Climate Change Messaging

Conservationists like to think facts speak for themselves. They don’t. In a world where allegiance often trumps evidence, who delivers the message often matters more than what’s being said. The same data, spoken by a nurse instead of a scientist, can land differently. In Amazonia, credibility travels along social lines. Farmers listen to agronomists, not activists. Urban families may heed pediatricians warning about heat-related illness before they trust an NGO ad. Pastors, teachers, and co-op leaders often reach places journalists and policymakers cannot. Matching voice to audience isn’t a branding exercise; it’s simply being honest about how people decide what to believe. That realism also means differentiating the message without diluting it. Indigenous leaders remain central, both as stewards and as narrators of success on their lands. Yet many who influence the forest’s future—like mayors, truckers, ranchers, and small business owners—don’t identify with Indigenous causes. Messages typically work best when they’re tailored to their audience: stewardship told as rainfall insurance for farmers, public-health policy for city dwellers, and fiscal stability for mayors who need predictable budgets. The goal isn’t to make everyone an environmentalist; it’s to make the forest relevant to each person’s daily choices. None of this can be faked. Trust is borrowed first and earned slowly. It grows when people see that acting on information pays, as in lower bills, steadier harvests, clearer skies, or fewer fires. For communicators, the task is to equip credible messengers with verified, usable material: sermon guides, WhatsApp videos, radio spots, farm bulletins, and committee briefs. Over time, authority shifts from the messenger to the message itself. What saves the forest, in the end, may not be a single voice but a variety—each carrying the same plain facts: e.g. protecting forest keeps rain falling; law in the Amazon means law at home; standing forest cools the air; healthy ecosystems make for healthy economies. Repetition stops being spin and starts being education. Once that logic comes from trusted voices, it no longer sounds like activism. It just sounds obvious. [I contributed a section on how to communicate about the Amazon for 'The Endangered Amazonia' report, published by COICA ORG this week. This is the second of three parts summarizing my contribution. This one is titled, "Why the messenger matters in efforts to save the Amazon] 👉 The report: https://lnkd.in/gpZs8JBW

I’ve been coaching a climate tech founder this quarter who reminded me why storytelling matters more than ever in this space. When he first came to me, he had a solid product, sharp science, and a deck full of charts… but absolutely no story about what his company was actually doing for people. So we started with the human side. We talked about the plant managers he’s hired across the country — people who’d spent years in unstable jobs, now earning salaries that allow them to buy homes, support families, and build roots in their communities. We talked about the farmers who rely on his team’s soil technology to grow crops that can survive the heat waves, drought patterns, and unpredictable seasons that have become the new normal. Farmers who used to lose half their yield every summer… now reporting the healthiest, most resilient harvests they’ve ever seen. We talked about the small towns getting cleaner, safer water because his company implemented better treatment protocols, upgraded their filtration systems, or partnered with local agencies to mitigate contamination that had gone ignored for decades. None of this was in his pitch. Not one slide. Not one sentence. But this is the impact. This is the story. This is what climate tech is actually about. When we rebuilt his narrative from the ground up, centering the people who now have better jobs, better soil, better water, and a better future...everything shifted: — His investor conversations opened up — His partnerships expanded — His confidence multiplied — His mission finally felt like the purpose he knew it was Climate tech isn’t just carbon and kilowatt-hours. It’s parents working stable jobs. It’s farmers feeding their communities. It’s families drinking water that won’t make them sick. The data matters, but the people make the story unforgettable. If you’re a founder building toward a big 2026 and you want your narrative to reflect the actual impact you’re making, this is your moment. I’m opening a few more storytelling strategy sessions for climate and impact founders who want: — fundraising storytelling that resonates — investor-ready narratives — human-centered case studies — mission clarity — messaging that moves people to act Your technology is powerful. Your story should be too. 📩 DM me or book directly through my link (in comments) if you’re ready to elevate your narrative before the new year.

