Reframing the narrative for climate justice

Speaking to my research sidekick, Kathryn today about current narratives around the climate crisis reminded me of an inspirational talk I heard at The Behavior, Energy, and Climate Change Conference (BECC) a couple of years ago from Dane County Office of Energy & Climate Change. And one I include in all my behaviour change presentations about reframing the narrative.

The Dane County scientists and engineers had been working on a campaign to get energy efficiency measures to frontline communities. So they partnered up with a public health body, who suggested the campaign was reframed.

The public health body approached the issue in a different way to the scientists and engineers:

• Their Theory of Change was focused on equity and not just energy savings
• They framed climate change as a way to fix the system rather than another problem for frontline communities
• So they framed the solutions in terms of safety

This is very relevant to the current narrative of adopting pro-environmental behaviours, which is often focused on:

And for anyone who knows anything about psychology the above trigger lots of aversion to the human psyche which is adverse to loss, scarcity, not fitting in with the crowd and looking for personal benefits.

Reframing your narratives

Would you like to engage different audiences and try out a different narrative for your environmental communications and campaigns?

For more inspiration on how to communicate using the principles of behavioral science, watch the on-demand workshop: Adopt motivating behavior change principles in your communications.