The twenty-sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26)<\/a> 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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I lived in Edinburgh from 2015 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 <\/em>there. <\/em>It\u2019s tangible \u2013 it\u2019s blocking their access to work. It\u2019s hard not to pay attention to the conversations happening at one\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Locale is also important when talking about climate impacts<\/em>, 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\u2019s day-to-day experiences (O\u2019Sullivan, 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\u2019t look or smell like home anymore. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019t 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\u2019s impossible to predict how an individual may be locally impacted by climate change because they themselves are complex beings living within complex systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s 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 \u2018downscaling\u2019, yet one that requires creativity and empathy instead of statistical models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Altinay, Z. (2017). Visual Communication of Climate Change: Local Framing and Place Attachment. Coastal Management<\/em> 45<\/em>(4), 293-309. <\/p>\n\n\n\n British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) (2021). The march culminated in a rally at the city\u2019s George Square <\/em>[Photograph]. BBC. https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-scotland-59179181<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Davidson, J., Bondi, L., & Smith, M. (2007). Emotional Geographies. <\/em>Ashgate Publishing Limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dupar, M., McNamara, L., & Pacha, M. (2019). Communicating climate change: A practitioner\u2019s guide. Insights from Africa, Asia and Latin America. <\/em>Climate and Development Knowledge Network. https:\/\/unfccc.int\/sites\/default\/files\/resource\/Communicating%20climate%20change_Insights%20from%20CDKNs%20experience.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Murdock, T., Cannon, A. & Sobie, S. (2014). Statistical downscaling of future climate projections for North America<\/em>. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. https:\/\/www.pacificclimate.org\/data\/statistically-downscaled-climate-scenarios<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/aspark\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/912\/2021\/11\/Argyle-Street-cropped.jpg\")
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