I met my inspiration at NY Climate Week and the insights she dropped will shape my work for years. Solitaire Townsend shared something uncomfortable: we've been telling the same "running out of time" story for longer than some activists have been alive. After decades at Futerra studying storytelling, here's the truth → Stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered than facts. Yet we keep managing data instead of managing emotion. Three narrative killers plague climate stories: → Sacrifice – telling people they must give up everything → Agency – making people feel powerless → Fatalism – convincing young people (up to 50%) that we're doomed When she started in the '90s, renewable energy was a joke—"what a few weirdos in California did." Now it's cheaper than fossil fuels. The story changed. The world changed. But we're STILL stuck at the inciting incident without moving forward. That's not how society changes. Society changes through punctuated equilibrium. Everything stays the same, then everything changes at once. We're at that moment. Here's what we miss: people engage with climate differently. After testing across markets from China to the US to Europe, Futerra identified three psychographic groups in your boardrooms and buying committees: GREENS (systems-first) → Push lifecycle TCO, Scope 1-3 cuts, resilience scores. Want credible roadmaps, open data and predictive impact metrics. What stalls them: short-termism and vendor lock-in GOLDS (societal-status focused) → Ask "What are peers doing?" Need recognizable logos, benchmarks, case studies. Move on what will make them look good internally and externally What stalls them: jargon and unclear immediate value. BRICKS (pragmatic operators) → Need <18-month payback, concrete playbooks, role-level wins. Track OPEX cuts and cycle time. What stalls them: Vague benefits and unclear ROI The tragedy is that Greens and Bricks fight each other. Greens push systems thinking; Bricks demand immediate ROI. Both try to convert Golds, who follow momentum. The insight: Stop trying to make every stakeholder Green. Your buying committee has all three. Your roadmap needs to speak to all three. If we change the story, we can change the world. We are homo narrativus : the storytelling ape. It's time we acted like it. -- Looking to tell effective stories for GTM in Climate? Check the pinned comment.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with this question: Why do some climate messages move people—and others don’t? In a new episode of Bloomberg Television's new show Quantum Marketing by Raja Rajamannar, Pranav Yadav (CEO of Neuro-Insight) breaks down how the brain actually responds to storytelling—and how that applies to climate advocacy. Around the 17-minute mark, he analyzes a well-produced climate ad and explains, through neuromarketing data, why it doesn’t stick. The key insight? Psychological distance. The ad talks about climate change, but not in a way that connects to people's personal context—what they care about in their day-to-day lives. And when something feels distant—geographically, emotionally, or temporally—the brain tunes it out. It fails to encode in memory, which means it doesn’t influence behavior. What does work? Stories that activate memory encoding by making the stakes immediate and relatable. That connect to identity, not just intellect. That meet people where they are—then move them. This kind of research lights me up. It’s why I believe we’re at an inflection point in climate storytelling. At TIME, we’re working to reframe climate not just as an environmental issue, but as an economic one. A human one. A business one. If you're doing research in this space—neuroscience, behavioral design, storytelling strategy—or want to help us build a better framework for climate narratives, let’s talk. We need to scale these insights and we have the tools to do it. Watch the whole video but especially the last bit after 17 min if you're thinking about how to communicate urgency, value, and impact in this moment. 🎥 https://lnkd.in/et_uK4c6 #climatecommunications #neuromarketing #behaviorchange #storytelling #TIME #climateaction #businesscaseforclimate

How do we make climate communication resonate with the very people it affects the most? 💡 🌎 In my latest essay for Question of Cities, I reflect on this pressing question, drawing on my experience in journalism and storytelling, as well as research and fieldwork in the climate space over the last few years. The article outlines how dominant climate narratives often remain inaccessible, overly technical, and disconnected from everyday lived realities. Some key takeaways: 🔁 1. Translation isn’t enough—localisation matters. Efforts like the UNDP Climate Dictionary are welcome, but we need to go further. People don’t say “Jalvayu Parivartan”—they talk about rain delays, changing festivals, and crop failures. Climate terms must emerge from how people experience change, not how we define it. Climate must be framed as an everyday issue. For most people in India, climate change competes with daily concerns like food, housing, and livelihoods. 📚 2. Storytelling enables agency. We need to shift from policy briefs to bottom-up storytelling, where a fisherwoman in the Sundarbans or a tribal woman in Odisha becomes the knowledge holder. 🎭 3. Embrace diverse media and people’s science. From metaphor-rich language to theatre, dance, and music—creative formats hold emotional and cultural power. Even community-defined terms like “wet drought” offer nuance and should shape climate adaptation strategies. 📰4. Mainstream media must build capacity. At a recent workshop in Maharashtra, we saw how rural reporters struggle to differentiate between climate and weather. There’s little support for them—especially women—to cover these stories. Climate needs to be integrated into all beats, not confined to disaster or weather coverage. 🎯 5. Climate communications is not just outreach—it’s strategy. Too often, communication is underfunded and under-prioritised. But to build inclusive, impact-driven programmes, we must invest in grassroots media literacy, storyteller training, and long-term behavioural change campaigns. 🌏 In the coming years, we will witness a growing wave of efforts to communicate climate change in new and compelling ways as climate becomes centre stage in policy and mainstream narratives. But the real test of these approaches won’t lie in international recognition or polished campaigns. It will lie in how meaningfully they resonate on the ground—in how a coal worker in Jharkhand or a landless labourer in Maharashtra understands, imagines, and navigates a world that is 1.5 degrees C warmer. 🔗 Read the piece here: https://lnkd.in/dGG8ZNZn A big thanks to Smruti Koppikar and Shobha Surin for trusting me with this piece. And of course, this would not be possible without Asar and all the fabulous work that I have got to be a part of in the last 3+ years! #ClimateCommunication #ClimateJustice

