Climate Storytelling

Climate scientists have great difficulty in making known the risks brought about by climate change. They face denial, scepticism and distrust in science in a world of misinformation and divisive politics (Woodley et al., 2022). Some of the difficulty comes from the scientific community itself, which tends to assume that providing scientific information “will necessarily lead to desired behavioural changes” and is constrained by its own standards of “strict objectivity and political separation”. The authors of the paper argue that conventional communication methods put distance between scientists and their intended audiences and may “fail to generate inspiration and connectivity”. They believe that scientists should be willing to “radically adapt their communication strategies” and they discuss three relevant factors.

First, they examine the problems of communicating climate change risks arising from the inherent difficulties of the subject, the activities of vested interests and lobby groups, the background of political polarization, the need to convince policy makers, and the circulation of “fake” news through social media platforms. Second, they consider the debate within the science community over how to respond to the new cultural context; how to address the “balance between what they perceive as science (being honest) and what they perceive as advocacy (being effective)”. Climate scientists may need to “choose an appropriate place along a continuum” between science-dominated and subjective judgements and recognise that some degree of advocacy may be unavoidable. Third, they accept that the usual one-way model of science communication is “hindered by an inability to address the ways in which people perceive and react to information on climate change”. It fails to inspire people, and “lacks the dimension of storytelling required to make information both accessible and engaging.”  Storytelling is not the only way to improve the communication of scientific ideas, and Woodley et al. describe a workshop in which printmaking, creative writing, theatre, performance and songwriting were used to explore collaborations between art and science. Feedback from the event indicated that it had a “significant impact … on the ways in which individual participants viewed their standard practices” in science communication; some participants expressed the desire “to sustain their critical reflection on communication practices and to embed their new understanding within future science communication and engagement.”

The Climate Action Unit (CAU) at University College London “works to change how scientists, policymakers, businesses, media, civil society organisations and citizens engage with each other about climate change” (UCL, 2024). They point out “a poverty of stories … too few ways we talk about climate change” and aim to shift the focus from the threatening nature of climate change to stories of action. For individual scientists and experts trying to tackle climate change, the stories can be about their day-to-day work; for “organisations, decision-makers, and community members” they can be about their climate actions. This theme is developed in short videos in which the CAU Director gives evidence to the House of Lords' Environment and Climate Change Committee. The CAU website also describes The Strategy Room, a project designed as a tool for Local Authorities, which provides an “immersive experience which uses theatre techniques & social psychology to uncover what residents think of climate change mitigation initiatives”.

Several European cities recounted climate stories and actions through the City Hubs project which aims to bridge the gap between scientists and society with climate stories (REACHOUT, 2024). Media used included text, audio, photos, videos, AI generated images, and maps. Amsterdam ran a science practice lab with the goal of working towards “a standardized European approach for climate risks”. Lillestrøm and Cork had the theme of flooding in common, whereas Milan, Logroño and Athens focussed on the effects of high temperatures. The narratives featured fictitious but typical citizens and were illustrated with drawings, photos and video. The characters typically referred to how their environment and lives had been affected or threatened by climate change, and their accounts were backed up with data on weather events, e.g. from radio and television broadcasts.

My Climate Story “is a public research project that makes global climate change personal.” Its workshops “guide participants to recognize how local climate impacts are …. shaping their life stories.” (Penn, 2024). Participants can allow their personal stories to be included in the project’s public story bank, a “resource for exploring how diverse individuals are making meaning of changes” which are typically measured in terms of atmospheric CO2 or sea level. Visitors to the project’s website are invited to make their own contribution, under any of three headings: a personal story connecting climate change to individual experience, typically near home; a story about how climate change is affecting non-human creatures; and a climate story interview between two people. In each case there is a set of questions: one set asks contributors to select from a list of emotions those that describe how they feel about climate change.

Many writers assume that storytelling must have a place in mitigating climate change, but not all provide evidence that this is so. An article entitled Q&A: Does Climate Fiction Work? addresses this issue (Nature, 2024). Dr. Schneider-Mayerson of Colby College, Maine, is asked “Have you found any evidence that climate fiction can change people’s perspectives?” He had collaborated on a study which found that “climate narratives did make people more concerned about climate change, heightening their risk perception and willingness to act. But the narratives did not have a particularly long-lasting impact.”

In his foreword to Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions Arvind Singhal tells a story that he believes had a powerful effect: that of the women of Mandal village who in 1973 protected their forest from lumberjacks, originating the term “tree hugger”. Their action, he claims, directly resulted in bans on felling green trees in parts of India (Coren and Wang, 2024).

The editors of the book describe its purpose as helping to build a “Community of Practice for Climate Storytelling”; they try to showcase climate storytelling strategies and applications in various professional fields, narrative genres, media platforms and modes of communication; and to synthesize best practices, lessons learned, and future planning. While there are chapters on topics such as fiction writing, visual illustration and news reporting, much of the book is concerned with Entertainment-Education, the “strategy whereby educational messages are purposely integrated into entertainment platforms to influence knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and social norms”. This form of communication has been used for decades in fields such as reproductive health, where quantitative data has been gathered which supports the view that it can be effective. Entertainment-Education is described as having “a long history of changing community social norms and applying pressure on governments to take action around complex and difficult topics, from child marriage to gender-based violence”. Information presented in narrative form attracts and sustains attention better and is easier to comprehend and remember than in a didactic presentation.

Information can be embedded in popular entertainment, with the advantage of reaching mass audiences. Some serial dramas or soap operas on television or radio are designed from inception with behavioural or social change objectives, others strategically insert educational messages into existing media and entertainment, and a third category comprises pure entertainment, but with climate change at the heart of the narrative. Serial form allows reinforcement, and identification with characters increases engagement, as does portrayal of real-world events that are relevant to the audience. The editors believe that whether in scientific reports, news, or entertainment, climate change tends at present to be associated with anxiety and fear, and they recommend that climate stories should focus on “positive framing and actionable solutions to foster human agency and facilitate real change” and claim that they can be told “without triggering identity politics”.

References

Coren, E., and Wang, H., eds., 2024, Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions, New York, Springer, open access online, accessed 5 December 2024

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-54790-4

Nature, 2024, Q&A: Does Climate Fiction Work? The Nature Conservancy, online, accessed 4 December 2024

https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/does-climate-fiction-work/

Penn, 2024, My Climate Story, University of Pennsylvania, online, accessed 3 December 2024

https://ppeh.sas.upenn.edu/experiments/my-climate-story

REACHOUT, 2024, City Hubs climate stories, REACHOUT, online, accessed 3 December 2024

https://reachout-cities.eu/climate-stories/

UCL, 2024, Climate Stories, University College London Climate Action Unit, online, accessed 30 Nov 2024

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/climate-action-unit/climate-stories

Woodley, E., et al, 2022, Climate Stories: enabling and sustaining arts interventions in climate science communication, Geoscience Communication, online, accessed 25 Nov 2024

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364442433_Climate_Stories_enabling_and_sustaining_arts_interventions_in_climate_science_communication

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