CALS 501

June 12, 2022

This blog post is for assignment 6 in the CALS501 course.

I remember lying in my bed as a child, listening to my parents sing bedtime songs:

“Five little ducks went out one day, over the hills and far away… Momma duck said ‘quack, quack, quack quack’, but only four little ducks came back.”

I was so concerned about what happened to the ducks as they disappeared, one by one. I would imagine the lives and adventures of the ducks: were they hiding, or lost? Were the missing ducks together or alone? At the end of the song when “all of the five little ducks came back”, I could finally relax and drop off to sleep.

During one of the interviews for our design challenge (in which we were tasked to inspire citizens to take climate adaptation actions), Mike Lickers emphasized how powerful songs and storytelling can be as communication tools (M. Lickers, personal communication, December 15, 2021). It reminded me of the duck song of my childhood, along with hundreds of other tunes I have listened to, sung, and relied on for emotional support through the years.

What has become clear to me as I reflect on the MACAL program is that in the climate action sector, stories and numbers have a dialectical relationship. Both stories and climate data can hold inherent truth and have power on their own, yet they function best as a partnership. Even the duck song is based on numbers. Listening to the number of ducks decline and then rebound was what brought the story to life.

The weaving together of emotions and data is the art of crafting a narrative, “which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone” (Dahlstrom, 2014, as cited in Bayer & Hettinger, 2019, p. 1). We observed this effectiveness of narrative-building when testing our design prototype. In front of a test audience, we shared photoshopped images of familiar landscapes that had been altered to show the projected future based on climate data (see example by the City of Edmonton, 2018, below). The numerical projections were also listed at the bottom of the image. One of the participants remarked: “The numbers don’t mean much to me… but they provide credibility to the image” (N. Schaper, personal communication, March 24, 2022). The image was powerful, but it became more powerful when it became clear that the image (a form of visual storytelling) was based on scientific data.

The mere presence of stories and numbers aren’t enough, however. It appears the worthiness of the information is scrutinized as well. When crafting a business case, Messner (2013) suggests that “anything far-fetched, exotic, complicated, or generally unknown does not make a good story” (p. 334). Both the financial argument and the story built around that argument need to be credible for the narrative that binds them to be effective.

Unfortunately, trust in the credibility of governments and other public leaders is at an all-time low in Canada (Proof Strategies, 2022). How can climate leaders fill this trust gap? In our society we tend to venerate leaders that are strong, smart, and visionary. Yet when I reflect on the types of leaders that I see making the most change in their communities, I see leaders that are trustworthy, reliable, steadfast, and sincere. In a word, leaders that are credible. Part of their credibility comes from their reliance on rigorous data and meaningful – yet not overblown – stories.

In what ways have you seen credibility (or lack thereof) impact a climate leader? How can leaders enhance their credibility?

References

Bayer, S., & Hettinger, A. (2019). Storytelling: A natural tool to weave the threads of science and community together. The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 100(2), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1542

City of Edmonton. (2018). Climate resilient Edmonton: Adaptation strategy and action plan. https://www.edmonton.ca/sites/default/files/public-files/assets/Climate_Resilient_Edmonton.pdf?cb=1655095823

Dahlstrom, M.F. (2014). Storytelling in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111, 13614-13620.

Messner, W. (2013). Making the compelling business case: Decision-making techniques for successful business growth. Palgrave Macmillan.

Proof Strategies. (2022). 2022 results report CanTrust index. https://getproof.com/what-we-do/cantrust/

February 15, 2022

This blog post is for assignment 5 in the CALS501 course.

In a post from November 2021, I coined the term ‘emotional downscaling’ to describe what I see as a core task for climate leaders: translating complex global climate projections into relevant information for the lives of their intended audience (O’Sullivan, 2019). Statistical downscaling is the process of translating global climate models into smaller geographic scales (Murdock et al., 2014), while ‘emotional’ downscaling emphasizes the importance of making this data relevant to people. With this in mind, my peers and I decided to incorporate the idea of localizing climate data into our CALS501 design challenge. In theory, this localization seems straightforward: determine the projected local hazards and resulting impacts, engage with the community, conduct a risk assessment, and develop a plan to respond to these risks (CCME, 2021). Upon reflection however, I am realizing that the complexity of risk makes this hyper-locality more challenging. Risks don’t live within well-defined boundaries of a community. Taking a holistic view of risk means looking beyond the local.

