new climate change communication and other lessons … · 2020. 10. 13. · fear doesn't work...

FEAR DOESN'TWORK

AND OTHER LESSONS ONCLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION

Photo: Farshad Usyan

CONTENTS

02 INTRODUCTIONWhy has it been difficult tocommunicate climate science andclimate change?

03 WHAT AFFECTSCOMMUNICATIONPsychology on how people processinformation , and how it can affecthow people view climate change

06 HOW TOCOMMUNICATECLIMATE CHANGEIncludes knowing your audience ,framing your message , use ofemotional appeal , andcommunicating uncertainty

14 CASE STUDY 1:COMMUNICATIONIS SURVIVALA look at how communication is amatter of survival in the case ofthe Philippines and typhoonHaiyan

17 CASE STUDY 2:COMMUNICATIONINFLUENCINGPOLICYA look at how communication canhelp influence internationalclimate policy as in the case of the"1 .5 to Stay Alive" campaign


At times, technical terms are beingrelayed to the public withoutsufficient explanation, or climate dataare still being presented withoutenough context. When these happen,the public tends to draw away, feelingdetached from the issue. However, aswe will learn later, climate changecommunication is very important, andin some cases, may become a matterof survival.

So what makes climate changecommunication effective? Accordingto the Center for Research onEnvironmental Decisions (CRED), “inorder for climate science informationto be fully absorbed by audiences, itmust be actively communicated withappropriate language, metaphor, andanalogy; combined with narrativestorytelling; made vivid throughvisual imagery and experientialscenarios; balanced with scientificinformation; and delivered by trustedmessengers in group settings.”

This seems quite overwhelming, butdon’t worry, we made this toolkit foryou to help break down what iseffective climate changecommunication and give you practicaltips on how to do it. Ready?

P A G E 2

INTRODUCTION

What do people think when they hearthe words “climate change?” Tooscientific, too complicated? And Howdo they feel? Fear, skepticism, orhope? What images do they see? Polarbears, glaciers, and typhoons?

Climate change has been a challengefor both the scientific community andthe media. There seems to be gapbetween the science and what isbeing communicated to the public.This has, of course, an impact onwhether or not people will care aboutthe issue and choose to take action, ornot.

According to Susanne Moser and LisaDilling, making people act on climatechange has become challengingbecause of a few things: “thecharacteristics of climate changeitself, its politicization andinstitutionalization, cognitive andpsychological ways of processinginformation, structural challengerspertaining to the media used forcommunication.”

Climate communications still seemsto be a problem among scientists andjournalists alike.

WHY HAS IT BEEN DIFFICULT TOCOMMUNICATE CLIMATE SCIENCEAND CLIMATE CHANGE?

WHAT AFFECTSCOMMUNICATION?

P S Y C H O L O G Y O N H OW P E O P L EP R O C E S S I N F O R M A T I O N

The person you are talking to already have theirset of values and beliefs. According to CRED,

confirmation bias “makes people look forinformation that is consistent with what theyalready think, want, or feel, leading them toavoid, dismiss, or forget information that willrequire them to change their minds and, quitepossibly, their behavior.”

In short, for climate deniers, it doesn’t matterthat there is 97% scientific consensus on man-

made climate change. They will look forinformation that will instead align to what theyalready know and what they believe in.

According to Carolyn Gergoire, people want toavoid cognitive dissonance with confirmationbias. Dissonance is where people haveinconsistency in thoughts and beliefs, whichcreates tension, especially if it requireschanging behaviors.

“Confirmation bias ultimately turns into‘motivated reasoning,’ an emotion-baseddecision-making process in which people tocling to false beliefs and ignore any opposingevidence,” Gregoire said

Can anything be done about this? Fortunately,yes. According to CRED, people will eventuallyupdate their existing beliefs and perceptions bycorrecting misinformation. The catch?

Communicators must be able to figure out themisconceptions of their audience on climatechange, disconnect this misinformation, andreplace it with new facts. However, too muchfacts can also backfire. So other tactics must beemployed if we are to communicate climatechange to climate skeptics and convince othersto believe in the science.

