Climate Outreach

Climate Outreach are developing the Climate Engagement Initiative (CEI), a nascent international alliance which promotes a world where governments fully engage their public on climate change, so that citizens can make informed decisions. The policies and lifestyle changes required to achieve current climate targets cannot be implemented without a strong social mandate and broad public acceptance of the scale and urgency of the issue. Engaging national governments is a key step to building the field for climate engagement that will create this public mandate. Although national governments have committed to supporting climate engagement through the Framework Convention and the Paris Agreement, these commitments are limited in their scope and legal enforceability. This funding will support the development of a set of indicators to encourage the efforts of all national governments on public engagement on climate. This work is instrumental for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and non-governmental groups to track global progress, and provide a tool for accountability and campaigning. The Foundation contributed in 2021 with a grant of £75,000 towards this project.

 

In 2021, Climate Outreach received another year-long grant of £50,000 to invest in the promotion of public engagement at COP26 and the governance of Climate Outreach. The project is divided in three work packages: a panel event on public engagement in the Blue Zone at COP26; an exhibition of Climate Visuals photography in the Green Zone; and the development of CO’s governance’s skills, experience and operations. With this three-fold project, Climate Outreach seeks significantly to advance the awareness, understanding and adoption of best public engagement practices by policymakers and media and environmental campaigners in the UK and around the world.

 

Resources

Climate Visuals is a virtual library of climate images for use of climate change and environmental groups, journalists, educators and businesses.  Its purpose has been to catalyse a new visual language for climate change that is salient and emotionally impactful, beyond the stereotypical climate change imagery which is often solely illustrative and innefective at driving change. Since its launch in 2016, the collection has grown to host over 1,000 Creative Commons and rights managed images – all content that embodies Climate Outreach’s evidence-based 7 Climate Visuals principles. Many images are available to license from third party sites or download for free under Creative Commons licenses for use in blogs, articles and campaigns.