Keywords

Storytelling is an essential part of human communication. We are all storytellers, and we all love stories! Since time immemorial, we have relied on storytelling for information sharing, sense-making, and social transformation (Fisher, 1987; Gottschall, 2012; Polkinghorne, 1988). Today, stories are everywhere and more prominent in our daily lives than ever before. They flood our news feeds in almost every waking moment and dominate our screens with endless options at the click of a finger. They travel in time and space as we share with each other, face to face and through media. In addition, they affect the way we think and how we feel (Green et al., 2019). Storytelling is at the core of our very being. The art and science of storytelling in recent decades have taught us that, when told well, stories are powerful. They can not only change people’s minds and actions but also fight social ills and save millions of lives (e.g., Green et al., 2002; Kreuter et al., 2007; Riley et al., 2022; Singhal & Rogers, 1999; Singhal et al., 2013). This might just be the secret to the survival of the human species and all life on Earth.

At this very moment, we are all writing the story of our time on this planet. Climate change is one of the most urgent and also one of the most complex global crises. Progress has been made in recent years, but these efforts are often disconnected. Our goal for putting together this book, Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions, is three-fold:

  1. 1.

    We hope to help build a “Community of Practice for Climate Storytelling” and see this book as our first step in action by inviting practitioners and scholars from different fields to share their knowledge, experience, and insight about how stories can be purposefully designed and effectively told to engage, enable, and empower various populations in climate communication.

  2. 2.

    We want to showcase a wide range of climate storytelling strategies and exemplary applications in terms of professional practices (e.g., education, literature, journalism, and popular media), narrative genres (e.g., drama, comedy, and fiction), media platforms (e.g., television, radio, and mobile), and communication modalities (e.g., text, visual, audio, and multisensory).

  3. 3.

    We plan to synthesize best practices, lessons learned, and what is needed now to advocate for increased funding, improved messaging, coordinated efforts, and necessary policy change that focus on human agency, effective solutions, positive actions, and sustainable initiatives moving forward.

In this introductory chapter, we use storytelling as an umbrella term for any type, form, genre, and practice of narrative communication. After briefly reviewing the current scientific understanding of climate change, recent public opinions about the issue, and the international community’s efforts, we point out three critical and interrelated gaps in climate change communication and articulate how narrative strategies, especially entertainment-education for social and behavior change, can effectively inspire and mobilize individuals and communities worldwide to engage in climate action and empowerment.

Current Scientific Knowledge about Climate Change

Widespread and rapid changes in the climate have been occurring since the Industrial Revolution, and syntheses of climate science such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports have shown definitively supporting evidence from paleoclimate archives, observational data, as well as peer-reviewed academic publications (Myers et al., 2021). With improved tools, technologies, and knowledge, scientists have reached a consensus that climate change is real; the evidence is unequivocal that human activities, such as population growth, rapid urbanization, and unsustainable consumption, caused the increased greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2023; Myers et al., 2021). Human influence is the principal driver of global warming and has warmed the climate at an unprecedented rate over centuries (IPCC, 2023; Myers et al., 2021). Higher global temperatures, significant loss of ice volume, rising sea levels, and extreme events such as heat waves, floods, droughts, and tropical cyclones are adversely affecting all life on Earth, across the ecosystems and human civilization in every inhabited region of the world, especially the most vulnerable among us (Friel et al., 2008; IPCC, 2022, 2023).

Without taking immediate and transformative actions, the frequency and intensity of these climate extremes will continue to increase and lead to catastrophic ecological, evolutionary, socioeconomic, and health consequences with biodiversity loss, land degradation, exacerbated inequities and injustices, and the largest human health crisis in history (Frumkin et al., 2008; Maibach et al., 2021; U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2016; World Health Organization, 2021). There are many ways that we can respond: climate mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and human exposure to climate hazards and climate adaptation by conserving biodiversity and developing regional and community resilience (Hawken, 2017). Improving the upstream effects such as reducing carbon emissions is more efficient than treating the downstream effects such as the compounding health impacts from extreme weather disasters, air pollution, water-borne pathogens, vector-borne, and zoonotic diseases (Luber & Lemery, 2015). Both the urgency and complexity of climate change demand effective, swift, scalable, and coordinated actions across all aspects and all levels of society.

