The Impact of Climate Change Communications

SIWI generously asked me to speak to a group of journalists and communicators a few days ago about water and climate change, as part of a briefing series in advance of World Water Week this year. 

I was thrilled and intimidated by the invitation. The temptation was to show a bunch of IPCC slides. I chose to just to talk — to avoid showing any slides of precipitation trends or tropical cyclone intensities. I wanted to focus on our narratives — even meta-narratives — about what is happening to us and if we can do anything about it.

A quick back of the envelope calculation using conservative assumptions suggested that over the course of AGWA’s 11-year lifetime, I’ve at least skimmed more than 28,000 water and climate articles. I feel quite skeptical of most water and climate related articles, press releases, and investigations. But I’m not totally sure that I’ve developed more than a bad attitude about how we use the media to socialize, introduce, and organize ourselves around these issues.

I can say that, through AGWA’s three newsletters, we try to avoid doomsaying end-is-nigh stories; plenty of people and organizations communicate this way, and that’s nothing we need to contribute to. Indeed, that message seems lazy, unhelpful, and depressing. Worse, it promotes despair rather than empowerment. And, speaking as a scientist, I don’t think that’s what the science is telling us.

We also try to avoid themes like climate-disaster porn, the image that we have to “fight” climate change, that political institutions are failing, or a determinism that the future must be worse than the past. I’d like to think the deepest message we try to provide to you, our members, is that we have to live with climate change, and by learning to live with it, our economies, communities, and ecosystems can emerge in a future better than where we are now. Every institution can become more resilient. Each person — especially each water person — has a role to play in making their work more resilient. Of course, no single simple solution exists. We all have a responsibility to see conditions honestly and clearly. But we also have justification to act with strengthening hope, even when the media tells us to be depressed and give up in the name of “informing” us. Fear and despair are what worry me most, as a father and uncle, as a global citizen, and as someone who wants our species to continue. 

I am not sure I communicated these ideas to the communicators very well. But we are trying to live these ideas for you, our members.

John H. Matthews

Black Mountain, North Carolina, USA