there’s some buzz and you clicked on it out of curiosity. That’s essentially the culmination of the pitch, the hook to get people interested in what you have to say. This process brings clarity to story-telling but also can be used for redoing a comms strategy.
What does all this have to do with comms in climate, air pollution, and sustainability in general?
Creating impactful climate communications
The pitch is a simple but powerful communication tool when used effectively. It can be adopted far more in climate action comms. Having spent some decades in news and on climate/air pollution research and coverage, what is striking is the depth of science and research available. Much of this - with notable exceptions - barely gets covered in the mainstream media, be it digital, TV, print or social media. Yes, there are several, excellent publications and sites that regularly headline such reports but these tend to be niche. The net effect is a gap in science communication.
Power of media
The influencing power of communications is immense. A stark example is in the adoption of heat pumps in the US and UK. One got it right, the other didn’t.
In UK ‘media scare stories’ are seen to have discouraged homeowners from installing heat pumps which are a cleaner, more efficient source of heating. The gas boiler lobby has been blamed as well as false beliefs that it’ll take a lot of costly insulation in “leaky” homes. In contrast, the US has a multi-pronged approach. Tax incentives are backed by progressive reporting in the mainstream media, awareness drives, and even the offer of free coaching for potential clients. The role of popular media is seen as key to bridge the awareness gap.
‘Awareness’ is one part of climate action that perhaps hasn’t got as much attention in the past as, say, financing, policy action, scientific research, and green innovation. But now ‘awareness’ is a stated goal by various organisations and investors.
Sustainability solutions for the 1.5 degree redline
No doubt improving credible comms can help amplify climate action far more than is happening now.
Time is running out before global warming crosses the 1.5° warming mark (over pre-industrial average temperature) beyond which the adverse effects on health, food security, the economy and much else are likely to worsen as per the IPCC; the world’s long-term average is currently at about 1.2 degrees but short-term averages have crossed the 1.5 threshold frequently. The unpredictable extremes of climate change are hurting many, from vulnerable communities to rich insurance firms coughing up billions of dollars for the destruction caused by extreme weather events like severe storms, flooding, and wildfires.
The gap in sci-comms is an opportunity for think-tanks, corporates, investors, funders, businesses, NGOs, multi-lateral agencies, and government programmes.
Some organisations are doing excellent comms. The UN Climate Change has a useful tutorial, the WHO and WEF are known for their well-produced videos in particular and overall comms outreach, and groups like World Weather Attribution have rapidly stepped up their comms impact helped by the fact that they focus on climate disasters making headlines, and groups like Purpose focus on improving sustainability comms.
Are comms teams delivering impact?
Many other organizations and groups are also doing ground-breaking climate action work. Yet they are not creating enough of a media buzz in proportion to the importance and impact of their initiatives. Is some new research falling through the cracks instead of informing policy change? Are there innovations going unnoticed by potential investors? Are there some corporate sustainability best practices that can help a larger industry? Is the comms too dense to engage a general audience, to trigger curiosity?
“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”
Charles Mingus, Jazz composer and bassist
The question such organisations need to address is whether they need to step up their comms game especially if they have internal teams. Some may not explicitly want this, although, in years of interaction with several groups and experts, there hasn’t been one I’ve come across who doesn’t want higher impact comms.
Media teams, like other resources, tend to be expensive. Experienced personnel, tech logistics, and other related costs require significant budgets. There are several examples of organisations putting out well-researched material which gets negligible engagement on social media. Likes, retweets, comments, or views range from single digits to perhaps a couple of hundred.
[Word of caution here: This doesn’t mean one has to succumb to creating viral content. The intent must be to write or produce material based on authenticity and expertise; and position it so it reaches the relevant audience. If it happens to go viral, that’s a bonus!]
This is unfortunate as this is not just a monetary investment with underwhelming returns but institutional expertise that is not being optimised. There are solutions at hand and, yes, it requires some grind.
In the digital era, there are new challenges like disinformation on a large scale but also new opportunities like your own podcasts or YouTube channels. If an organisation’s strategy is done well, the growth in engagement, visibility in the Press, and generally a buzz around the organisation’s work can only improve.
(If your organisation is invested in climate action in any way, you may have some insights on this. Or perhaps some questions. Feel free to get in touch at Chetan.Bhattacharji@gmail.com, happy to chat on how to make your sustainability comms more impactful.)
Solutions for climate change communications
The big plus is that there is still widespread respect and appetite for data and science, even in an era of trolls and climate change deniers. That's a good starting point. Beyond that greater engagement and collaboration require investment in time and resources. It may seem counter-factual but comms strategies, with some exceptions, need not chase the media and viral content. That will follow once there’s a focus on lucid and relevant substance, on organic material based on your or your organisation’s expertise.
A pivot to more impactful comms strategies is quite doable. Fundamentally it needs a change in ways of seeing (hat-tip to John Berger’s classic.) Add to this the other layers - simplifying and de-jargonising; sharper writing, contextualisation, coaching those in charge of comms, interview strategies, and better analytics are some of these. The improvement in comms could be measurable, with metrics like viewership or engagement metrics, or intangible, say, a policy-maker or investor following up on what’s been published.
Pegs for every pitch
A pitch can be made stronger if it’s positioned in a wider context. This could be a matter of timing it, say, to a UN COP conference, a new government, a super-cyclone, an extreme heatwave, intense air pollution. Piggybacking on such pegs can make your comms suddenly more topical and help improve reach. Credibility is important because there is a fine line separating this from seeming too opportunistic. Given the extent of the climate crisis, for every pitch there are probably enough pegs.
Consider these for instance: Emissions of greenhouse gases increased last year and policy action is not fast enough to reduce this. Climate funding remains stingy by the biggest historical polluters, mainly the global north, as does the transfer of green tech from richer countries to developing ones. Greenwashing, that is climate action masquerading as environment-friendly, is a taint that’s becoming harder to launder particularly for large businesses. Litigation risk is also rising with pressure on polluters to pay up. The world is bracing for yet another record-hot year. On the other hand climate action is becoming more ambitious at least in terms of funding and commitments if not quicker action.
Climate comms will play a key role in the next few years but it needs to amp up now.
Post-script: Identifying target audiences? The comms dilemma was described in a nutshell by a woman recently who worked with Nagapattinam’s vulnerable fishing community, in South India. Responding to a climate comms panel, in Mumbai, she said nothing the panel had discussed mattered to the fisherfolk she knew. Her point was that phrasing climate issues like the 1.5°C target is too abstract for such communities who are suffering the effects of global warming. Can climate comms be tailored for them? Similarly, warming seas is also too abstract for apple farmers in the Himalayas suffering losses because of extreme weather. Such vulnerable communities are key audiences but there are several others. Funders and investors, lawmakers and policymakers, students, Press, and social media among several others. If climate change affects every aspect of life, every opportunity should be used to communicate about it. Daily headlines are still dominated by politics, business, sports, the weather forecast. What will it take for climate change to be a daily fixture? More awareness can only help collaboration, sharing best practices, ESG, adaptation, mitigation, and resilience.