Recent Public Opinions about Climate Change

In the United States, communication scientists have identified distinct groups that they called “global warming’s six Americas” (Leiserowitz et al., 2009): (1) The alarmed groups are most worried and motivated, strongly believe in climate change, and support climate action. (2) The concerned groups are worried and agree that global warming is a threat but may still be distant to take action. (3) The cautious groups are aware of climate change but uncertain about its causes to make up their minds. (4) The disengaged groups are largely unaware of global warming and disconnected from the reporting on this issue. (5) The doubtful groups question the claim of global warming and see it as a low risk. (6) The dismissive groups deny that global warming is happening, human-caused, or a threat, and oppose most climate change policies. Over time, more Americans are moving toward the alarmed and concerned groups (Leiserowitz et al., 2023). Their survey data from December 2022 also showed that one in ten Americans reported feeling distressed about global warming, and the climate distressed are more likely to take actions such as signing a petition or volunteering at an organization on global warming (Ballew et al., 2023).

Reports from recent international surveys have consistently shown that a majority of the public across the globe is concerned about climate change, and many people would like to contribute to this cause (Andi, 2020; Bell et al., 2021; Flynn et al., 2021; Leiserowitz et al., 2021). According to the UNDP, in People’s Climate Vote (the largest public opinion survey on climate change to date), 64% of their 1.2 million respondents across 50 countries said that climate change is an emergency. Of those, 59% said that the world should do everything necessary and urgently in response (Flynn et al., 2021). Similarly, 69% of 80,155 respondents in a Reuters Institute survey in 40 news media markets said that they consider climate change to be an extremely or very serious problem (Andi, 2020). Furthermore, 76,328 Facebook users in 31 countries and territories worldwide who participated in a survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication also showed that most of them agreed that climate change is happening (79–94%) and will harm future generations (53–89%; Leiserowitz et al., 2021). A Pew Research Center survey found 72% of their 16,254 respondents across 17 advanced economies worried about how climate change will personally harm them, and 80% are willing to change how they live and work, including a median of 34% willing to make “a lot of changes” to their daily life, to help curb global warming (Bell et al., 2021). In other words, more people around the globe are willing and ready to act now.

Intergovernmental Organizing for Climate Action

Thirty years ago, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed as an international environmental treaty, having been rectified by 197 countries since it took effect in 1994. The UNFCCC (n.d.) has set the foundation for subsequent milestones such as the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 (setting global targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction) and the Paris Agreement in 2015 (limiting global warming well below 2 °C, preferably 1.5 °C to sustain a functioning biosphere). Most recently, the COP26 in 2021 was convened in Glasgow to bring countries together and accelerate climate action toward the goals of the Paris Agreement. The resulting Glasgow Climate Pact shows some progress; however, many scientists and activists criticized its lack of stronger commitments and are calling for a more inclusive and just movement (e.g., Hawken, 2021; Masood & Tollefson, 2021). An ongoing effort in that direction is the Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) framework, which prioritizes and advocates for equitable community-centered engagement and active empowerment at the local level through education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation on these issues (Bowman et al., 2021; Bowman & Morrison, 2021; Cintron-Rodriguez et al., 2021). These existing intergovernmental frameworks provide high-level guidance for funding, coordinating, and monitoring progress toward climate mitigation and adaptation goals. However, many citizens worldwide are not confident in the international community’s efforts to reduce global warming. In fact, 52% of the Pew Research Center survey said they were not too confident or not confident at all (Bell et al., 2021). What is needed now is to mobilize all members of society in collective action, especially at the local and regional levels, through actionable climate mitigation and adaptation pathways (IPCC, 2022).

