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Communicate effectively about your work: Learn how to talk about climate change
Adaptation Strategies and Actions
Communicate effectively about your work: Learn how to talk about climate change
Strategy:
Communicate effectively about your climate change work
Climate change can be a difficult topic to talk about because it's complicated and has become politically-charged. Luckily, researchers have been studying climate change communications. Training and practice can make it easier to communicate effectively with your target audience, from decision-makers to students to your neighbors.
Action
Learn best practices for communicating about climate change
How do we talk about climate change in a way that is easily understandable and inspires action? Researchers have developed various guides and best practices that can help you spread the word about your work. For example, here is a list of best practices developed by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University and ecoAmerica. Their full Communications Guide is listed first in Resources below. Please see the other website resources below for further details, including research on public opinion about climate change in the US.
10 Principles of Climate Change Communication
1. Put yourself in your audience's shoes
2. Channel the power of groups
3. Emphasize solutions and benefits
4. Bring climate impacts close to home
5. Connect climate change to issues that matter to your audience
6. Use images and stories to make climate change real
7. Make climate science meaningful
8. Acknowledge uncertainty, but show what you know
9. Approach skepticism carefully
10. Make behavior change easy
Resources
Target Species, Species Groups, Habitats and Stressors
Scope and Constraints
Goals
References
1. Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) and ecoAmerica. (2014). Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication. NY and Washington, DC.
Click link above to view references.
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