"Climate change is complex and multifaceted and can prompt a whole host of emotional reactions. This free course will take you step-by-step through the journey of creating effective, powerful climate communications, from setting objectives to identifying key messages to evaluating your success." (ht
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tps://apolitical.co)
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"At the highest international political level, the United Nations declared the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 after having announced (and later not fulfilled) the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. This shift from the MDGs to the SDGs, in which the term development was replac
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ed by the concept of sustainability, also demands a paradigm shift within the research field of development communication and communication for social change which needs to put the focus on sustainability, embracing the concept of sustainability communication as key when analyzing and practicing social change by the use of communication and media. The article unfolds this argument by explaining the political shift from the MDGs to the SDGs and the relevant research fields analyzing these different goals and then sketching the research areas of development communication and communication for social change as well as the one of sustainability communication. In bringing all these areas together, it is argued that the change of the political goals provokes the above mentioned paradigm shift in the research area of development communication. Transforming development communication into sustainability communication also allows to focus the broad term of communication for social change on a specific aim – which is sustainability." (Abstract)
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"This study identifies who is talking about climate change in Africa, both in the mainstream media and on Twitter, and analyses the key messages emerging from the different platforms. For the mainstream media, we used Google’s Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT) platform to access
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articles using the search terms ‘climate change AND Africa’ or ‘climate change’ and the name of all 54 African countries. We then identified the top five countries with the most articles in the sample and using random sampling, undertook a frame analysis of the articles. Regarding Twitter, we downloaded tweets containing ‘climate change AND Africa’ or ‘climate change’ and the name of all 54 African countries, identified who was tweeting and what they were tweeting about. We also identified key African climate change activists and analysed their tweets. While the nature of mainstream media coverage varies across the top five countries, a slight shift towards articles focused on adaptation and mitigation was observed, away from purely disaster narratives. Worryingly, for Twitter, very few African voices are tweeting about climate change and what they are tweeting does not draw much attention to pertinent issues on the continent in respect of climate change." (Abstract)
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"Analysis of over 850 advertisers between 1 September and 23 November 2022 showed a small cohort drove the majority of false or greenwashed advertising on Facebook, with activity peaking in the weeks preceding and during COP27. Common techniques included ‘nature-rinsing’, to distract and mislead
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audiences on net zero targets, as well as denial of climate science and emotional messaging around livelihoods, national security and sovereignty in relation to fossil fuels. Given the advertising spend identified, it is probable these messages were viewed by a wide audience at a key juncture in the climate agenda". (page 10) [...] "At COP26, outright denialism was seemingly outpaced by subtler ‘discourses of delay’ and attacks on climate action. In 2022, denialist content made a stark comeback on Twitter in particular, with the hashtag #ClimateScam spiking out of nowhere in July 2022. Since then, CAAD analysis has recorded over 362k mentions (including retweets) originating from over 91k unique users, with daily mentions never dropping below 1000 posts. The term often appears to be trending despite data that shows more activity and engagement on other hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency. The source of its virality, including explicit promotion via Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, is therefore unclear, and again highlights the need for transparency on how and why platforms surface content to users." (Page 17)
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"This document discusses how the six evaluation criteria of the OECD DAC (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development – Development Assistance Committee) can be used to get environmental sustainability on the agenda for evaluations and monitoring. These criteria are widely used in inter
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national development organisations, and similar criteria are often used in other organisations. This document is based on existing guidance produced by OECD DAC (OECD, 2021) with additional commentary from the members of the Footprint Evaluation Initiative." (Summary, page 1)
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"Wer KI als Lösung präsentiert, muss auch Beweise dafür liefern. Wir zeigen in der zweiten Ausgabe unseres SustAIn-Magazins, dass KI-Systeme in der Energieversorgung durchaus den Einsatz von erneuerbaren Energien verbessern können. Aber ihr Potenzial kann nur ausgeschöpft werden, wenn eine daf