Critical Gaps in Climate Change Communication

Climate change communication is a growing field of scholarship and praxis centered around how we communicate about climate change, such as the public understanding of the issue, news coverage, and message framing, as well as risk perceptions and media effects (Chadwick, 2017; Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, n.d.). There are at least three critical and interrelated gaps in climate change communication that warrant immediate attention and action: funding, messaging, and coordination.

First, funding support is severely lacking, especially for the science communicators to conduct applied work with what we already know that works. There is no incentive for media producers to invest in research and development to create accurate content while keeping up with the rapid production cycles. Practitioners such as visual illustrators in the field are either not paid or not paid adequately for their work on climate change. Moreover, there is an urgent need for programmatic investment in full-time jobs dedicated to climate change communication and systematically developed networks of these professionals to create a truly meaningful and sustainable impact over time.

Second, messaging is significantly limited in terms of overall quantity, quality, and efficacy. We need more messages about climate change, messages that go beyond merely raising awareness and sharing scientific findings. Current messaging about climate change is predominantly about fear and anxiety, in both the language and imagery used in scientific reports, news stories, and entertainment programs. This can be difficult to translate into responsive behaviors. We must shift the messages in the stories we tell about climate change from issue-oriented to action-oriented and focus on positive framing and actionable solutions to foster human agency and facilitate real change (De Meyer et al., 2021). More specifically, we need “simple clear messages, repeated often, by a variety of trusted and caring messengers” that make the behaviors we are promoting “easy, fun, and popular” (Maibach et al., 2023, p. 54).

Third, coordination is almost nonexistent among existing teams and initiatives across various disciplines. Due to financial and capacity constraints, even climate communication professionals are mostly working in silos. This is a major challenge for knowledge sharing. Many must reinvent the wheel and experience difficulty when disseminating their products or interventions. In addition, the messages from different groups and fields are scattered, and there are no clear pathways to connect the dots, leverage existing resources, and amplify positive impact. The most vulnerable groups to climate change are often left out of important discussions and initiatives (IPCC, 2022). We need to coordinate our efforts in engaging communities, curating content, and linking resources across national, regional, and local levels as well as the full range of media platforms to ensure the messages are clear, consistent, and compelling.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation are a planetary race with physical, cognitive, emotional, geopolitical, and sociocultural barriers. Using the exemplary approaches and applications in this book, we argue that storytelling is an effective catalyst for climate change communication and empowerment. We advocate for it to be integrated into climate change funding, planning, and monitoring to help avert this global crisis.

Entertainment-Education for Social and Behavior Change

In the span of over 50 years, the idea of intentionally combining entertainment with education for health promotion and behavior change, known as entertainment-education or edutainment, has evolved into a field of research and practice around the globe, making a significant impact at the individual, interpersonal, community, and societal levels (Frank & Falzone, 2021; Riley et al., 2022; Singhal et al., 2013; Storey & Sood, 2013; Wang & Singhal, 2021a). In its early years, from the 1970s to the early 2000s, practitioners mainly worked with government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and creative professionals in developing countries to create prosocial radio and television serial dramas (Singhal et al., 2004; Singhal & Rogers, 1999). Given that context, entertainment-education was defined as “the process of purposely designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate in order to increase audience knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, and change overt behavior” (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p. 9; also see Singhal et al., 2004, p. 5). The focus was to find the “sweet spot” that helped balance the entertaining and the educational elements in the story so the audience members would relate to the plots, fall in love with the characters, not feel they were being preached at, and could see new possibilities to enhance their lives (Wang & Singhal, 2021a).

With the growing accessibility and popularity of digital technologies and interactive media, storytelling on web-based platforms with immersive environments rose rapidly. In 2009, a reformulated definition was proposed to emphasize that entertainment-education is “a theory-based communication strategy for purposefully embedding educational and social issues in the creation, production, processing, and dissemination process of an entertainment program, in order to achieve desired individual, community, institutional, and societal changes among the intended media user populations” (Wang & Singhal, 2009, pp. 272–273). And most recently, in keeping with the global trend and through the lens of translational research, an updated statement defined entertainment-education as “a social and behavioral change communication (SBCC) strategy that leverages the power of storytelling in entertainment and wisdom from theories in different disciplines—with deliberate intention and collaborative efforts throughout the process of content production, program implementation, monitoring, and evaluation—to address critical issues in the real world and create enabling conditions for desirable and sustainable change across micro-, meso-, and macro-levels” (Wang & Singhal, 2021a, p. 227).

