Stakeholder awareness in climate education

All the 'green skills' in the world won't make a difference without one, fundamentally human, skill. As the world looks towards COP30 in Brazil, the chat is all about targets, technology, and policy. Where can we be more ambitious? How do we get more progress, faster? And we talk a lot about 'green skills'—the technical expertise in carbon accounting, renewable energy, and biodiversity. These will help accelerate emerging tech like carbon capture and vital solutions like low carbon liquid fuels. And while that stuff is critical, it’s only half the story. In my experience, the real work of sustainability happens in the messy, human middle. It happens at the intersection of people, departmental politics, and budgets. All the best data in the world doesn't mean a thing if you can't get it over the line with the people who need to sign off on it. This brings me to what I believe is the single most important skill in delivering real progress on climate: stakeholder engagement. It's the 'street smarts' of knowing how to listen, how to bring people along, and how to find common ground, even when it’s hard. It’s about getting sh*t done, not just being technically "right." We need the technical experts, absolutely. But we desperately need the people who can connect the dots and make change happen. And we need to be teaching these skills alongside the “hard” green skills if we are going translate promises into action. #COP30 #GreenSkills #GreenJobs #ClimateJobs #LinkedInNewsAustralia #SustainabilityJobs #SustainabilitySkills

Shared understanding is fundamental to any change endeavour. But how do we orchestrate a journey towards a shared understanding? This framework - from the fantastic Challenge-led system mapping handbook by Climate-KIC - highlights a structured progression inspired by the DIKW pyramid. I really like the way iterative dialogue is embedded in a way that ensures resources become living documents that evolve with stakeholder insights, reflecting the dynamic nature of the system. "The evolving conversation contributes to the collective understanding of the challenges, the questions, and the mapped system itself." This journey begins with participatory processes and data generation, which lay the foundation for understanding the makeup of the system. These steps involve diverse stakeholders coming together to identify core components and relationships within the system. As the process evolves, we move into harvesting and documentation, where data transitions into manageable sources and is organised into coherent information. This phase involves physical structuring and cognitive processes, framing data into actionable insights and beginning to illuminate system patterns. The next phase—conceptualisation and analysis—builds on this structured base to foster a deeper understanding. Here, information transforms into knowledge through analytical structuring. This stage involves recognising connections, patterns, and dynamics, enabling stakeholders to identify key indicators of progress or change. Finally, the journey culminates in wisdom, where insights are communicated through visualisation and interpretation. This stage bridges the gap between abstract analysis and practical application, enabling informed decision-making and co-produced practices. Wisdom reflects a high level of both structure and understanding, empowering stakeholders to act collaboratively toward systemic change. This iterative and participatory process emphasises the importance of feedback loops and incremental understanding, ensuring that stakeholders grasp the complexities of the system and also feel invested in its transformation. "Knowledge management integrates links between interpretation, analysis, and action, allowing practitioners to move from traditional 'learning to manage' practices to 'management as learning'."

10 Techniques to Help You Influence Change on Climate and Nature 🌍 Influencing change in a world resistant to it is tough. But as Mary Annaïse Heglar says: 💬 “The thing about climate is that you can either be overwhelmed by the complexity of the problem or fall in love with the creativity of the solutions.” 💬 So, here are 10 ways to keep your creative as you influence change: 1️⃣ Link it to something they already care about. Listen closely. What motivates your stakeholders? If they’re birdwatchers, show them how bird populations are at risk. Find the connection that speaks to what they love. 2️⃣ Ask for a favour. People feel more invested in someone’s success after helping them - psychologists called this the “Ben Franklin effect.” What small favor can you ask to help them feel invested in your work? 3️⃣ Compare and contrast. Show the stark difference between the status quo and action. Find sensory ways of helping them experience the two options so they can ‘feel’ what course of action they want to take now to set us all up for the future. 4️⃣ Use metaphor. Dinosaurs wouldn’t vote for their own extinction. A good metaphor helps people see a challenge from a new angle (and make it more obvious why doing nothing is more than a bit bonkers). 5️⃣ Tell a story. Stories inspire. They don’t need to be big—just relatable and specific enough to show what’s at stake and what’s possible. What story does your audience need to hear to feel moved? 6️⃣ Find who they look up to. Who inspires the people you’re seeking to influence? Show what their peers and their heroes are doing to help them see action and engagement on climate as the norm. 7️⃣ Create space to listen. Listen to gather insights on your stakeholders’ aspirations, anxieties and where they feel torn on climate action. You’ll learn and they’ll be influenced by hearing themselves speak. 8️⃣ Seedbomb. An idea from the brilliant @Caroline Hickman: land a bold or shocking statement with calm detachment, then move on—like tossing a seed bomb over a fence. This way you give it space and time to take root, rather than trigger resistance with insistence. 9️⃣ Ask for permission. “Can I share an idea with you?” Simple, but powerful. This act of seeking consent gives your audience agency, making them more receptive to what you’re about to say. 🔟 Get them to describe their vision. “What does success look like for you in 10 years?” Give them space to articulate their dreams for sustainable future and see how their goals are connected to it 💡 What’s your go-to technique for influencing change? Let’s build a collective toolkit - drop your suggestions in the comments!

New WB report on the untapped potential of education in climate action: https://rb.gy/rx8pmi. Some key points: - Education is a powerful but UNDER-USED instrument for climate action. Channeling more climate funding to education could significantly boost climate mitigation and adaptation. - Schooling and learning, especially for the poorest, are at significant risk because of climate change. Education systems need to adapt for a changing climate. This report shows how countries can do this. - Climate action remains slow. Nearly 79 percent of youth across eight low- and middle-income countries believe their country is in a climate emergency.  - This is in part due to missing or misleading information, in three ways: there are Information gaps on climate awareness, especially among older people. There are information gaps on how to act for climate mitigation and adaptation, and still there is a lot of misinformation. This is great work by my colleagues Shwetlena Sabarwal Marla Spivack, Sergio Venegas Marin and Diego Ambasz. Young people are feeling the impacts. They are anxious, angry, and ready to act. This report shows how education itself could be our most powerful weapon against climate change. It reshapes behaviors, develops skills, and spurs innovation—everything we need to combat the greatest crisis facing humanity: https://rb.gy/rx8pmi

If you’re part of a corporate sustainability team, NGO, or a local community group, your agenda must include increasing climate literacy—not just among experts, but among the general population. We have GREAT ideas about solutions. But solutions won’t gain traction with the public, in courtrooms, with policymakers, or within corporations if people don’t understand: ✅ The science of climate change ✅ What it means for our society to leave a stable climate ✅ The solutions for mitigation and adaptation ✅ How to navigate the two most common emotional responses—spinning (overwhelm) and shutting down (denial) We can’t afford to keep operating in silos, assuming that facts alone will drive change. If people don’t understand the why, they won’t support the how. Training, education, and public engagement should be a top priority for all of us who care about shifting the trajectory of climate change. Without climate literacy, as we have seen, even the best solutions will stall. Future Climate Collective

Who is most responsible for climate action? In our new paper in Communications Earth & Environment, we show across 39 African countries that those who have heard of climate change place primary responsibility for addressing #climate_change on their own #government, a further third see ordinary #citizens as most responsible, while very few place responsibility on historical #emitters. Education, decreased poverty, and access to new media sources are associated with increased attribution of responsibility to historical emitters. Concerning that for those with least #capacity to deal with #climate impacts, there is low expectation of any improvement on #responsiveness of their government. This is important because the #political salience of climate change themes among political parties and voters remains comparatively low in Africa. #Political actors and climate #governance stakeholders more broadly will need to pay greater attention to #climate_action as #citizens experience climate impacts, understand its consequences, and increasingly look to hold their representatives and governments to account. Yet citizens who have access to #resources and #information are associated with support for #climate_action broadly, the empowerment of everyday Africans to act, and the recognition that historic emitters should play a larger role in climate action. Interestingly, #state_professionalism is associated with citizens’ increased willingness to address climate change, their increased demand that the state also addresses the issue, as well as their willingness to hold the government accountable, all three are consistent with the #virtuous_cycle. In regions with high levels of state professionalism, respondents are more likely to say that ordinary citizens can do something to address climate change. So what are the implications? #Poverty alleviation and increased access to #education, combined with professional frontline #government bureaucracies can re-apportion citizen expectations of responsibility for climate action onto historical emitters and actors with more resources for scalable climate action. Future work is needed to identify the joint effects of #climate_change_literacy, the attribution of responsibility, and how the Africans evaluate the action of their governments and historical emitters in addressing or failing to address ongoing climate change and losses and damages escalate. What are the implications for political settlements & political parties, especially for opposition parties? Read the Open Access paper here: https://rdcu.be/egjbw Thanks for another excellent #climate_literacy collaboration: Talbot Andrews Matthias Krönke Andreas Schwarz Meyer Christopher Trisos Debra Roberts Climate Risk Lab African Climate & Development Initiative University of Cape Town Afrobarometer Cornell University University of Reading Nimrod Zalk Tim Kelsall Nature Portfolio