Adam Corner: Climate Communications and Philanthropy in ‘the era of doing stuff’

Back in July, Adam Corner, one of the UK’s leading experts on climate change and public engagement posted a provocation on LinkedIn.

The thrust of it was that maybe, just maybe, we already know everything that needs to be known about communicating on climate change, and that given this, funders might need to move on from the ‘era of message testing’ and onto the ‘era of doing stuff’.

I have gradually got to know Adam over the last decade or so and we recently (finally) got to meet in person this summer. His LinkedIn post came a week or so after we’d met and I asked him if I could interview him about it… to unpack it a little more.

Morgan Phillips: When I read your LinkedIn post, what struck me wasn’t just the argument, it was the frustration behind it. Where are we at with climate communications research?

Adam Corner: I've worked on public engagement with climate change my entire professional life.

When this field of climate communications - the idea that people needed to support and be bought-in on the changes ahead - developed, we were in a subtly but importantly different era, where certain assumptions could be taken for granted.

The targets we were pushing for were dates in the future. The impacts we wanted to avoid were still just about avoidable. Fundamentally, message testing and narrative work was about shaping the future: finding ways to persuade ourselves how to change course.

As Bordeaux burns, these assumptions no longer hold.

We have so much macro-scale "building support for climate action" message testing that anything additional at this point is, I think, largely redundant. After more than twenty years of research, we are not going to unearth any new magic words, and the idea that we've just been barking up the wrong messaging tree is no longer tenable.

In this sense, the era of message testing is over. We are now in the era of doing stuff.

MP: Yes, so has climate communication research done all of what it needs to do?

AC: No. We absolutely need a continual understanding of public audiences on climate change - this is a perpetually moving target. But these opinion insights need to be in service of societal and environmental goals, not signalling to political, media and philanthropic elites that we have our fingers on the pulse (as they too often do).

Understanding the values and aspirations of audiences, their place-based identities, and the messages that are positively received in the context of the socio-economic constraints people live under will never not be part of the toolkit we need to do our collective work. We would never not want to understand and empathise with whoever it is we're trying to communicate with.

There will always be a need for research that asks how a particular audience in a particular place with particular values engages with different kinds of climate narratives, especially when they hone in on a topic or policy in depth, or capture a particular political moment or context.

This is what public opinion research should be about: building empathy, not spinning a line for a press release or offering up a clunky new analysis of "trusted messengers" who most people will never encounter.

These opinion insights need to be in service of societal and environmental goals, not signalling to political, media and philanthropic elites that we have our fingers on the pulse, as they too often do.

If communications research still matters, what exactly has changed? Why do you think so many organisations continue to frame the challenge as one of finding better messages?

We are doing this work in the context of decimated trust, fragmented politics and widespread grinding economic hardship. There is no message that can somehow compensate for this.

We need to think about the trust building, the addressing of the economic barriers to supporting climate policies, and the doing of the stuff itself as the message now.

As in communicating through our actions and deeds, rather than our words – actions speak louder than words, etc?

Yes, the idea that we "just need new narratives" is not a credible take on the situation we're in.

You’re not saying that’s in an either/or though are you, we need both good communications and practical delivery?

Of course we need to not say off-putting things when we speak to people. Of course we need to be informed by an understanding of who our audiences are. But this no longer comes through macro-scale message testing, and we shouldn't be squandering our precious and finite resources on it.

Yes, because resources are tight in the environmental sector, and we do need to make wise choices in how we allocate those resources. So, it is either/or to an extent.

That’s it. Actually delivering a transition that is fair and affordable, sends a much stronger message than any amount of talking up that transition ever will. The early days of messaging shaping the future of climate action have passed. This is not revolutionary. It's simply the stage of the transition we've reached.

Your argument is also about funding, funders, and what philanthropists want to fund. Given the stage we’re at, you’re asking funder to recognise what is and isn’t required of them today? 

There is a real, growing and legitimate backlash against audience insights that float above the climate movement's work, because they never quite connect with practical demands, and never quite answer the specific strategic questions campaigners and community organisers have.

The responsibility for this lies in part with a fragmented funding landscape that can't easily recognise duplication and is drawn to shiny new things, even when those new things are quite a lot like the old, if still perfectly serviceable, things.

It doesn't have to be this way. But it will require a change of mindset to point resources in the right direction.

OK, so imagine you're speaking directly to a foundation that's about to commission another large international messaging study. What's your case for investing that money somewhere else?

Ask yourself why you haven't installed a heat pump or solar panels or shutters for your windows. It is probably for the same reason I haven't done any of those things either, and it isn't because we haven't heard the most persuasive message yet.

There is widespread recognition that our economic model is not delivering what people need. Climate policies that don't challenge this are part of the problem. If we want a better understanding of the public, we should be not only listening to, but acting on, the very real concerns people have about the upfront cost of many current climate policies.

Fundamentally we need to be – and be seen to be – on people's side. This means listening at a local level, showing empathy, and advocating on people's behalf for better climate policies, not finding cleverer ways of selling those policies to them. And it means, at times, challenging power, not finding better ways of spinning it to people.

My plea to funders is simple: please stop backing generic message testing projects and focus on the harder work – logistically and emotionally – of getting stuff done on the ground.

So many groups doing the stuff, doing the trust building, creating the content for messages that really can move things on, are desperately short of funding, and are unlikely to be able to draw much from macro-scale work like this when everything is conditioned by the practical conditions under which climate policies are delivered.

The question for me is whether philanthropy is ready to step up to this challenge?

Dr. Adam Corner is a writer, researcher and strategist specialising in public opinion on climate change. He previously held the posts of Research Director at Climate Outreach, Co-Director at the centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations (CAST), Interim Director at the Local Storytelling Exchange and Senior Associate on audience insights for the European Climate Foundation. He is currently Impact & Engagement Lead for Climate Barometer, as well as working independently as a consultant. Adam has written commentary and analyses for international media (the Guardian, New Scientist, FT), authored a wide range of reports, published widely in academic journals and lead-authored the book ‘Talking Climate: From Research to Practice in Public Engagement’.

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