Decades of work in entertainment-education have proven it to be a cost-effective way to foster positive change in communities around the world. For example, a flagship institution Population Media Center (n.d.) estimated the cost of only $2.54 USD for each person to begin discussing family planning with important people in their social circles as the direct result of one of their entertainment-education programs. In addition, the embedded educational messages are typically grounded in formative research with a deep understanding of the unmet needs of the intended audience and clear social objectives for behavior change, which is then modeled through character development and story arcs (Singhal et al., 2013). Mexican writer–producer–director Miguel Sabido pioneered the entertainment-education production methodology (commonly referred to as the Sabido Methodology), which includes a framework with competing moral values related to the educational theme; a set of positive, negative, and transitional characters as role models; a narrative structure that confronts the status quo and progresses through stages of suffering, doubting, and overcoming obstacles to achieve the ultimate triumph; and the use of epilogues to guide and facilitate public discourse, and promotion of resources to enable desired actions (Sabido, 2021; Singhal et al., 2013).

Novel and effective solutions can be introduced and modeled through powerful characters and storylines that boost self and collective efficacy and facilitate behavior change. A famous example is how Soul City used neighbors’ banging pots and pans as a bystander intervention for domestic violence in their entertainment-education television drama, which led to people emulating the same behavior, naming their community as Soul City, and the featured hotline ringing off the hook (Singhal et al., 2013). A critical point here is that when behavior modeling is coupled with supporting infrastructure, it can effectively facilitate change at scale. For example, Sabido’s first entertainment-education telenovela alone “shifted the shameful norms around illiteracy and inspired half a million viewers to enroll in Mexico’s national adult education program” (Wang & Singhal, 2021b, p. 822). Three of his early entertainment-education telenovelas were able to slow down Mexico’s population growth rate from 3.7 to 2.4 in 5 years; without those interventions, Mexico would have had 50 million more people today (Sabido, 2021; Wang & Singhal, 2021b).

Taken together, entertainment-education is a narrative communication strategy that can promote and accelerate climate action and empowerment. The design, implementation, and impact of different entertainment-education initiatives may vary considerably according to individual project goals, available resources, collaborative processes, and issue- and audience-based contextualization and adaptation. Some of them are illustrated in the chapters of this book (Bish, 2024; Brown, 2024; Garg et al., 2024; Falzone et al., 2024; Hinerfeld et al., 2024; Sood et al., 2024). For illustrative purposes, in this chapter, we describe one example of entertainment-education used in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in India that modeled actionable solutions and inspired individual and collective action to reduce air pollution.

Example of Entertainment-Education for Climate Change

Verse

Verse I am the air I help you breathe and help you sing I am a life-giver like your mother I love greenery and thrive on grasses and trees But my child, when you do not listen to me I am starving and in pain I am trapped in pollution Suffocated by smoke Lost in the loud noise I have become dark, very dark… I am the air Like your own mother A mother who bears so much pain For her children…

These are the lyrics from Main Hawa Hoon (I Am the Air), the theme song of a 2017 radio drama series Ek Zindagi Aisi Bhi (A Life We Aspire For) broadcast in India (The Change Designers, 2017a). These words painted air as a suffering mother, full fleshed, with color and sound, in time and space. It delineated a clear picture of air—an essential element of life on this planet but often invisible to its inhabitants. This personification of air, coupled with a somber melodic tone, helped evoke empathy among listeners to care deeply about the deteriorating quality of air in their communities (The Change Designers, 2017b).

