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.

Book Review: The Nutmeg’s Curse – Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh

This book starts with the mystery surrounding a story of a lamp falling in the dead of the night on the island of Selamon, in the Banda Archipelago, in 1621. This lamp sparked the genocide that was to follow on the Banda Islands by the Dutch East India Company.

The Banda Islands are surrounded by still-active volcanoes and one of the gifts of this volcanic soil is Nutmeg. According to Ghosh, at the time, the worth of this spice in Europe had reached mythical proportions describing it as “envy-inducing symbol of luxury and wealth that conforms with Adam Smith’s insight that wealth is something desired, not for the material satisfaction that it brings but because it is desired by others.”

In the following chapters, he writes about the colonisation of the Americas and the brutal treatment of the indigenous people at the hands of the colonisers. Amitav Ghosh, an Indian-born writer, frequently refers to the decades-long colonisation of India in his book as well. As an Indian, I was especially keen to read his views.

Not a book on colonisation.

This, extremely well-researched book is filled with parables on how the extermination of the indigenous peoples led to the extermination of a type of thinking that had kept the original inhabitants in rhythm with the land they lived on for centuries, till the colonisers arrived.

In addition to other truly Machiavellian practices like terraforming, this was done by systemically linking nature-based thinking, solutions or mysticism with so-called ‘savagery’, and replacing it with market-based thinking that viewed the Earth as a resource simply to be used and  inevitably exploited. The consequences of which we are facing today with the climate crisis.

Now, he writes “The Western settler-colonial culture is no longer confined to the settled colonies. Since the adoption in 1989, of the Washington consensus, the ideologies and practices of settler-colonialism have been actively promoted, in their neo-liberal guise, by the world’s most powerful countries, and have come to be almost universally adopted by the national and global elites.” And it’s these settler-colonial practices that are now being implemented in many a former colony, unfortunately.

The parables in this book are forcing me to rethink my ideas of progress. As a product of a post-colonial society and education, I am beginning to see more clearly how deeply entrenched our mistaken views of progress in this world are. It made the need to re-establish a value system that is not rooted in exploitation, and has a more symbiotic relationship with the Earth, all the more urgent to me.

In this book he elaborately explains why we cannot fight the climate crisis by simply using market-based-solutions-thinking – the very thinking that caused this predicament in the first place. To truly tackle the climate crisis, we first need to question the foundation of our foggy and distorted ideas of progress.

In my opinion, books like this one are fighting hard to break through this fog.

The climate crisis: What’s poetry got to do with it?

Last week, newspapers and social media were awash with distressing images of raging, red fires and swirling rivers flooding unsuspecting towns. These images accompanied headlines quoting the IPCC’s latest report that issued a ‘code red’ for humanity. I read so many blogs, tweets and status updates where people were (and still are) trying to process the findings of this report. The overwhelming feeling is one of hopelessness, powerlessness, and frustration. I feel the same way.

This crisis is most definitely a challenge we will have to face as a collective. There is a lot that needs addressing in terms of policy and structural changes. At the same time, it is a challenge for the individual too. For me, the challenge is to maintain hope in the power of the individual.

The report states that humans are ‘unequivocally’ responsible for heating the planet. Don’t we then have the unequivocal power to change it? We must continue to believe in that agency. But how do we, individuals, those of us who are not in seats of power, keep this sense of agency alive? Especially when headlines like this one “Latest IPCC Report Predicts Disaster – Yet Again. But Not Much Will Happen – Yet Again.” lull us into a sense of futility. A sense that nothing we do will make an iota of difference anyway.

Reclaiming agency

Around the time the report came out I was reading the book Hope is a decision by Daisaku Ikeda, a Buddhist Philosopher and in it, he writes: “An ancient Japanese Poet wrote, “Poems arise as ten thousand leaves of language from the seeds of people’s hearts”. Our planet is scarred and damaged, its life systems facing possible collapse. We must shade and protect the Earth with “leaves of language” arising from the depths of life. Modern civilization will be healthy only when the poetic spirit regains its rightful place.”

Could we reclaim our sense of agency and salvage our planet with odes to its unimaginable beauty and generosity? Sir Mark Rylance said something similar in an article in the Guardian a few months ago when he called for the arts to help solve the climate crisis by telling stories that persuade people to ‘fall in love with nature’.

The peculiar power of poetry 

For centuries different cultures have been using poetry as a means of communication. Many of the Buddha’s teachings were documented in the form of poetry by his disciples. Like music, there is a peculiar power in poetry.

What if we, not just Hollywood, Bollywood or the publishing industry, incorporated more poetry in our communications? What if we were to give poetry its rightful place in mainstream communication? Through it, we would have to confront our relationship with nature, because it certainly needs some work. The form it takes doesn’t need to be anything other than what you’d like it to be. Nothing grand.

We could use it, not to judge whether someone might be the next T.S Elliot, but to simply speak of the Earth in a different language. The pandemic has already frazzled our nerves and made us extraordinarily anxious. I believe there is a growing need for a lighter touch in how we communicate about the climate crisis. An approach that has less yelling and despair. Something softer, something more heartfelt to inspire change. And, while writing from the heart, where most poetry comes from, we might also be able to regain some of the agency that seems to elude us. Perhaps, then with each verse, as Daisaku Ikeda writes, we could slowly start to create those ‘leaves of language’ with which we could shade our planet.

In that vein, I wrote a poem (below) for a tree I had grown to love outside my window. It had to be cut down. I must admit it really did come from the heart and writing it did give me a peculiar power.

Standing Tall

My sister sighed as she fell,

The wind whispered her a farewell,

Did they know what they’d done?

Did they know she’d loved them well?

 

My family before me was razed,

One by one, I felt their roots shrivel,

We were all connected once,

Now all that has been erased.

 

They will come for me too, I know,

Until that day comes nowhere will I go,

This isn’t just my woe, I know,

I feel you bleed too, you’re all not my foe.

 

Until they come, I’ll stand tall,

I’ll do what I can to protect you all,

They will come for me too, I know,

But don’t worry, until that day comes nowhere will I go.