A case study from Calgary may help illustrate my point. The Springbank Off-stream Reservoir (also known as a dry dam) is a climate adaptation project west of Calgary designed “to accommodate water volumes equal to the 2013 flood on the Elbow River” (Government of Alberta, 2022, para. 1). Once completed, the dry dam will fill with water during high precipitation events, preventing flooding downstream. Five properties will be directly impacted by the dam, including private landowners and a summer camp for underprivileged youth (Jabbal et al., 2020). The 2016 environmental impact assessment highlighted potential declines in fish and grizzly populations due to habitat loss, disruption of sacred sites for local Indigenous groups, and more (Government of Canada, 2016). There are real-life impacts of this adaptation strategy for individuals, communities, and the ecosystem. However, the project is moving ahead because the risk to infrastructure downstream in Calgary outweighs the risks of the dam construction (Jabbal et al., 2020).   

Herein lies the conundrum of risk. Those that may experience the worst risks from climate change (and adaptation to it) may not be in control of the mechanisms to mediate that risk. Or, they may have mechanisms to reduce their risk (ie: building a dam upstream), but their actions may impact other communities’ or species’ abilities to adapt (ie: access to traditional medicine sites). The current residents of Springbank, the children attending summer camp, wildlife, and the Indigenous communities in the area will all be impacted by the dam to varying degrees. Whereas Calgarians who will benefit from the dam… well, their lives won’t change except they won’t have to deal with a potential future flood. The burden of change falls to those living outside the community at risk. As Smit and Wandel highlight, “the adaptive capacity of individuals or households is shaped and constrained by social, political, and economic processes at higher scales” (2006, p. 284). By overlooking how these processes at higher scales influence local adaptive capacity, we may externalize risk onto other communities.

Our prototype for the design challenge has been based on the idea that localizing climate data is important to start engaging citizens on climate adaptation. We are focusing our prototype on the community of Leduc in central Alberta. Yet, if we ignore the regional complications of risk, we may jeopardize the adaptation strategies of other communities. For instance, by only focusing on Leduc and not the surrounding context, we may develop a robust adaptation plan for the community of Leduc that in turn impacts the ability of the nearby Maskwacis Nation to adapt.

As climate practitioners, we need to find a way to localize, yet not lose sight of the regional complexity of risk and adaptation. This seems to be the essence of systems thinking: to understand the individual components, but not lose sight of how those components interact with one another. One way we are playing with this idea in our prototype is to lead the community of Leduc through a systems-mapping exercise. Perhaps encouraging citizens to think in systems will lead to adaptation strategies that are beneficial to people outside of Leduc in addition to those within it.

References

Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (2021). Guidance on Good Practices in Climate Change Risk Assessment. https://ccme.ca/en/res/riskassessmentguidancesecured.pdf 

Edey, N. (2017, August 4). Springbank dam EIA to be submitted in October. Cochrane Now. https://cochranenow.com/articles/springbank-dam-eia-to-be-submitted-in-october

Government of Alberta (2016). Environmental assessment – Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. https://calgaryjournal.ca/2020/07/14/against-the-current-both-sides-of-the-sringbank-dam-argument/

Government of Alberta. (2022). About Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. Springbank Off-stream Reservoir. https://www.alberta.ca/about-springbank-off-stream-reservoir.aspx#jumplinks-5

Jabbal, S., Atwood, B., & Gonzalez, D. (2020, July 14). Against the current: Both sides of the Springbank dam argument. Calgary Journal. https://calgaryjournal.ca/2020/07/14/against-the-current-both-sides-of-the-sringbank-dam-argument/

Murdock, T., Cannon, A. & Sobie, S. (2014). Statistical downscaling of future climate projections for North America. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios

O’Sullivan, F. (2019). To survive climate change we’ll need a better story. Bloomberg CityLab. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-11/meet-sweden-s-chief-storyteller-for-climate-change 

Smit, B., & Wandel, J. (2006). Adaptation, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability. Global Environmental Change 16, 282-292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.03.008

November 5, 2021

This blog post is for assignment 4 in the CALS501 course.

The twenty-sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is currently taking place in Glasgow, Scotland. This has relevance for me, not only as a burgeoning climate leader, but also as a person who called Scotland home for a year. As someone who has walked the streets of Glasgow many times, I can visualize the conference taking place in front of my eyes from thousands of kilometers away. This global-yet-local view of Glasgow I’m experiencing mirrors one of the central challenges for climate leaders: reconciling the need to communicate impacts at a personal level with the uncertainty inherent in global climate models.