Over the course of six 30-min audio episodes (The Change Designers, 2017a), stories of deteriorating air quality and its impact were told through a constellation of compelling characters that not only echoed people’s real-life experiences but also demonstrated the possibility of alternative realities. Sudhir, 28, has recently moved to live with his mother in the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, the heart of India’s northern belt. This is also where Chutki lives. Chutki is 26, educated, independent, and witty, the young woman he has been seeing for 4 years. Through twists and turns as well as community gossip, Sudhir and Chutki manage to get married in court and celebrate their union by planting a native tree (peepal) that produces oxygen 24 h a day. Instead of having a lavish wedding that can cause a lot of pollution and waste, Sudhir and Chutki emerge as a new normal in their community. During one of the episodes, the couple are stuck in heavy traffic at a four-way intersection, as it happens so often on the streets in India, Sudhir hops out of the auto-rickshaw and spontaneously starts a “social intervention” by directing the crowd and clearing the traffic. Chutki, on the other hand, in one scene, demonstrates waste segregation and composting while sharing with the women about the danger of burning waste and cooking on a wooden stove. Produced and broadcast 3 years before the COVID-19 pandemic, publicly wearing masks was modeled as a novel solution to prevent people from inhaling polluted air and protect them from diseases such as asthma and lung cancer (Cohen & Pope III, 1995; Guarnieri & Blames, 2014). Also woven into the plots were a veteran taxi driver’s decision to adopt the new technology and switch to an e-rickshaw after his asthma diagnosis, and his daughter Rupa’s strong attitude against a village head because of his selfish and socially irresponsible motive to build a factory even though she is in love with his son (The Change Designers, 2017b).

Ek Zindagi Aisi Bhi (A Life We Aspire For) reached approximately 20 million people in just 6 weeks. Their program evaluation showed that the 194 participants in their listener groups shared a total of 162 behavior change references; and categorically speaking, adopted 24 eco-friendly behaviors, 15 actions to control emissions, 10 waste management solutions, 10 steps to discuss these issues with others, 9 ways to increase personal and social accountability, and 3 specific new things to reduce their health risk due to environmental hazards—some of these changes may be a result of listeners emulating the attitudes and behaviors modeled by the characters in the show that they aspired to become while others may be creative adaptations or completely new discoveries (The Change Designers, 2017b).

To paint a picture of the show’s impact, most listeners adopted the use of cloth bags for everyday shopping in the market as an alternative to plastic bags, which are non-biodegradable and a major issue of littering, landfills, and burning waste that cause pollution. All participants in the listener groups agreed on the benefits of new technologies such as e-rickshaws and solar panels to reduce harmful emissions. One woman went ahead and filled out the form to buy an e-rickshaw! In another group discussion, a listener shared that she installed a compost bin and her family enjoyed sewing herbs and vegetables in her terrace garden, all thanks to her new habit of composting waste. Another listener told the group that she chose to gift a plant at a neighborhood birthday celebration and said to everybody that “whenever there is a moment of happiness around us, we should take that opportunity to plant a tree and grow a new life”. Positive changes also took place beyond individual actions. Inspired by the characters in the show, one group was motivated to hold their local leaders accountable for improving environmental conditions. A rally with community members to demand real change grew to be a series of marches that led to a signed petition to the municipal authorities because of the intervention (The Change Designers, 2017b).

Moreover, good stories are generative—they plant seeds to nurture more creative solutions and inspiring stories. A 60-year-old woman said she loved her listener group. They felt they learned so many new things and wanted to share with others. Such enthusiasm turned into a community event where they actually reenacted and performed the story of Ek Zindagi Aisi Bhi (A Life We Aspire For) on the stage as part of the International Women’s Day celebration in their district. There they were holding the microphones and narrating their character’s stories in front of more than 1000 women in the audience. The community leader expressed that this was the first time that air pollution was ever discussed publicly, and even more unusual and rare is that these efforts were led by women, whose voice was never valued or heard in the community. As the audience rose to applaud the performers on the stage, they recorded videos on their phones and whistled as they marveled at the drama. In those moments, the invisible air became not just visible through the airwaves but bold and colorful visuals co-created and co-owned by the community, while the silenced members became creatively and powerfully vocal (The Change Designers, 2017b).