There are many things that affect climate

change communication, not just in terms of

media platforms and how the message is

relayed to the public, but it is also important

to understand how the receiver of the

message processes information.

C O N F I R M A T I O N B I A S

P A G E 3

WHAT AFFECTSCOMMUNICATION?

P S Y C H O L O G Y O N H OW P E O P L EP R O C E S S I N F O R M A T I O N

So now we know that people will only continueto believe what they already believe in, and thatthey will only choose to process informationthat already confirms their biases. This may alsolead to people only getting more information toprove themselves and end up believing in itstronger than they already do. This is called the“backfire effect.”

According to a study from Dartmouth, “If peoplecounterargue unwelcome informationvigorously enough, they may end up with 'moreattitudinally congruent information in mindthan before the debate,' which in turn leadsthem to report opinions that are more extremethan they otherwise would have had."

David McRaney summarizes the backfire effectsimply, “Once something is added to yourcollection of beliefs, you protect it from harm.

You do it instinctively and unconsciously whenconfronted with attitude-inconsistentinformation. Just as confirmation bias shieldsyou when you actively seek information, thebackfire effect defends you when theinformation seeks you, when it blindsides you.

Coming or going, you stick to your beliefsinstead of questioning them. When someonetries to correct you, tries to dilute yourmisconceptions, it backfires and strengthensthem instead.”

According to Skeptical Science, there are twoways to deal with this: present informationcoupled with self-affirmation; and second,

frame it in a way that doesn’t threaten theirworld views. We’ll have more on framingmessages in the second part of this toolkit.

Be careful though, it is not only climate skepticsor climate deniers who have confirmation biasand experience backfire effect. Even advocatescan have them too.

If climate skeptics use the argument thatclimate change isn’t real because it’s stillsnowing where they live, advocates must becareful not to connect every weather relatedevent, such as El Nino and typhoons, to climatechange. The urge to use everything to our ownadvantage to help the cause will only lead tomore misunderstanding andmiscommunication, and only widens the gapbetween the science and the public’sunderstanding of it.

B A C K F I R E E F F E C T

P A G E 4

HOW TOCOMMUNICATECLIMATECHANGES o h o w t h e n c a n w e c o m m u n i c a t e c l i m a t ec h a n g e ? W h a t a r e t h e e f f e c t i v e w a y s t or e a c h t h e p u b l i c a n d m a k e o u r a u d i e n c eu n d e r s t a n d o u r m e s s a g e b e t t e r ?

You will read many articles on the howcommunicating climate change (or any otherissue), and most will tell you that an importantthing to understand is to know your audienceand frame your message accordingly. How youcommunicate climate change to universitystudents might be different to how youcommunicate it to policy makers.

Framing is actually quite a common practicein media. For example, when you hear newsabout the latest rise in temperatures duringsummer, you will read articles about it indifferent frames: how it can affect health, howit can affect food security, how it can affectyour everyday life with decrease in watersupply.

N O M A D I C | 2 4

A. KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCEAND FRAMING YOUR MESSAGE


Another example would be communicating theimportance of renewable energy, such as solarenergy to help curb global warming — forbusinessmen and the energy sector, one can framethe message in the lines of how solar energymakes sense for the economy and how it will bethe future of the energy sector; for workers in coal-fired plants, one can frame the message sayingthat solar plants give more jobs and will notrisk worker's health.

This is what you call framing, and most peoplealready frame information unintentionally,because of the contexts they live in. Journalistsalso frame news so that it can relate more to theaudience. However, Matthew Nisbet warns us thatframing doesn’t mean spinning news: “Framing, itshould be noted, is not synonymous with placing afalse spin on an issue, although some experts,advocates, journalists, and policymakers certainlyspin evidence and facts.”

RELEVANT QUESTIONS TO ASK

In choosing how to frame your message, it mightbe useful to ask the following questions aboutyour audience:

What are their demographics? Are they old oryoung? What level of education have theyattained?