#NarrativeTips, Why climate communications needs to go far beyond climate A friend of mine Nadine Hura reminded me some years back that for many people, the issues that climate disruption bring are not (only) about the climate. Rather the climate problems we face now are simply a symptom of a set of problems deeply rooted in how modern economic systems have treated people and the environment for hundreds of years (extractive I think is a good metaphor here). While some groups are now experiencing the downstream impacts of that via climate disruption, many people have experienced the impacts for much much longer. So simply raising the climate disruption red flag doesn't actually have the resonance many of us communicating about it feel that it should. That is why I believe people will often rate cost of living, or day to day issues more critically than climate. The real pain they feel right now is top of mind BUT it has the same root cause. It's why some researchers talk about poly crisis - extract extract extract across people, systems for long enough and everything falls apart for most people. But different people will experience that differently depending on their context— their historical, cultural, social, physical context. So the same frame (climate) doesn't engage people. For me, in my early years doing this work, I thought the job was to try and explain this complexity at the heart of multiple systems breakdown (and that is part of it to some extent). However, to invite people into this story, and see themselves as a character in it, I have come to understand, through observation, listening, that a more compelling frame is that of a better life. Here is why: 👉 For many groups, framing loss and risk leads to defensive processing (fancy words for putting your hands over your ears and hoping it will all go away). 👉 Modelling increasingly shows robust and just (justice is key here not as a frame but as a value to drive decisions) responses to climate come with multiple benefits across different people’s lives from health, employment, air quality, community connection, power and food security. These things have enormous intrinsic and extrinsic value to people, a city and country over the long term. 👉 Disruption from climate is a sure thing. We are more sure of this than any other future modelling we do. 👉 While we could discuss how to determine the level of response given uncertainty on about predicted scale of the disruption, these are fundamentally *narratives of delay* that come from industries that don’t like what robust action would do to their profits (and practices of extraction). 💡By communicating the benefits, in terms of the day to day facets of different people’s lives, that robust, just, and bold climate action offers, we can better capture the needs and real concerns of many different groups, and engage better. Image by Megan Salole of a cityscape where effective climate action has led to better lives

I’m going to be blunt: we need a lot of things in the US right now 𝘢𝘯𝘥 climate storytelling is one of them. Let me explain. Climate storytelling is more than just a means of communication. It is a tool for shaping public perception, inspiring action, and ensuring that climate progress is not lost. Scientific reports and raw data are essential, but they often fail to connect on an emotional level. Climate storytelling transforms statistics into relatable experiences, helping people see themselves in the fight against climate change. Research shows that narratives structured as stories are more effective in inspiring pro-environmental behavior compared to plain facts. By framing climate change through the lens of personal stories, artistic expression, and speculative fiction, we can drive awareness, empathy, and engagement. But as the political landscape shifts and efforts to suppress climate discourse intensify, the need to protect and amplify these stories has never been more urgent. Censoring climate science (and scientists), dismantling NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, silencing media, encouraging book bans, defunding the parks. It’s an attack on science, but even when science is attacked, we must continue storytelling. ↳Yessenia Funes writes an independent climate newsletter called Possibilities, a space that explores the possibilities that lie where the climate crisis meets community. An absolute champion of marginalized voices, Yessenia rolls up her sleeves to uncover community-based stories that have the emotional tact to drive change. ↳Nicole Kelner is the founder of Arts and Climate Change, an organization that uses art as a tool for climate communication. Her infographics translate complex topics into playful and educational visuals for the masses. ↳Tory Stephens is the Climate Fiction Creative Manager at Grist. Tory has a way of championing climate fiction as a means of envisioning equitable climate futures and has launched four climate fiction collections and read hundreds (if not thousands) of submitted short stories over the last five years alone. By fostering diverse narratives centered on resilience and innovation, his work empowers readers to imagine and fight for a just and sustainable world. ↳Gabrielle Korn's bestselling cli-fi novel, The Shutouts, explores the intersection of climate crisis and personal storytelling, weaving environmental themes into an emotionally compelling narrative. Books like hers serve as both warnings and sources of hope, demonstrating the power of fiction to shape public discourse on climate change. Climate storytelling is a lifeline that passes the baton from our past to our future. It’s imperative that we rally around the power of individuals who are climate storytelling now to continue to inspire, educate, and mobilize a world that refuses to be silenced. Follow my friends above, and share your favorite organizations and individuals in the comments. 