This is one example of how inspiring and powerful stories, when designed and shared with deliberate prosocial objectives and coordinated collaborative efforts, can change not just people’s minds but also their spirits and behaviors. We encourage you to learn more about entertainment-education as well as other narrative communication strategies in this book that may help the climate change endeavors for you and your communities.

Organization of This Book

As shown in Table 1, we have organized this book to begin with a global overview of entertainment-education and how it has been used to address climate change based on 87 programs from 2000 to 2020 with different approaches and practices in the Global South and the Global North (Sood et al., 2024). Following this overview, we have four chapters demonstrating how organizations that champion entertainment-education implement it in the Global South: PCI Media uses its “My Community Methodology” to create authentic and locally driven radio dramas to support climate action (Brown, 2024). Population Media Center uses the Sabido/PMC Methodology to promote family planning and girls’ education in their radio dramas for a healthier and more sustainable population living on this planet (Bish, 2024). BBC Media Action engages young people in storytelling from television to social media to promote public discussions and government accountability for climate change (Garg et al., 2024). Peripheral Vision International developed children’s television series with inspirational models for climate education and agency (Falzone et al., 2024). Then, we transition to explore how entertainment-education and social impact entertainment strategies have been used and can potentially be improved in the Global North, represented by the United States. A comedy-drama prototype for climate communication tailored toward young adult Americans is proposed with detailed character development and story arcs based on theory and research (Coren, 2024). A newly established Rewrite the Future program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been helping Hollywood better incorporate climate change themes into their entertainment programming to promote effective solutions (Hinderfeld et al., 2024). Despite the seriousness of the climate crisis, comedians are having a ball firing their secret weapons to wake up their audiences and get them involved in climate action (Gurney & N’Diaye, 2024).

Table 1 Summary of narrative strategies, communication platforms, and geographic locations of climate storytelling programs featured in this book
Full size table

In addition to entertainment-education, we have included many other creative storytelling strategies for climate change communication in the second half of this book. Climate fiction (or cli-fi) is a literary genre that uses fictional characters and storylines to inspire green actions (Baden & Brown, 2024). Visual illustrations created by professionals have a long history in science communication and should be increasingly supported to produce quality imagery to effectively convey messages about climate change (Monoyios et al., 2024). Music, with powerful melodies and lyrics, can evoke deep human emotions to care about planet Earth, as shown in The ClimateMusic Project (Dixon et al., 2024). The evolution of the food we consume can also tell compelling stories about the impact of global warming (Eiseman & Hoffman, 2024). Practices in journalism can benefit from cross-disciplinary teamwork, audience engagement, and artificial intelligence-driven technologies to generate hyperlocal news reporting that promotes actionable solutions (Whitwell, 2024). Understanding community-based resilience and learning from positively deviant initiatives can help us boost collective efficacy and reduce mental health challenges related to climate change (Cosentino et al., 2024). Maps and geospatial software applications can be powerful tools for climate storytelling and empowerment (Wolf-Jacobs et al., 2024). Interactive storytelling in immersive environments can create conditions for self-directed deep learning and large-scale public engagement in climate science communication (Spiegel & Wang, 2024). Inviting youth to observe and embody birds through puppetry, costumes, and movement in outdoor settings can better integrate the themes of equity and inclusion into environmental preservation (Osnes et al., 2024). In addition, instructional storylines developed by the Understanding Global Change Project use coherent sequences of lessons to help students connect their lived experiences with scientific concepts of systematic change (Bean, 2024).

We invite you to explore different narrative communication approaches and applications for climate change in this book. These projects provide insight into how we can expand climate change communication through many media types, adapted regionally and demographically to support a wide range of climate mitigation and adaptation outcomes. Through partnerships with existing media and storytelling infrastructure, improving the visualization of strategies already underway, and incorporating insights from entertainment-education and other narrative communication strategies, we can effectively accelerate climate solutions.