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r geeignete Infrastruktur existiert. Auch ist immer wieder zu hören, dass autonom fahrende Kleinbusse gut fürs Klima sind. Meistens wird dann aber nicht erwähnt, dass für den Betrieb dieser Kleinbusse viele Ressourcen benötigt werden. KI-Hoffnungsfantasien bringen uns nicht weiter. Wir müssen uns den ganzen Lebenszyklus von KI-Systemen anschauen, wenn wir ihre Nachhaltigkeit bewerten. Wir müssen aufhören, nur nach den CO2-Emissionen zu fragen, wenn wir die Auswirkungen der Systeme auf die Umwelt untersuchen. Und wir müssen KI-Systeme genau, umfassend und unvoreingenommen analysieren, wenn wir ernsthaft versuchen wollen, KI nachhaltiger zu gestalten." (Editorial)
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"An ongoing partnership between UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report and the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project, hosted by the Sustainability and Education Policy Network (SEPN), has developed 80 country profiles on CCE policies and practices
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. These are available on the MECCE Project website (www.mecce.ca) and on the GEM Report Profiles Enhancing Education Reviews website (PEER, www.education-profiles.org) which also hosts country profiles on other themes at the core of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. The 80 country profiles provide a comparative perspective of countries’ progress in relation to Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, through Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE); and on SDG Target 4.7, which focuses on education for sustainable development. The profiles cover all regions of the world, all income levels. The countries they cover are home to 75% of the global population [...] The GEM Report and MECCE Project teams have developed several measures to identify global trends in policies and practices in the country profiles (Figure 1). The measures can support countries to learn from peers. They can also support global target-setting and benchmarking in diverse contexts – particularly when used in combination with global indicators, regional and national surveys and polls, and qualitative Information. Some of the measures are illustrated in the following pages." (Pages 2-3)
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"Climate journalism and environmental investigative journalism (EIJ) share a common foundation of covering environmental and climate issues, but they differ in both scope, methodologies and public service focus. The first is a subset of environmental journalism that specializes in climate-related to
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pics, while EIJ has a broader mandate to investigate a wide array of environmental concerns, often with a focus on uncovering hidden truths and exposing wrongdoing. Discussions held with ARIJ, Oxpeckers, The Third Pole, CENOZO and Info Nile showed that all agreed upon the necessity to distinguish these two fields - without necessarily cancelling each other out." (Page 7)
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"Global land and resource grabbing has become an increasingly prominent topic in academic circles, among development practitioners, human rights advocates, and in policy arenas. The Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing sustains this intellectual momentum by advancing methodologica
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l, theoretical and empirical insights. It presents and discusses resource grabbing research in a holistic manner by addressing how the rush for land and other natural resources, including water, forests and minerals, is intertwined with agriculture, mining, tourism, energy, biodiversity conservation, climate change, carbon markets, and conflict. The handbook is truly global and interdisciplinary, with case studies from the Global South and Global North, and chapter contributions from practitioners, activists and academics, with emerging and Indigenous authors featuring strongly across the chapters." (Publisher description)
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"This volume explores how religious and spiritual actors engage for environmental protection and fight against climate change. Climate change and sustainability are increasingly prominent topics among religious and spiritual groups. Different faith traditions have developed "green" theologies, launc
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hed environmental protection projects and issued public statements on climate change. Against this background, academic scholarship has raised optimistic claims about the strong potentials of religions to address environmental challenges. Taking a critical stance with regard to these claims, the chapters in this volume show that religious environmentalism is an embattled terrain. Tensions are an inherent part of religious environmentalism. These do not necessarily manifest themselves in open clashes between different parties but in different actions, views, theologies, ambivalences, misunderstandings, and sometimes mistrust. Keeping below the surface, these tensions can create effective barriers for religious environmentalism. The chapters examine how tensions are manifested and dealt with through a range of empirical case studies in various world regions. Covering different religious and spiritual traditions, they reflect on intradenominational, interdenominational, interreligious, and religious-societal tensions." (Publisher description)
