David Attenborough: “If we save the sea, we save our world”

The ocean floor is often referred to as the last great frontier – dark, mysterious and menacing all at once. And in my recent research on the arguments and frames used in climate communication, I found that the devastation caused by the rising levels of this shadowy frontier looms large, adding to its perceived menace.

But the new documentary Ocean, narrated by David Attenborough, turns on the light, dispels the shadows, and reveals a habitat just imperilled as the land above.

Backed by spectacular visuals, Attenborough’s wonder-filled voice guides us through miles of ocean floor. He takes us through kelp rainforests, and three-mile-high sea mountains, that host vibrant underwater worlds – bustling societies of marvellous living beings whose lives are so intricately connected.

(Shout out to the boxer crab that uses poisonous sea anemones as its gloves!)

As Attenborough describes it, their lives, much like ours, are so intricately woven together that should one of the species fail, the whole fragile ecosystem begins to wobble, then crumble.

A win-win

One of the greatest threats to these wondrous worlds, as depicted in the documentary, is posed by ruthless fishing trawlers. Their sharp talons claw indiscriminately through these delicate eco-systems that have perfected themselves over thousands of years, leaving carnage and a desolation in their wake – an echo of the desolation we witness in the wake of razed rainforests.

Despite the bleakness, the documentary does remind us that the ocean has one remarkable ability: it heals quickly.

All we need to do is leave it alone. Just for a few years.

We’re repeatedly reassured that we don’t need to stop fishing altogether. Instead, as more than one fisherman in the film emphasises we need to respect and work with the ocean. This may not be a quick fix for the rising sea levels, but it will help. Healthy marine life in a healthy ocean absorbs large amounts of carbon – even more than the rainforests on land. As David Attenborough concludes: If we save the sea, we save our world.

A win-win, no?

How can we help?

I won’t lie, it wasn’t an easy watch. Nor should it be. This is just where we are. But since I was in a theatre there was no looking away. Often, after watching something like this, I feel helpless and wonder what I can do. So, I swear off this and that. But this film offered many hopeful moments. One that struck me was how important the small, often invisible beings and actions are.

Take, for example, the nondescript phytoplankton – it’s no glamourous boxer crab, I’ll give you that. But the whole ecosystem relies on these microscopic creatures, and they absorb billions of metric tonnes of CO2. And unknowingly (at least for most of us), we rely on them too.

And it’s from these micro-organisms that I took hope: every living being, every action we take is important, and does matter in the grand scheme of things.

Concrete action

So, if you’re looking to act, you could sign this petition: https://only.one/act/bottom-trawling (sourced from: Enric Sala)

The documentary is campaigning for 30% of world’s oceans to be preserved from exploitation in anticipation of the UN 2025 Ocean Conference in June, now just about 3% is protected. The film was produced by Silverback films and Open Planet Studios, and directed by Toby Nowlan, Keith Scholey, and Colin Butfield.

Lady Macbeth

The tragedy of Macbeth is often seen as a testament to raw ambition but rarely is it seen solely through the eyes of the women. The ballet drama, Lady Macbeth, I recently saw at the National Opera and Ballet in Amsterdam, shifts the spotlight from the General to the Lady – telling the story through her eyes.

The lead, Olga Smirnova, is absolutely brilliant. Although I was perched high up in one of the nosebleed seats, and couldn’t really see her facial expressions, I was captivated throughout the performance. Each movement radiated fierce emotion, amplified by the extraordinary soundtrack, creating an unspoken dialogue.

One moment in particular stayed with me: the moment when she glides on to the stage to meet her husband after they learn he will not be the next king. The anger she feels – at being overlooked, dismissed – is thick and palpable.

But what has compelled me to write this is the timeliness of the angle taken – by the choreographer Helen Pickett and director James Bonas – to focus on how women lose our power and how we lean on one another. The progression of the acts as they’ve written and choreographed it mirrors the slow erosion of the space and autonomy generations of women have fought so hard to claim.

In Shakespeare’s time, women often had no other avenue but to express their ambitions through the men in their lives. Unfortunately, this dynamic still plays out in many parts of the world today.

If there was one thought that lingered after the curtain fell on this poignant performance, it was this: when women’s spaces—to be, to dream, to lead, and to access their own power—are curtailed, no one wins.

For more on the performance visit the website.

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Hopeful results from the world’s largest survey on climate change

With the perpetual sense of urgency surrounding crucial elections and the widely prevalent despair over tragic wars, it can sometimes seem like the pressing need for climate action has taken a back seat.

However, according to world’s largest standalone public opinion survey on climate change, People’s Climate Vote 2024 conducted by the UNDP and the University of Oxford, it is dominating our thoughts.

I found the results from this survey to be both surprising and hopeful. For instance, they found that 87 percent of the world’s population (surveyed) cares about the state of our planet! That’s a remarkable consensus in our deeply divided world.

It’s just one of their many compelling findings. Below you’ll find some brilliant graphics made by UNDP highlighting some other key findings.

Three reasons why I’m sharing this survey:

1. We don’t necessarily know what people are thinking, if we don’t ask the right questions: With all the arguments we see in public forums, we could be led to believe that we’re very attached to our prehistoric fuel. But the survey finds that 72% of people globally want their country to transition from fossil fuel to clean energy quickly.