What do they do in their everyday lives? Do theyexperience climate change impacts directly? Dothey see it first hand?

What do they care about? Do they care about thefuture? Or do they care more about what’shappening in the present?

Who do they listen to? Do they listen more toauthority figures or do they distrust them?

Where do they get their information? Do they getit from news sources or do they get informationfrom other people close by like neighbors andfamily members?



P A G E 6

According to Climate Outreach,values which people hold canalso define whether or not theysupport environmental causes:

“Over several decades, andthrough research conducted inover 60 countries, there is now ahuge body of evidence thatshows the certain values andbeliefs tend to go together –while others tend to be opposedto each other. People whoidentify strongly with ‘self-enhancing’ values (e.g.materialism, personal ambition)tend not to identify strongly with‘self-transcending’ values (e.g.benevolence, respect for theenvironment).

By knowing these things, youwill now have an idea of whatyour audience might think whenyou give them informationabout climate change, and youwill have a better idea how tocommunicate your message in away so that they would listenbetter and care more.

Has there been any unsuccessfulframes used to communicateclimate change? Yes, there are.One example cited by Nisbet isthe frame climate advocatesused to compare distortion ofclimate science to George W.Bush’s misuse of evidence tomake a case to go to war withIraq. This frame was likely to berejected by Americans.

"Framing, it should benoted, is notsynonymous withplacing a false spin onan issue, althoughsome experts,advocates, journalists,and policymakerscertainly spin evidenceand facts.”-Matthew Nisbet

A. Who is our audience?

Our target audience are those whodo not care about the new nuclearpower plant. They are upper-middle class, probably white collarworkers. They care about theirfamilies, have insurances, like tofeel safe and secure, do not have orvery little experience in protestingor going against authority. Theylike to have peaceful lives.

B. What is our possibleframe/message?

Because the audience is upper-middle class, we can imagine thatthese people care about safety andsecurity, and welfare of theirfamilies, above everything else. Thepossible frame we can use is hownuclear power plants can threatenthe communities and we can giveexamples such as Chernobyl andFukushima. Messages can be builtaround this, and can focus on thelasting impacts of nuclear plants incommunities.

EXAMPLE

A new nuclear power plant is setto be built in an upper-middleclass city, but a few miles awayfrom where people live. Thepeople are divided: half of themwouldn’t want to coal firedpower plant to be built, whilethe other half doesn’t care.Those who don’t care about itthink that nuclear power plantsare safe and do not pollute theenvironment, unlike coal-firedpower plants. How do we framethis so that those who do notcare will eventually care aboutthe cause?

Photo by: AG Sano

P A G E 7

"To break through the

communication barriers of human

nature, partisan identity, and media

fragmentation, messages need to be

tailored to a specific medium and

audience, using carefully researched

metaphors, allusions, and examples

that trigger a new way of thinking

about the personal relevance of

climate change."

-Matthew Nisbet

SCENARIO:

According to Carbon Brief, we only have 5 years

left before we blow our 1.5 degree carbon budget.

(Read the whole article here:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-only-five-

years-left-before-one-point-five-c-budget-is-

blown)

You have learned that your city, which has

experienced drought and water shortage as a

climate change impact, might approve fracking.

Only a few people in your city is against it, they

believe that this development will help people

have jobs. The city is composed mainly of lower

middle class to lower class workers. Most of them

have been educated until high school.

How would you communicate this research on

1.5 degrees and connect it to why it is important

to stop fracking to the following audience to

help your cause:

a. Fellow climate advocates who are thinking of

how to campaign

b. Your local government who might approve

fracking or a new coal fired power plant

c. Members of the affected community who

support the fracking or the coal fired plant

EXERCISE


Uncertainty about the science proves to be a

challenge to communicators. According to Maxwell

Boykoff, “Uncertainty can be reframed as scientific

incompetence.” And we hear this time and again

when climate skeptics keep on using the argument of

uncertainty to defend their position. So how do we

deal with it?

