"Creating Effective Environmental Communication Strategies offers conservation professionals a straightforward, ten-step guide for designing and delivering strategic communication that drives measurable conservation impacts. Written for government focal points, NGO staff, scientists, privatesector partners, community organisers, and the communication specialists who support them, the guide positions communication as a core management tool rather than a last-minute public relations add-on.
At its core, the guide recognises that conservation succeeds only when people change unsustainable practices as a result of targeted attitude changes and knowledge gains. In this process, information alone is not the missing link between a problem and a solution. Instead, the authors frame communication as a two-way, participatory dialogue in which meaning and messages are co-created by and with audiences rather than bombarded on them. Drawing on holistic learning models (Head-Heart-Hands) and KAP-related social marketing insights about incentives, audience segmentation, media selection, and storytelling the guide shows practitioners how to move all parties involved from “being aware” to “ready for action” in ten logically consistent steps that build on each other.
The ten steps unfold across four phases of a project life cycle. Assessment covers situation analysis, stakeholder and KAP research, and the drafting of specific, measurable communication objectives. Planning stress-tests the change hypothesis, secures partner buy-in, and selects the most effective media mix for each audience segment. Production walks teams through message design, media and material production, and pre-testing for clarity, socio-cultural fit, and call for action. Finally, Action & Reflection guides roll-out, adaptive management, and rigorous monitoring and evaluation (M&E) that feed lessons back into future work. Throughout this management cycle, the guide insists on regular learning loops so adjustments happen in real time rather than ex-post.
A separate SeedBox of more than thirty plug-and-play so-called “seeds”—stakeholder maps, force field diagrams, media use planners, indicator scorecards, and more—anchors every step, enabling users to apply concepts immediately without reinventing templates. Case studies such as Venezuela’s Flying Together campaign related to threatened bird species and the nationwide conservation radio drama as part of My Green Mongolia translate theory into real-world outcomes and demonstrate how adaptable the framework is to different cultures, languages, and resource levels." (Executive summary)