Enhancing learning, communication and public engagement about climate change – some lessons from recent literature

Abstract

This paper sets out to develop key messages for the theory and practice of environmental education from a review of recent research literature on climate change communication (CCC) and education. It focuses on how learners of climate science understand messages on climate change, the communicative contexts for education on climate change, the barriers that can be found to public engagement with climate change issues, and how these barriers can be addressed. 92 peer-reviewed studies were examined. The analysis focuses on the goals and strategies of CCC, and how barriers can be addressed given the research findings on: (a) the content of CCC, (b) visualizations, (c) framing, (d) audience segmentation. The paper concludes that CCC and education need to address barriers to public engagement on several levels simultaneously. It recommends that scholars of environmental education focus critical attention on how practice addresses senses and spheres of agency; sociocultural factors; and the complexities of developing scientific literacy given the interpretative frames and prior understandings that are brought to bear by the public in non-formal education settings.

Keywords:

• climate change
• communication
• public understanding
• public engagement
• learning
• non-formal education

Acknowledgements

This paper was made possible by a grant from the Swedish Research Council for the project Making sense of climate change – a study of the formation and maintenance of social representations (project no. 2008-1723). The author wishes to thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

Notes

1. For examples of non-formal climate education activities, see, for example, the World Bank Climate Change Portal (http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/) or the climate courses for sustainable agriculture in Australia discussed by George, Clewett, Wright, Birch, and Allen (2007, 2009).

2. Examples of such campaigns include the EU’s Climate Action campaign (http://ec.europa.eu/climateaction/index_en.htm) and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s climate campaign, which included TV and newspaper advertisements as well as posters displayed in public places across Sweden in 2002–2003 (SEPA 2004).

3. A previous, comprehensive synthesis paper on climate change communication was written by Moser in 2010. Moser’s paper builds on knowledge from the broader field of communication studies to inform theory and practice of climate change communication. The present paper complements Moser’s findings in that it takes it point of departure in the growing field of climate change communication literature rather than in communication theory in general. Moreover, in contrast to Moser’s paper, the present paper is explicitly directed to an audience of environmental education scholars.

4. “Communicative context” here refers to factors that influence how climate change communication is understood and received by the audience, e.g. how media framings of climate-related issues or the public’s pre-existing perceptions on causes, impacts and responses to climate change.

5. See, for example, Kahlor and Rosenthal (2009), Kim and Neff (2009), Moser and Dilling (2004), Nicholson-Cole (2005), Ockwell et al. (2009), O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole (2009), Sterman (2008), Sundblad et al. (2008), and White and Wall (2008).

6. For further discussion on how changes in framings of climate predictions influence decision making, see Nicholls (1999).