According to the Uncertainty Handbook by Adam

Corner et al., uncertainty is a friend of science and an

enemy of inaction. And there are 12 tips they offer to

help us communicate uncertainty (excerpts from the

handbook and article from The Guardian):

1. Manage audience expectations

People see science as definite, without room for

uncertainty. Let your audience understand that

science is an ongoing debate and let them see that

even outside of science, people make decisions based

on uncertainty all the time.

2. Start with what you know, not with what you don’t

know

Start with science that has been settled. Are humans

causing climate change? Yes. Will we cause changes

to our climate if we don’t reduce carbon emissions?

Yes. Focus on these messages first before going to

questions such as will climate change make

hurricanes more common.

4. Shift from “uncertainty” to “risk”

Most people are used with the idea of risk than

uncertainty, that’s why it can be more effective. For

example, do say “The risk of our town flooding,

disrupting our businesses and schools, is now higher

than ever before because of climate change.” Don’t

say, “Although there is a great deal that is unknown

about how local services will be affected, climate

change is more likely to cause more flooding in the

future.

5. Be clear about the type of risk you are talking about

A common strategy of skeptics is to intentionally

confuse and conflate different types of uncertainty. It’s

therefore critical to be clear about what type you’re

talking about – causes, impacts, policies or solutions –

and adopt appropriate language for each.

Example, do say “Scientists are as certain about the

link between human behaviour and climate change

as they are about the link between smoking and lung

cancer.” Don’t say, “Although we can never be 100%

certain of anything, it is highly likely that changes in

our climate are due to an anthropogenic interference.

6. Understand what is driving people’s views

Uncertainty about climate change is higher among

people with right-leaning political values.


COMMUNICATING UNCERTAINTY

P A G E 9

However, a growing body of research points to

ways of communicating about climate change that

do not threaten conservative belief systems, using

language that better resonates with the values of

the centre-right.

7. The most important question is “when” not “if”

Climate change predictions are usually

communicated using a standard uncertain

outcome format. So a statement might say that sea

levels will rise by “between 25cm and 68cm, with

50cm being the average projection, by 2072”.

But flip the statement around – using an uncertain

time framing – and suddenly it is clear that the

question is when (not if) sea levels will rise by 50cm:

“sea levels will rise by at least 50 cm, and this will

occur at some time between 2060 and 2093”

8. Communicate through images and stories

Most people understand the world through stories

and images, not lists of numbers, probability

statements or technical graphs.

9. Highlight the positives of uncertainty

Research has found that uncertainty is not an

inevitable barrier to action, provided communicators

frame climate change messages in ways that trigger

caution in the face of uncertainty. If you talk about

uncertainty in a positive way, it creates hope, if you

talk about it in a negative way, it creates feelings of

hopelessness.

10. Communicate effectively about climate impacts

The question “is this weather event caused by climate

change?” is misplaced. When someone has a weak

immune system, they are more susceptible to a range

of diseases, and no one asks whether each illness was

caused by a weak immune system. The same logic

applies to climate change and some extreme weather

events: they are made more likely, and more severe,

by climate change.

11. Have a conversation, not an argument

Despite the disproportionate media attention given to

skeptics, most people simply don’t talk or think about

climate change all that much. This means that the

very act of having a conversation about climate

change – not an argument or repeating a one-shot

slogan – can be a powerful method of public

engagement.

12. Tell a human story

People’s tendency to prioritise daily personal

experiences over statistical learning, and their existing

political views, have a far greater in uence on our

beliefs about climate change than the error bars on

scientists’ graphs. When people feel inspired by the

answers to climate change, they no longer see

uncertainty about the future as the central question.

P A G E 1 0


USING EMOTIONALAPPEAL ANDUNDERSTANDABLELANGUAGE

M o s t p e o p l e b e l i e v e t h a t u s i n ge m o t i o n a l a p p e a l i s t h e m o s t e f f e c t i v ew a y o f c o m m u n i c a t i n g c l i m a t e c h a n g e .I s i t t r u e ?