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"Heat risks, such as those associated with heatwaves, are increasing in frequency, severity, and duration due to climate change. The ways in which people around the globe perceive and respond to heat risks are now of great importance to reduce a range of negative health outcomes. A growing body of l
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iterature aims to assess the factors that influence people's behaviors in relation to heat risks. This research can inform better interventions, such as improved communications approaches, that attempt to facilitate adaptive behavioral responses to such risks. This review focuses on how insights from behavioral and attitudinal studies about heat risk responses can inform communication approaches. These insights are organized into three key themes: (1) Behaviors—What types of actions can be taken by people, and what evidence is there for adaptive behavior? (2) Antecedents—Which individual and contextual factors can influence people's behaviors? (3) Communications—How can existing insights be better integrated into interventions? Aspects of communication, including the role of message characteristics, messenger, and imagery, are discussed, with examples of messages and narratives that target influential antecedents of adaptive responses to heat risks. The paper makes three important contributions. First, it organizes literature on the antecedents and behavioral responses to heat risk; second, it provides a typology of the range of heat risk behaviors; and, third, it discusses how antecedents can be integrated into communication interventions. The review concludes with a proposed agenda for research, highlighting the need for substantial testing and evaluation of heat risk communication, applying insights from the literature." (Abstract)
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"Global media coverage of climate change has grown consistently—although unevenly—over recent years. While major differences exist in how much attention is paid to climate coverage in different parts of the world, how climate is discussed has been noticeably uniform and the major thrust of the
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climate communication agenda” remains recognizably “global” in that it is driven by the more mature media markets in the North and especially by the narratives coming out of international climate institutions (e.g., the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], climate Conference of the parties [COPs] international nongovernmental organizations [NGOs], and think tanks). Building on the recent experience of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, this essay argues that with the advent of what we are calling the age of adaptation, climate reporting is likely to shift rapidly from mostly explaining why climate change is important (and generally convergent broad ideas about what might be done about it) to reporting on localized climate impacts (and often divergent preferences on how to allocate responsibility and evaluate the cost of those consequences). This will, we argue, make global media narratives on climate change not only more complex and more contentious, but also more honest." (Abstract)
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"This second volume builds on the initial groundwork laid by Ecocinema Theory and Practice by examining the ways in which ecocritical cinema studies have matured and proliferated over the last decade, opening whole new areas of study and research. Featuring fourteen new essays organized into three s
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ections around the themes of cinematic materialities, discourses, and communities, the volume explores a variety of topics within ecocinema studies from examining specific national and indigenous film contexts to discussing ecojustice, environmental production studies, film festivals, and political ecology. The breadth of the contributions exemplifies how ecocinema scholars worldwide have sought to overcome the historical legacy of binary thinking and intellectual norms and are working to champion new ecocritical, intersectional, decolonial, queer, feminist, Indigenous, vitalist, and other emergent theories and cinematic practices. The collection also demonstrates the unique ways that cinema studies scholarship is actively addressing environmental injustice and the climate crisis." (Publisher description)
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"The landscape of documentaries has changed greatly in the twenty-first century. From a niche form, with few productions, to global distribution via social media. Post-truth documentaries largely have a sense of outsiders challenging the status quo, delivered by self-proclaimed experts with anecdote
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and emotions central to the power of message delivered on free online platforms. In a world of fake news and alternative facts the documentary can still be a device which highlights the SDG issues, engages audiences and promotes discussion. They can be part of a system of regaining the public trust to encourage the political will to continue the agenda and meet the goals. In a post-truth era maybe people need a different form of documentary, one that while continuing critical thinking and research, moves from the expository to other modes or hybrids to inform the debate on SDG’s. Documentaries that are more inclusive then ‘I speaking about us to you’, less patronising than ‘I speaking about them to you’." (Conclusion)
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