Storytelling is one of the reasons why ideas and solutions rarely scale, because we still don't know how to tell them. Without compelling narratives, even the best work remains invisible. Last week in Nairobi, I had the privilege of working alongside young changemakers and startup founders in the climate mobility space, sharing what I've learned about storytelling and advocacy. My key message? Stories transform individual efforts into collective movements. I've seen it with Tunde Onakoya, who used a chessboard to reach millions. I saw it again in that room, when one team turned their climate solution into a rallying cry: "A warrior is a woman." Three steps to get there: a) Identify the human component - Start with a person, not a program b) Illustrate the problem in their life - Make it real, tangible, relatable c) End with something memorable - Give them a line they can't forget That's how you turn good work into a movement. To everyone in that room and beyond: we're not just running organizations or projects. We're rewriting what's possible. And our stories? They're our greatest weapons.

Trust isn’t built in boardrooms. Trust isn’t built in boardrooms, it's earned in the field, day in and day out. Here’s how to turn that insight into action in construction and sustainable partnerships: 1. Walk the Talk: Demonstrate Commitment Through Early and Visible Action 🛠️ ✳️ Involve all stakeholders from the start, including contractors, suppliers, and local communities. Early engagement breaks down adversarial mindsets and builds shared purpose. ✳️ Implement pilot initiatives, like a small-scale sustainable façade or energy-monitoring system. Tangible results speak louder than promises. Measuring and showcasing early wins validates the approach . 2. Co-create Trust with Transparency and Shared Governance ✳️ Define common goals and metrics together carbon savings, material reuse rates, well-being and report performance regularly . ✳️ Use participatory governance models joint committees where all parties have a voice, not just legal sign-off. This tackles power imbalances head-on. 3. Break Down Silos with Integrated Teams & Collaborative Contracts ✳️ Form cross-disciplinary teams (architects, engineers, contractors) working in tandem. This overthrows the typical confrontational “hand-off” model. ✳️ Adopt collaborative contracting like integrated project delivery (IPD) risk is shared fairly, with incentives tied to collective success . 4. Align on Mutual Value & Institutionalize Equity ✳️ Agree on mutual benefits contractors gain new skills and future pipeline, communities gain jobs or training, and clients gain sustainability credibility. ✳️ Acknowledge and address power differences: provide capacity-building support to smaller partners and ensure all voices shape design and execution. 5. Share Successes and Tell the Stories ✳️ Use case studies from projects like Powerhouse Kjørbo in Oslo or Bee’ah HQ in Sharjah to show that eco-design + performance + beauty can coexist. ✳️ Publish real-world performance data: “Our pilot roof cut energy use by 20%.” Data ensures credibility. 6. Build Psychological Safety and Cultural Trust ✳️ Encourage open problem-solving sessions, beyond blame listen, reflect, and co-design solutions. ✳️ Consider brief trust-building exercises: mindfulness circles, site-level retrospectives, or speed-coaching tools used in cross-sector sustainability projects. Putting It All Together: A Trust-Building Recipe ✴️ Kick off with a multi-stakeholder workshop; map expectations and co-develop pilot scope. ✴️ Launch the pilot, gather baseline data, and set up shared dashboards. ✴️ Meet weekly on-site, review data openly, iterate and refine. ✴️ Scale up once trust is tangible teams feel ownership, partners see value. ✴️ Document wins and propagate them as the new standard.

We often talk about sustainability as a strategy. A roadmap. A plan. But in the real world where rivers are drying, crops are shifting, and communities are adapting, sustainability begins not in boardrooms but in backyards. It’s grown, not imposed. Felt, not forced. Whether it's a farmer in the Himalayas switching from apples to pomegranates, or a coastal family rethinking their fishing practices, the most powerful sustainability efforts aren’t designed elsewhere and dropped in, they’re built from lived experience, local wisdom, and everyday choices. Ground-Up Is the Only Way That Lasts. Real change begins when people ask: “What can we do with what we have?” “What practices have sustained our land for generations?” “How do we honour our way of life while adapting to a changing world?” The answers don’t come from toolkits they come from conversations, trust, and belonging. A grandmother teaching seed-saving. A youth group reforesting a hillside. A family-run guesthouse deciding to compost because that’s what makes sense to them. When sustainability is embedded in identity, not just strategy it becomes part of how people live, not something they do on the side. Let Communities Lead the Way. We need to stop asking, “How do we teach sustainability?” and instead ask, “How do we listen to those already living it?” The future isn’t built by importing solutions but it’s built by supporting those quietly working on them every day. By providing space, not scripts. By amplifying, not instructing. Because when sustainability is grown from within by people who love their land, their community, their culture it doesn’t need enforcement. It endures.