Strategies for Communicating About Climate Change Impacts on Public Lands

Abstract

Natural resource agencies in the United States have a huge responsibility to protect and manage public lands as well as effectively communicate with diverse publics about land management issues. One of these issues is how best to deal with the impacts of climate change on our nation’s treasured landscapes. Fortunately, a recent surge of research and theorizing in the social sciences on communication about climate change can inform natural resource communication efforts. What insights can scholars share with communication practitioners and public land managers? What communication principles will help them create effective strategies for communicating about climate change? How can scholars best communicate the complexity of climate change impacts and nuances of changes at landscape scales? To begin to address these questions, Colorado State University researchers, in partnership with the Office of the Governor of the State of Colorado, hosted a 3-day workshop on the challenges and opportunities associated with communicating about climate change on public lands in the western United States. This commentary summarizes ideas generated from workshop discussions, including 9 key messages and 10 key principles for effective climate change communication in a land management context.

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

“…Featherstone et al, 2009, p. 214;cf. Akerlof et al, 2011;Kim & Neff, 2009;Lowe et al, 2006;Moser, 2006;Maibach et al, 2008;O'Neill & Hulme, 2009;Schweitzer et al, 2009). By segmenting the audience into target groups, climate change communication can be elaborated to resonate with the different interpretative frames of different target groups, and thereby make more sense to the public (Akerlof et al, 2011;Lowe et al, 2006;Maibach et al, 2008;Moser, 2006).…”

Four Models of Science Journalism

“…Vercellesi et al, 2010) and environmental journalism (e.g. Schweizer et al, 2009) suggested the focus of a given news story should be tied to particular contexts, such as scientific, cultural, social, and political issues, or what situation or place the story is situated in (Schweizer et al, 2009). In his guidelines for peace journalism, Lynch (2002) suggested journalists focus stories by asking whether the story is event-based, or whether it seeks simplicity or to explore complexity.…”

“…Additional searches were performed in Google Scholar, in the online databases of key journals (e.g., Journalism, Journalism Studies, Science Communication, Public Understanding of Science, Health Communication) and via citation, footnote, and author searches . The searches retrieved 17 relevant articles (Bubela, 2006;Brossard and Lewenstein, 2010;Clarke, 2003;d'Andrea and Declich, 2005;Davies, 2008;Gerhards and Schäfer, 2009;Kahlor and Rosentahl, 2009;Kerr et al, 2007;Kouper, 2010;Leach et al, 2009;Logan, 2001;Piolli and Conceição da Costa, 2008;Schweizer et al, 2009;Secko, 2007;Sturgis and Allum, 2004;Tlili and Dawson, 2010).…”

“…Levi, 2003;Vercellesi et al, 2010) and environmental journalism (e.g. Schweizer et al, 2009). Lastly, the development of story-writing criteria used an adaptation of Secko's (2007) method for developing 13 guiding principles for science journalism production.…”

Prospects for Canada's protected areas in an era of rapid climate change

“…Accordingly, agencies and organizations will be responsible for communicating these challenges and opportunities to an increasingly diverse and concerned public audience. Parks and other forms of protected areas offer the potential to educate millions of visitors annually on climate change impacts and their implications for natural assets, and they provide the opportunity to enhance understanding of associated managerial responses (see Schwiezer et al, 2009). For example, Canada's national parks and Ontario's provincial parks system attract more than 10 million visitors per year, respectively, with economic benefits extending far beyond park boundaries (Ontario Parks, 2005;Parks Canada Agency, 2009).…”