I lived in Edinburgh from 2015 – 2016, visiting Glasgow frequently. In a funny family coincidence, my brother also found his way to Scotland in 2015 and made Glasgow his home. The sounds, smells, weather, and personalities of these cities have stayed with me upon returning to Canada. Scotland will always hold a piece of my heart.

When my brother shares that he must go through a police checkpoint to access his office because the COP 26 conference is happening across the street, I can picture his commute. When he shares photos of police officers lining the roads, I recognize Argyle Street and think about the nearby parks I have enjoyed with my nephew. When I see photos of the youth rally in George Square, I remember a delicious lunch I had around the corner. These places are alive for me.

The field of emotional geography explores the relationship between an environment and its emotional content; how environments facilitate emotion, and how emotions play out in different environments (Davidson et al., 2007). For me, the emotional geography of the COP 26 conference is mediated through my own lived experience and the experiences of my family in that city. My interpretation of the events and outcomes are happening through a lens of familiarity and nostalgia. For Glaswegians, the event is taking place right where they work, live, and play in real time. I wonder if this helps the climate conversation feel more real there. It’s tangible – it’s blocking their access to work. It’s hard not to pay attention to the conversations happening at one’s doorstep.

Locale is also important when talking about climate impacts, not just climate conferences. Climate communications research has found that effective messages are personalized to fit audiences (Dupar et al., 2019) and clearly demonstrate the impacts of climate change in people’s day-to-day experiences (O’Sullivan, 2019). As Altinay (2017) summarizes, “The strength of local framing comes from its ability to counteract the need for psychological distancing by localizing the consequences and heightening risk perceptions by giving personal, local meanings to global issues” (p. 295). In my view, this localizing and personalizing often relies on the emotional geography of a place: triggering memories of shared experiences and local events. For example, I often hear Albertans talk about the heat dome and heavy smoke from forest fires this past summer. Sharing these experiences with one another reminds us of the hazy views from our windows, and the smoke in our lungs when we went outside. Home didn’t look or smell like home anymore.  

This focus on the local also occurs in climate science through a process called downscaling. This is a statistical procedure by which information from global climate models are translated to smaller geographic scales (Murdock et al., 2014). Downscaling extrapolates from larger patterns to show how climate will impact specific regions. Unfortunately, downscaling can often introduce uncertainty since there is limited high-resolution data (Pyle, 2021). The smaller the scale, the more difficult it is to predict precisely what will happen.

This puts climate communicators in a difficult situation. Research tells us that in order to be effective, we need to communicate how climate change will impact daily experiences. Yet climate models don’t allow the level of precision that might be meaningful to individuals due to the statistical consequences of downscaling. We can anticipate large-scale patterns of change; however, we never know how it will impact individuals on a day-to-day basis. Will climate change impact my commute? Will my favourite restaurant go bankrupt due to food prices? Will my house be flooded? It’s impossible to predict how an individual may be locally impacted by climate change because they themselves are complex beings living within complex systems.

I am beginning to realize this is the challenge for climate leaders more broadly (and our cohort specifically for the CALS501 design challenge): to work through this discrepancy and find ways to translate through the uncertainty. It’s our role to find and connect with the emotional threads and memories that people rely on to make meaning out of their local environments. This is a type of ‘downscaling’, yet one that requires creativity and empathy instead of statistical models.

References

Altinay, Z. (2017). Visual Communication of Climate Change: Local Framing and Place Attachment. Coastal Management 45(4), 293-309.

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) (2021). The march culminated in a rally at the city’s George Square [Photograph]. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-59179181

Davidson, J., Bondi, L., & Smith, M. (2007). Emotional Geographies. Ashgate Publishing Limited.

Dupar, M., McNamara, L., & Pacha, M. (2019). Communicating climate change: A practitioner’s guide. Insights from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Climate and Development Knowledge Network. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Communicating%20climate%20change_Insights%20from%20CDKNs%20experience.pdf

Murdock, T., Cannon, A. & Sobie, S. (2014). Statistical downscaling of future climate projections for North America. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. https://www.pacificclimate.org/data/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios

O’Sullivan, F. (2019). To survive climate change we’ll need a better story. Bloomberg CityLab. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-11/meet-sweden-s-chief-storyteller-for-climate-change 

Pyle, L. (2021, February 18). Climate Models [Course lecture]. Science and Impacts of Climate Change Course, Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada.