Communicating natural climate solutions as solutions to climate change – Nature4Climate
A campaign to make land use as important as renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transport and industrial emissions reductions, in the battle against climate change.
UK | 01/06/2017 –
One of the clients of Browning Environmental agency, global NGO The Nature Conservancy, planned to launch a landmark science paper that it had worked on for two years with 15 other organizations. This provided the most comprehensive analysis to date of the potential of land use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (for example, reforestation, conservation agriculture, and coastal wetland restoration). This paper is relevant to climate change scientists and to the conservation community but Browning Environmental recognized its potential to deliver transformational change to action on land use on the ground, using communications. For decades, the climate debate had tended to dismiss the land sector opportunity because it appeared too complicated compared with technological fixes like solar panels or wind turbines. With the support of our client, we conducted a research project in six countries (USA, Mexico, Brazil, China, India and Indonesia) to understand what was working in land use communications, and how this was related to policy action. This enabled us to develop messaging to more effectively engage audiences in target countries and draw some significant conclusions regarding land use. For example, we found that compared with renewable energy, and sustainable transport, few leaders had taken strong positions on the topic. We also found that campaigners had focused overly on tropical forest protection, neglecting the opportunities in agriculture in Northern and OECD countries. We prepared the launch of the paper working on a typical array of content–videos, social media material, a brochure–but we also tailored media materials to local languages and audiences. We also engaged VIP leaders through our network including Christiana Figueres, Lord Stern, and Dr. Mayaki. At the same time, we started the planning for a new initiative, Nature4Climate, which aims to rally different stakeholders around increased action on land use (see the section: Strength points of the practice).
More info & Social Media
http://www.browningenvironmental.com
https://twitter.com/browningenviro?lang=en
https://www.linkedin.com/company/browningenvironmental/
Editor’s Note: All information published as submitted by the author(s). Minor edits may have been made to increase readability and understanding.
