The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and the Hoffmann Centre for Sustainable Resource Economy at Chatham House are co-hosting a meeting on mass communication, innovative media and storytelling to mobilize people’s hearts and minds to deliver natural climate solutions.
Restoration and rehabilitation of natural infrastructure such as forests, mangroves, wetlands and soil are increasingly recognised as key contributors to meeting climate targets, with cost-effective mitigation potentials of more than 11Gt CO2 annually. These efforts can also deliver multiple benefits, from improved ecosystem services to livelihood and health benefits for both urban and rural populations. Initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge, New York Declaration of Forest and Sustainable Development Goal 15 set out ambitious pledges that governments and many in the private sector have committed to deliver. However, these pledges are yet to transform into actions due in part to barriers including the lack of a policy framework and enabling environment, appropriate finance and viable business models, and technical capacity on the ground.
In addition, a communication challenge persists as current efforts focus on rationalising existing science and evidence rather than focusing on how the information is delivered sensitive to values, norms and cultural systems in order to build a broad support base. Changing how we talk about climate change and nature-based climate solutions can have a profound impact on not only how people think about these issues but how, and whether, they are likely to engage with them.
This meeting will bring together experts from the creative industries, media channels, and cognitive and linguistic sciences to help identify innovative ways to stimulate and mobilise broad societal support for large scale natural climate solutions.