Climate & Sustainability
Sign up for new symposium on communicating climate solutions
Amid polarized discourse on climate change and science, trusted communicators in communities may be key to discussing solutions
Mike Beck, director of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience at UC Santa Cruz, at a national forum on nature-based solutions in February.
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The public is invited to join more than 150 community leaders, government officials, scientists, journalists, and other stakeholders convening at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from September 15 to 17 for the inaugural Communicating Climate Solutions Symposium.
Communities in California and around the world are experiencing climate change impacts, including extreme weather, wildfires and floods. But the communities most affected by climate change are often those that have contributed the least to the problem.
The three-day symposium will feature scientists, journalists, community and indigenous organizations, and climate solutions funders, as well as a film screening, museum tour, and student workshop. Virtual registration is still open to the public, and most events will take place at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center.
“We need to communicate often, openly, and most importantly, clearly about the risks and impacts we face so that we can help communities identify solutions to climate change,” said Mike Beck, director of the UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience, which is jointly hosting the symposium with the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program.
Yet the rapidly evolving information landscape poses major challenges to effective climate communication, according to Science Communication Program Director Erika Check Hayden. Amid a polarized and fragmented national dialogue around science, people often can’t find the information they need about how science intersects with the issues that affect them most directly.
“People are hungry for information about how climate solutions intersect with their daily lives, from the food they eat and the air they breathe to the high cost of living everywhere,” Check Hayden said.
The conference will feature two keynote speakers: Amanda Hansen, deputy secretary for climate change at the California Natural Resources Agency, and Ed Maibach, director emeritus of George Mason’s Center for Climate Change Communication.
Maibach works with weathercasters and physicians to help them talk about how climate change impacts their viewers and patients.
“The current political and information environment are driving climate polarization, but there are countless opportunities to reverse the trend,” Maibach said. “Most importantly, we can activate the voices of new trusted messengers, people in communities across America who can speak in new ways about the problem and what can be done about it.”
The symposium will also explore how journalists can better enable historically underrepresented voices to communicate their own climate solutions, said Sikina Jinnah, professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. “We must enable solutions to emerge from communities that don’t always have access to journalists and other climate communicators,” Jinnah said.
UC Santa Cruz is uniquely positioned to convene these critical discussions, said UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Cynthia Larive. “These are focal areas for our campus, and we are proud to lead on these issues through our Science Communication Program and our Center for Coastal Climate Resilience,” Larive said.