How is the Graz Charter changing climate communication in the DACH region?
Summary of the online event on 13 May
On 13 May, a webinar was held on the question ‘Will the Charter improve climate communication?’. The initiators of the Charter wanted to take stock of the situation: What does it take for the ‘good professional practice’ formulated in the Charter to be put into practice by as many people as possible in their day-to-day communication work?
Around 150 participants logged into the online event at midday to listen to inputs from Isabella Uhl-Hädicke, Alex Tiefenbacher and Petra Pinzler and discuss climate communication.
The event was co-organised by ProClim - Forum for Climate and Global Change of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT), Klimafakten, the German Climate Consortium DKK and the Climate Change Centre Austria CCCA.
Isabella Uhl-Hädicke, environmental psychologist at the University of Salzburg, spoke about various strategies for urging people to behave in a certain way or asking them not to do something. She showed that reminding people not to do something often also signals to them that many others also behave in this way and ultimately leads to them doing it instead of refraining from it. This is due to the so-called ‘prisoner's dilemma’: both individuals would be better off if they behaved cooperatively, but do not do so out of self-interest. Uhl-Hädicke also spoke about tolerance of ambiguity and emphasised how important it is when it comes to environmental issues that we learn to tolerate complicated and contradictory situations.
Alexandra Tiefenbacher, journalist for Das Lamm, mentioned three points that she felt were particularly important for climate communication. Firstly, she emphasised that climate communication should train openness and the willingness to look at solutions. Furthermore, good climate journalism should be honest and complete. However, this is only possible if resources are available for research. Finally, she formulated the concern that critically cautionary reports should not be played off against positively encouraging climate reporting: Both approaches are needed for holistic reporting.
`Die Zeit´ journalist and podcaster Petra Pinzler (‘Auch das noch? Der freundliche Krisenpodcast’) outlined the biggest challenges facing climate reporting. Climate topics don't click enough due to their low news value - which is why the financial resources are also lacking. The second difficulty she mentioned was the heterogeneity of the target audience to be addressed by climate communication: ‘We can no longer talk about “we”. There is no one climate communication strategy that can reach everyone’. It is therefore important to reach as many new target groups as possible and to break out of the climate bubble in order to find new allies and expand the coalition of the willing.
Following the inputs, the participants discussed the Graz Charter and the effectiveness of climate communication. It became clear that it is not so much a change to the Charter that is desired, but rather a further development of the Charter with important points. The exchange showed that there is broad expertise on effective climate communication within the K3 community. Research and practice is a big step further than it was ten years ago. And yet: the challenges and new circumstances continue to require intensive engagement with the topic. For the K3 consortium, such exchanges with the community are extremely valuable. They show where the most important issues lie, which can be addressed in future events such as a K3 Congress.
Graz Charter on climate communication
The Graz Charter for Climate Communication has been in place since September 2024. In it, experts from science, journalism, local authorities and non-governmental organisations call for a change of course in communication on climate issues - and at the same time use the charter to describe what solution-oriented communication on climate change should look like. More than 1,000 experts and practitioners from a wide range of fields have now signed the charter.