The question begs to be asked: if we useemotional appeal, which ones are the mosteffective? A study by Tyndall Center for ClimateChange Research found that fear is the mostwidely used emotion in communicating climatechange.

Saffron O’Neill and Sophie Nicholson-Cole fromthe Tyndall Center for Climate Research sayscommunicators must be careful in using fear: “Fearful representations of climate changeappear to be memorable and may initiallyattract individuals’ attention. However, they canalso act to distance and disempower individualsin terms of their sense of personal engagementwith the issue.”

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FEAR, HOPE, ANGER -

WHICH EMOTIONS REALLY MATTER?

Photo: AG Sano

Research by the Yale Project for Climate ChangeCommunication The Role of Emotion in GlobalWarming Policy Support and Opposition agreeswith this. The research suggests that using fearmay be counter-productive.

According to the research, “Researchers foundthat “worry” about climate change was thestrongest predictor of support for policies tomitigate climate change. “Disgust,” on the otherhand, was the strongest predictor of oppositionto these policies. Interestingly, researchers alsofound that “fear” did not strongly correlate withsupport for policies to mitigate climate change.”

In addition the research suggests that instilling ofhope, a positive emotion, may lead to moreengagement with the public.

TOO MUCH EMOTIONAL APPEAL?

In communicating climate change it is no surprisethat most people use emotional appeal as a wayto reach the audience, especially if facts and datadon’t seem to connect to the public.

And it is true, using emotional appeal can beeffective, and as cited above, “worry” can be thestrongest emotion you can use to make peopleact. But, be careful in using too much emotionalappeal, as your audience might eventually gettired of it. CRED emphasizes that your audiencehave only a finite pool of worry, a limited capacityfor worrying.

According to CRED, these 3 things might happenwhen you overuse emotional appeal:

1. That your audience’s concern about your riskmay lessen when exposed to other near-termthreats

2. That your audience’s emotional system will gettired in the long run and will not remain engaged

3. That your audience will experience emotionalnumbing whereby overexposure to emotionallydraining situations will eventually lead them tobecome apathetic



P A G E 1 2

3. Acknowledge that the audience has other

pressing issues. Create a balance between pre-

existing concerns and the climate change issues

to be discussed.

4. Gauge an audience’s degree of numbing (i.e.,

ask them questions about their levels of media

exposure to climate change, show them well-

known images associated with climate change

and note their re- action), make them aware of

the various effects of numbing, and encourage

them to briefly consider their level of worry and

potential numbness to climate change.

So what can we do about it? CRED gives us 4

tips on how to avoid numbing an audience to

climate change:

1. Decide what portfolio of risks they want to

make the public more aware of and then

demonstrate the connection between those

risks, such as the relationship between climate

change and disease.

2. Balance information that triggers an

emotional response with more analytic

information to leave a mark in more than one

place in the brain.

Photo: AG Sano

P A G E 1 3

CASE STUDY:WH E N C L I M A T E C O MM U N I C A T I O N

I S A MA T T E R O F S U R V I V A L

Climate change communication can become amatter of life and death, especially for countrieswhose lives are in the frontlines of climatechange and yet have very limited access toinformation.

The Philippines, for example, is one of the mostvulnerable countries to climate change. Thecountry experiences an average of 20 typhoonsin a year. While typhoons are not caused byclimate change, extreme weather events suchas Haiyan is linked to the rise in globaltemperature. In fact, during Haiyan’s landfall,the 19th Conference of Parties (COP) washappening in Warsaw, Poland. Philippinenegotiator Naderev Sano made an impassionedspeech about the lack of action inside theUnited Nations Framework Convention onClimate Change (UNFCCC).

Back home, at least 7,000 people died becauseof Haiyan. The main culprit? Confusion aboutwhat the country was facing, due to lack ofgood communication.

Dr. Mahar Lagmay, Director of Project NOAH,

the Philippines’ primary DRR program, said hedid everything he could communications wise— a television warning, even tweeting celebritieswho “have more followers than the populationof Finland.” But no one seemed to care.

