Summary of report by Stefanie Swanepoel with African Earth Rights: Communicating Climate Change - Adaptation Futures 2018

By Brendon Bosworth

Core challenge: difficulty in communicating climate change information in such a way that it shifts behaviour at the state, business, community or individual levels.

Why? Complexity of the message, significant scientific uncertainty of climate change effects and the diversity of demographic groups in the world, each with particular world views and understandings.

Things that make it difficult to communicate about climate change

• The causes of climate change, such as greenhouse gas emissions, often cannot be seen or are only visible in remote and generally uninhabited regions.
• People tend to believe that individual actions cannot have global impacts, especially as these impacts are often not felt at the individual level.
• There are more immediate challenges: food, employment, housing and education.
• Any benefits to changing behaviour will only be apparent in the long term; there is no short-term incentive to shift the way in which we produce and consume.
• People have an “apparently deep-seated psychological need to deny and suppress existential threats.” Climate change communication therefore needs to overcome spatial, emotional and time barriers.

Need for consistent terminology and understanding of cultural context:

• Climate services are often developed with a superficial understanding of the target audience and are dominated by western values and cultural norms. The Africa Ministerial Conference on the Environment recommends developing appropriate climate change terminology in local African languages.
• Climate change messaging needs to use clear and accessible language, particularly because of the complexity of the issue and the uncertainty of climate change long-term modelling.
• The different aspects of climate change-related work tend to use and understand the same terms in different ways.

Communicating uncertainty

• There is a high degree of uncertainty in climate projections for different regions. This makes it difficult for stakeholders to make decisions regarding adaptation measures and to communicate the need for these to constituents.
• In a study conducted by the Priestley International Centre for Climate (Framing climate uncertainty: Frame choices reveal and influence climate change beliefs) researchers note that the translation of uncertain numerical climate projections into “simpler but ambiguous verbal frames” is contributing to the polarisation of opinions about climate change. It found that how climate change messaging was delivered – choice of words and framing of the narrative – influenced how the audience perceived the likely severity of the consequences, and therefore their levels of concern.
• Information should be supplied verbally and graphically – using accessible graphs and figures – to support informed decision-making by non-scientific audiences.

Role of a shared vision

• To bring about long-term and sustained change, researchers must build a shared vision and theory of change within their teams and with stakeholders. “Co-designing activities with an emphasis on communication, reflection, mutual learning and evaluation produces more flexible, respectful and inclusive project environments. This leads to better outcomes and opportunities for dispersal of lessons learnt…” (Seona Meharg of Australia National University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia).
• For adaptation behavioural change to occur communication must empower people to make what are often difficult choices. There is a need for a “different way of reflecting and communicating about the future to inspire, orient and attract action that will ultimately determine the rate and magnitude of climate change.” (Katharina Hölscher’s work – What does a sustainable and resilient future under climate change look like? Transformative visions for Europe).

Compelling narratives

• Successful narratives that lead to the adoption of adaptation behaviour were simple in approach, focused on specific target audiences, communicated via existing and trusted networks, outlined the benefits, connected to people’s experiences and were illustrated through practices. (Based on work by the PLACARD project).
• Urban climate communication must include hooks that describe how climate change will impact and potentially derail the city goals dear to policymakers. It must also include practical examples of cities that have adapted or not to give a human context to the climate data, as well as resources and solutions that city planners can implement and test. Messaging must be segregated for the varied levels within city leadership and management (Markus Berensson’s work for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, United Kingdom).

Co-creation of knowledge

• Co-produced knowledge is more likely to be accepted and acted upon (Ajay Bhave’s research ‘Robustness of adaptation options to deep uncertainty in the Water-Energy-Food nexus in Malawi.’)
• Importance of co-production of knowledge and “language” that is understood by all stakeholders in a particular context.
• The “effective uptake, implementation and impact of scientific outcomes in real life depend very much on the success of this cooperation and collaborative co-production.” This practice can open up space for collaborative decision-making and action, as well as testing new forms of governance and policies to address complex problems. (Barbosa’s research – Collaborative Co-production: what could be missing in climate change adaptation).

Importance of trust and use of intermediaries

• Need to identify what climate information is important for the stakeholder group and for consistent engagement to ensure that messaging is relevant.
• The importance of constant communication and transparency in providing information builds the trust necessary for adaptation activities.
• Co-production of climate information is key to growing credibility and a sense of ownership, and is therefore more likely to be used by stakeholders.

(Neha Mittal from the University of Leeds. Study with the tea sector in Kenya and Malawi – Time to tailor climate information for tea: Lessons from co-producing climate information in Kenya and Malawi.)

Example of using intermediaries:

• Experience in Rwanda found that while context-specific information made available through an online Maproom interface was useful, the most effective way to communicate the information was through intermediaries. In this case, a training-of-trainers approach engaged about 53 000 Rwandan farmers with more than 90% of farmers changing some aspect of their production following engagement. These trainer intermediaries know the rural communities and can tailor the information accordingly. (From Colombia University, James Hansen’s research – Can rural climate services meet context-specific needs, and still be scalable?)

Use of graphic data

• Study (by Neha Mittal) explored which types of graphical visualisations enabled user understanding and led to action. The study surveyed 112 national, local and sectoral planners in Zambia using different graphs and figures to evaluate the level of comprehension among the participants.
• Findings included the men were more confident than women in interpreting information presented in this way, and that information presented in minimums and maximums was more easily understood than in percentiles, and that coloured bar graphs were easier to interpret over different scale, market and non-coloured bar graphs.
• The research also noted that people may have high levels of confidence regarding data they have misinterpreted. Information presented graphically must be unambiguous to avoid misinterpretation and thus miscommunication.

Please view the full report here