2. Easy, shareable visuals: UNDP has broken down the findings from their enormous survey into accessible and relatable visuals. I think these should be widely shared and used to change archaic policies that don’t reflect what the majority of the world is thinking and feeling.

3. Hope: Lastly, and most importantly, to reassure those of us working on climate change mitigation (in whatever capacity) that it’s not a losing
battle – 81% of people globally want their country to plant trees and protect wildlife!

You can find the survey here: People’s Climate Vote 2024. If you’re interested in the topic, I can promise you, it’s not a long, dull read.

(Visuals below are by UNDP)

The march of the Mosquito

The Aedes albopictus, or the Asian tiger mosquito, is gaining notoriety this summer. It was the focus of an article in The Guardian a few days ago, it was on the Dutch NOS news yesterday, and it also makes an appearance in this article published in Open Access Government that I collaborated on with my colleagues, epidemiologists at KIT Institute, Jake Mathewson, and Ente Rood.

Why is it making headlines? This dreadful mosquito is a vector for diseases such as chikungunya, yellow fever, and dengue.

Growing up in India, I vividly recall government officials combing through the garden during the warm, wet monsoons – when this dreaded mosquito thrives – looking for stagnant water. They’d warn us against empty pots with stagnant water and promptly throw out any collected water they saw.

Just yesterday, the NOS featured a public health professional doing precisely the same thing in Arnhem.

This striped menace is on the move!

The rising temperatures in this age of climate change offer fertile ground for this mosquito to move and multiply. However, Jake and Ente suggest that to stop the advance of this mosquito and other diseases that will gain ground, we must extend our efforts, broaden our scope beyond our backyard and borders, and commit to transnational strategies.

To know more about how we can and should respond to the shifting burden of diseases, read our article here: https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/the-shifting-burden-of-neglected-tropical-diseases-in-the-age-of-climate-change/176417/

Or download the PDF.

Talking the (Climate) talk

You may have already come across this climate dictionary by the UNDP. It’s been making the rounds on social media for a while now.

I’ve found it to be an incredible resource that can be used in so many ways!

It’s a patient guide that helps you navigate the nuanced world of climate change terminology. The dictionary identifies and explains quite a few of the confusing terms and concepts one might come across while reading about climate change.

For instance, what is the difference between carbon removal and global carbon capture, and is it the answer to all our troubles? See page 14.

You could extract a specific page and send it to a friend looking for a simple explanation of a puzzling term they’ve just heard – I did it.

If find that it’s more than a dictionary – it’s a quick onboarding to the world of climate change communication.

Where and how did people consume their news in 2023?

The Digital News Report for 2023 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is out.

As someone who sells their wares in pretty much the same marketplace as journalists, I find their insights on news consumption very valuable.

In the report, I found three key takeaways that I think are worth sharing. The first really came as a surprise to me.

I recommend reading the entire report. But if you don’t have the time, the summary alone is packed with valuable nuggets of information. Or you could jump straight to the country-specific insights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins

I love books – hard copies, not e-books. So when I read something riveting, I make it a point not to dog-ear a book or make notes in the book itself. But when I’m tempted, the entire book-reading experience unfortunately turns into either a drawn-out, internal battle with myself to drop the pencil or a note-making chore.

From the moment I started reading The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins, I had to stop myself from reaching out for a pencil. But when I made it to the end of the first chapter without giving in, to my surprise, I saw he’d included a summary of the very points I wanted to underline! Not only did it save me from the inevitable internal turmoil, but it also saved me precious note-making time.

It’s an excellent example of chapter two – Know your audience.

Atkins is a presenter on BBC News whose ‘explainer’ videos (according to me) are a masterclass in packaging complex issues in an accessible, informative, and deceptively effortless manner. He weaves in just how painstaking the process of making them is into the book.

But the book isn’t just for journalists. In my opinion, Atkins has managed to accomplish something that most communication people struggle with – targeting a very wide audience.

He’s managed to tailor-make the book, with summaries, quick references, examples, and anecdotes, so that it’s relevant for anyone who needs to explain anything to a tough crowd – a primary schoolteacher in front of disinterested kids or an employee trying to pitch a brilliant new idea to a busy boss.

Apart from appreciating the fact that you can see that every sentence is meticulously mulled over, I also appreciated the author’s general tone. Atkins’ tone is warm and open. He is unstinting with his praise for his colleagues and makes sure he credits people as he goes along.

At the same time, he doesn’t hide the disappointments he’s had to deal with in his career. He explains how, over the years, he turned what he learned through those experiences into input for the painstaking preparation of whatever he produces. He writes that when someone asks to see how he edits, he sees it in their eyes that they wonder ‘why he’s obsessing over details this small’. “I do this because the details add up to something that is more than the sum of its parts,” he writes.

The book isn’t necessarily an easy read – it depends on what you want to get out of it. It can be, if you’d like to skim the surface of what the book has to offer, there are short explanations for every aspect of the book. For example, there’s a short chapter on writing emails.