After the typhoon ravaged the Visayas region, itwas found that most evacuation centers werelocated near the coast. Everyone who wereevacuated in these areas died, due to the stormsurge that swept cities and towns. Blame wasput in the government agency for weatherforecasting, for not having communicated theterm “storm surge” properly.

On the other hand, the government agencyinsisted that it was able to communicate theweather bulletin days and hours ahead ofthe typhoon's landfall. Meanwhile, people fromthe communities and even the local city mayorssaid they simply didn’t know what “storm surge”

means and wished it was explained to themthat “it was like a tsunami.”

T Y P H O O N H A I Y A N

P A G E 1 4

Photo: Erik de Castro

There was also an expectation that they would beable to weather the typhoon, as they haveexperienced many strong typhoons in the past.However, they didn’t know that what they werefacing was the strongest typhoon recorded inhistory to make landfall.

Many criticisms were hurled at Dr. Lagmay and histeam, but Dr. Lagmay insists on using the correctterms. He says in an interview with Esquire that, "It'snot going to be the last time we experience this.We're going to have storm surges again," heexplains, not for the first time, and definitely not thelast. “We can’t confuse the terms, because themechanism for evacuation could be different. Weneed the people to know what they are, and thatkind of awareness is developed long before."

While the Philippines has always been a countrythat experiences many weather and climaterelated events, most people still lack theknowledge on climate change. As was the case,

even government officials thought that Haiyanwas just like any other strong typhoon that hittheir cities in the past. There was already aknowledge gap on climate change and itsimpacts, such as extreme weather events andthe risks people face.

Aside from this, people in coastal communitieswho were interviewed said that they have seenchanges in weather and the ocean, but did notknow what these changes were about. Theyalso believed they had always known what todo during storms. However, in recent years, theirknowledge has proved no longer enough toadapt to these changes.

In this case, the failure to communicate climatechange, its impacts, and risks, such as anextreme weather event like Haiyan, led to theloss of lives of thousands of people.

WH E R E WA S T H E G A P

P A G E 1 5

T H E I S L A N D WH E R EE V E R Y O N E S U R V I V E D

There was, however, one small island in the path ofHaiyan where everyone survived. Their weapon?

Good communication.

Camotes Island, a small island off the coast of Cebu,

whose disaster risk reduction strategy includedgood communication at the local level. The townhas adopted the purok system. The purok is thesmallest unit of the town, often consisting of about50-100 households. Each purok has a leader, who isin charge of making any announcement thatcomes from the Mayor’s office - including disasterpreparedness and weather advisories.

In an article from Rappler entitled San Francisco:

The Island where All Survived, Local Disaster RiskReduction Management Office (LDRRMO) Researchand Planning officer Monica Tan shares howcommunication about weather related events arerelayed in the island:

“All municipal grounds have access to a WiFiconnection, allowing the LDDRMO) to monitortyphoon tracks or tsunami warnings," she said.

Photo above: Tulang Diyot, an islet of Camotes Island inhabitedby 200 families. Everyone survived typhoon Haiyan.

Once a disaster has been confirmed by stateweather bureau PAGASA to hit the town , theLDDRMO calls a meeting of barangay (town)

officials and issues written advisories forpreparation and evacuation .”

"The puroks make information dissemination –

a make-or-break factor for disasterpreparedness – much more effective ,” sheadds .

One of the islets of Camotes Island , TulangDiyot , was cited as a good example wheregood communication saved all 200 familiesinhabiting the islet . In the same article inRappler , Tan shares how it was done :

"In Tulang Diyot , even without an advisory , thepurok officers were ready because ofcommunication with barangay officers ," saidTan .

They didn 't need to wait for a barangayofficial to come to their aid . By Wednesday ,

two days before the storm , families werealready being evacuated out of the island . ByThursday , everyone was evacuated ," sheadded .

The success of Camotes Island is of coursedue to a number of factors : good governmentplanning and disaster risk reductionmanagement , engagement with the localcommunity , and good governance included .