It’s not an easy read if, like me, you want to use it as a guide to step up your explanations at work and study to a whole other level. If so, you might just have to whip out your notebook and start making notes, which I now, unfortunately, realise I cannot escape.

Climate change communication has a new four-letter word

We like bad news. Or so this recent study published by nature human behavior would have us know. The authors of this paper examined over 100,000 viral news stories and found that most people clicked on headlines with negative words that instilled fear more often than they did on those with positive words. The reason for this, they explain, is somewhat coded in our genes.

“The tendency for individuals to attend to negative news reflects something foundational about human cognition—that humans preferentially attend to negative stimuli across many domains” they explain. They go on to elaborate that humans, from infancy, focus their attention on the negative stimuli in their environment. “Negative information may be more ‘sticky’ in our brains,” they say.

By Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project

What’s this got to do with climate change communication you ask? Quite a lot, I’d say.

There is no doubt that the climate crisis is the biggest challenge that humanity has ever faced. As we collectively blunder through it, one of the toughest aspects of it is figuring out how to communicate about this crisis. Clearly, we are gluttons for punishment because we evidently love bad news and need fear to get us to move. Just like in the old days, when Neanderthals lurking around our caves, forced us to develop tools that may have driven the Neanderthals to extinction, and allowed us, homo sapiens, to reign strong.

But when it comes to climate change reporting, too much of it causes climate anxiety and fear for their future – especially among the youth. Some experts believe this can be a good thing and stimulate action among young people. At the same time, paradoxically, all this bad news is also causing a rise in news avoidance. So then is fear the new four-letter word in climate change reporting?

If not fear, then what?

Should we have more hopeful communications? Dr Matthew Hornsey and Dr Kelly Fielding caution against messages of hope. According to them, “Distress is strongly correlated with mitigation motivation; hope is not”. In their research, they found that messages informing people of any form of happy progress somehow made people even more complacent. This doesn’t really shock anyone, I imagine. Then is hope the new four-letter word in climate change communication?

Not necessarily. It depends on what kind of hope you’re selling. Human-rights strategist and communications expert and founder of hope-based communication, Thomas Coombes advocates the use of solutions in hope-based communications. While the Drs Hornsey and Fielding found that positive messages of progress that inspired hope led to complacency, they also found that positive messaging around solutions also led to inaction. People just didn’t want to engage in solutions if there was no real urgent need for them to.

So, for some, fear might be the new four-letter word in climate change communication, and for others, it might be hope. I personally believe we need a healthy dose of both with a smattering of solutions. Simply because no one is going to try to put out the fire if we all believe we’re going to surely burn – even if the water hoses are right in front of us.

We need the purveyors and messages of hope and vision to assure us that even if there is a high likelihood of all of us burning, there is a small chance that if we all pick up the hoses in front of us, big or small, we just might be able to put out the fire.

Analysing global news consumption

This latest Digital News Report 2022 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism analysing global news consumption is a treasure trove of information and insights.

The insights found in it aren’t just relevant for journalists, but are useful for anyone trying to engage with a large international audience.

Below are 5 findings that resonated with me.

I’ve highlighted them because these are trends I’ve observed working on communication for international development too. And who doesn’t like their observations backed up by quantifiable data from a reliable source?

If you don’t have the time to read the entire report, the summary alone is very informative.

Communications to turn the tides

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is in grave danger, according to the Sustainable development Goals Report published this month. The report also highlights areas that need exploring to salvage the situation.

No one expected a glowing report in the aftermath of a pandemic. Especially with the war in Ukraine directly impacting access to food around the world. But seeing the cold, hard numbers in colorful infographics is sobering.

For instance, progress on SDG 1, No Poverty, has been derailed by COVID-19. After a steady decline in extreme poverty rates, we’re seeing the first rise in extreme poverty since 1998. Rising food prices and the war in Ukraine are poised to push this even further.

The window for Climate Action, SDG 13, is rapidly closing. At the same time, in 2021, emissions increased by 6% and reached the highest levels ever. And according to the report, “current national commitments are not sufficient to meet the 1.5 °C targets. Under these commitments, greenhouse gas emissions are projected to increase by almost 14 percent over the next decade”

These are just two of the 17 goals. Each goal is examined in this report. To read about the status of each goal I recommend reading the report or going through the summaries here. Urgent and comprehensive action is vital to rescue these goals from becoming mere tokens.

According to Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Liu Zhenmin, “The severity and magnitude of the challenges before us demand sweeping changes on a scale not yet seen in human history.”

Of course, this situation has been building up over the years. And this is evident in previous reports.

On a constructive note, what is different in this year’s report was the inclusion of a section highlighting the effectiveness of communication strategies. They break down the diverse communication channels used by National Statistics Offices and how effective these channels were in countries with different levels of income (graph from the report below). They write, “The opportunity is ripe to take advantage of modern communication channels and produce tailored support and data products to reach different user groups.”

As someone who has been working in communication for years, I’ve found that the area of communications is consistently underestimated and underutilized – frequently an afterthought. But, as the report states, the time is ripe to utilize all the communications tools at our disposal to make the sweeping changes needed to turn the tide.