However , it can 't be denied that good climatecommunication plays a vital part in it . Wherepeople understand the risks they are facingand where the message is disseminatedclearly , good communication can save lives .

"The puroks makeinformation

dissemination – amake-or-break factor

for disasterpreparedness – much

more effective."

Camotes Island, CebuPhoto from Expedia

P A G E 1 6

CASE STUDY:S U C C E S S F U L C L I M A T E

C O MM U N I C A T I O N I N F L U E N C I N GI N T E R N A T I O N A L P O L I C Y

Successful climate change communication canhelp campaigns succeed, and eventually lead toa bigger win such as changes in policy. The casestudy we will look at is the “1.5 to Stay Alive”

campaign leading to the 21st Conference ofParties (COP) in Paris last 2015.

What is the 1.5 to Stay Alive campaign about?

The 1.5 to Stay Alive campaign was led by theisland states and the vulnerable countries insidethe United Nations Framework Convention onClimate Change (UNFCCC). The campaignadvocated for the inclusion of “1.5 degrees”inside the Paris Agreement, a temperature limitfor global warming.

Although it seemed impossible, the said goalwas eventually included in the Paris Agreement,but not after a campaign went underway.

The 1.5 temperature goal was first heard ofinside the UNFCCC in 2009, during the COP15negotiations in Copenhagen. Back then, mostcountries supported the 2 degree temperaturegoal, but Tuvalu, along with the Alliance ofSmall Island States (AOSIS) and Africancountries, decided to support 1.5 degreesinstead of 2 degrees.

I . 5 T O S T A Y A L I V E

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H I S T O R Y O F 1 . 5

This was after AOSIS commissioned a work withthe Potsdam Institute for Climate ImpactResearch on the impacts of 2 degreetemperature rise. The islands knew that theywere going to be in much danger and decidedon a 1.5 degree target. This caused divide withother countries who called the 1.5 degree goal“unrealistic.”

In the next years, small islands continued tochampion the 1.5 degree goal, and eventuallyattracted more countries to join, with ChristianaFigueres supporting the said goal in 2011.However, this wasn’t enough for the biggercountries to support the said temperature goal.

Above: One of the music videos produced forthe "1.5 to Stay Alive Campaign"

In 2015, a UN report concluded that 2 degreeswasn’t safe and a study by Nature ClimateChange suggested that a 1.5 degree goal was stillachievable although “the window for achievingthis goal is rapidly closing.”

But small islands and vulnerable countries aren’tjust going to give up. The Caribbean nationslaunched a “1.5 to Stay Alive” campaign, togetherwith the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), agroup of vulnerable countries inside the UNFCCC.

In the Caribbean, free concerts were held, analbum was recorded, videos were produced. TheCVF helped in campaigning inside the UNFCCC.

There were many communications effort to makethe public understand what the campaign wasabout and help put pressure inside the UNFCCCand the Paris Agreement.

In the end, more than 100 countries endorsed theambitious global temperature target, and wasincluded in the Paris Agreement.

There was, of course, many factors involved in itssuccess, including lobbying with negotiatiorsinside the UNFCCC. However, one key factor wasthe communications involved in the campaign.

Where before, only people inside the UNFCCC orscientists would understand the importance of a1.5 degree target, with the 1.5 to Stay Alivecampaign, the message was brought closer tothe public and the public was able to pressuregovernments to be more ambitious in their goals.

The message, “1.5 to Stay Alive” was easy tounderstand, and was short and catchy enough toremember. The platforms used were importanttoo. Take for example the use of music, an artform embedded in the Caribbean culture. Bycreating these songs, more people from smallisland nations became aware and educatedabout what they are facing and so too, becameconcerned about what the outcome of the ParisAgreement will be.

Caribbean artists perform at the UNClimate Talks in Paris, 2015Photo from The Voice St. Lucia

WHAT MADE IT WORK

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REFERENCESBig Think Editors. “The Backfire Effect: Why Facts Don’t Win Arguments.” Big Think, 2016, http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-backfire- effect-why-facts-dont-win-arguments. Accessed 25 January 2017.

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