Hosted by OSOS , contributed by Di Martino on 15 May 2018
Climate change issues are clearly a growing concern for the public today. In recent years, people have received a great deal of information from media on the causes and consequences of climate changes, but – depending on countries and regions – the understanding of citizens and their engagement in these topics is still varied. Communication professionals are making effort to communicate the messages correctly. This project proposes to contribute to a global effort to develop news tools and educational actions on climate change from “informative” to the “active” procedures through the exchange and dissemination of practices that involve citizens in actions and dialogue.
This project will contribute to generate interests and to increase public awareness on global and local aspects of climate change.
In this context, four main objectives were identified:
- The first one is exchanging practices and integrating synergies among schools, involved in the project and engaged in the communication of climate change.
- The second one is to implement a global communication action based on communication of climate change issues.
- The third one is to disseminate the latest results of research and its contribution to the advancement of climate change comprehension.
- The fourth one is the engagement of citizens in debates, and the collection of data concerning their perception in on climate change issues, its risks and impact, both for the general public and for policymakers and other stakeholders.
These objectives were achieved through a coordinated work plan of activities during the project.
“What I do about climate change?” will be a campaign and will integrate with school labs, science demonstrations, participatory games, teacher training sessions, lectures and debates, taking place during the project, which engage the public (parents, students, teachers and general public) in the issues of climate change.
The project will end with a public meeting in the region of Campania or the municipality during which the students involved will present the best practices (decalogo) of behavior to be taken to reduce climate change in their city and will ask the possibility to disseminate them to the citizens and take them into consideration. .
Main phase of the project will be the Local Citizens’ Debates are participatory meetings with around 30 individuals taking part, which are structured to gather people’s views and perceptions on climate change issues. Participants are selected in order to have a representative mix of expertise, age, gender, and institutional connections.
Local Citizens Debate (LCD) aiming at raising interest and stimulating debate on climate change issues, risks and impacts both for the general public, for policymakers and other stakeholders. Those issues are a growing concern for society today so much so that the consequences can be experienced in daily life. However, the understanding of citizens and their engagement in these topics vary considerably due to the complexity and quantity of information available on media. This is a unique opportunity for people not only to debate with other citizens, but to make explicit the topics you want to deepen on climate change, the aspects deemed to be in need of better communication, the kind of actions you wish to see implemented both at local and global level.
We consider the project as a communication Campain through which actual research results can be disseminated to dialogue among students, teachers, scientists, stakeholders, policy makers and citizens.
To make young people grow with a sense of responsibility towards themselves and others, the planet Earth belongs to everyone and we all have the duty to contribute and to do our part, even if we have the feeling that it does not help because others are choose for us. Moreover this type of activity increases the transversal skills required today by the Italian educational system. In addition to participatory and communication activities, educational science activities will be held to investigate some scientific topics on climate change.
The first step will be dedicated to the selection and cataloguing of existing programmes and activities aimed at raising public awareness of climate change phenomena and the related impacts. A wide range of communication tools will be considered, such as participatory games, educational activities, workshops, lectures and debates. An online catalogue will be developed by the schools involved, sharing and exchanging the best experience. Each school establish relationships with local research institution groups working on climate change level for the implementation of their public programmes.
The main achievement, during the first step of the project, was the sharing and the definition of the best practices that will be used after for the campaign for the communication of climate change in all schools. Methodological inputs concerning the implementation of activities to be performed with the public during the campaign and for the organisation of the Local Citizens Debates.
The second step will be dedicated to developing the local communication action to the public with two actions: public programmes and Local Citizens Debates. First of all, each school will define the calendar of events during the 5 months, including a list of participatory games, educational activities, workshops, lectures and debates, involving the general public (citizens, students and teachers), and the organisation of one Local Citizens Debates (LCD), involving a representative sample of citizens from young people to senior citizens on a structured discussion about the expectations of climate issues.
The educational activities will focus on understanding the functioning of the climate and the earth system, including the ocean and the polar regions, determining the causes of changes in the past and predicting their probable future evolution.
All schools will organize special communication activities by stimulating the curiosity of citizens about climate change phenomena. The two-way approach - considering the social, ethical and economic aspects - suggest organizing, as much as possible, communication activities with experts and transforming the school into an “agora” encouraging the meetings of ideas, opinions and stimulating the discussion among people in a place where citizens could compare their ideas, opinions and points of view.
The “Local Citizens Debate” (LCD) will involve various actors: scientists from local research institutes, stakeholders, decision makers at the local level, civil society organizations and, of course, citizens. In this way, citizens will be the possibility of dealing with the local dimension of climate change (at the regional and local levels) in relation to the global dimension.
The goals of the LCDs are to identify specific needs and to implement the appropriate processes of agenda-framing, getting people engaged in a real dialogue on the future, where they can freely express their fears concerning the consequences of climate change and their expectations and propositions, in order to offer useful tools for local policy makers. To the end will be write the best practices to present during the final event at the Municipality or at office of Campania Region.
RRI principles
One of the key aspects of OSOS is the inclusion of RRI — Responsible Research and Innovation — principles (more information at RRI-Tools.eu). This is how this Accelerator fits into the RRI model:
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Governance |
Climate change issues are clearly a growing concern for the public today. People have received a great deal of information from the media on causes and consequences of climate change. On the Internet, citizens and young people have free access to a wide variety of in-depth information concerning many aspects of climate change, while they are not often prepared to evaluate such information and to elaborate their own opinions. The project proposed is a coordinated action aimed at to develope good practices and at strengthening collaborations with the scientific community on climate change issues. |
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Public Engagement |
The project contributes to a global effort, from the “informative” to the “active” phase, through the exchange and dissemination of the best practices, with specific actions aimed at encouraging the involvement of citizens in actions and in dialogues. Through the project, the schools itself can strengthen the efforts together with the local institutions to organise local Communication Action on climate change issues for the dissemination of research results, throut a dialogue among scientists, stakeholders and the public through participatory practices. |
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Gender equality |
As for many other activities we will work in respect of gender differences to try to reduce gender stereotypes we need to involve personalities from the research world and institutions, mainly female, in order to highlight that women increasingly occupy positions of power and decision-making. |
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Science Education |
The project contributes to generating interests and raising public awareness, especially among young people, on the global and local aspects of climate change. The aim is to understand what correct attitudes must be taken to contribute to the reduction of climate change in respect of ourselves and the society around us. It is important to perceive and be aware that natural resources can exhausted. |
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Ethics |
NGO representatives, politicians, scientists, teachers, teenagers, parents, journalists and citizens can found in the schools a unique setup and a wide portfolio of offers, where they could debate, discuss, and analyse scientific and technological issues in a truly democratic way. The schools are natural venues for such activities, since they offer an opportunity for a wider exchange of ideas, providing information that is generally perceived to be reliable and providing a neutral ground for individuals to meet and voice their concerns. |
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Open Access |
People need a clarification on the effects of climate change. They would need to know how much part of the global warming is caused by human activities and how much is a natural phenomenon. Will be shared scientific information, citizens more they know, the more they are likely to act, expecialy young people. Thanks to the involvement of schools, that will benefit from the best practices experimetated through the project will can to develop of public events to inform citizens and stakeholders. There is a big interest on the topics of climate change and of global warming, concentrating both on the information to reducing climate problems than on scientific topics. |
Feel
The real challenge of the proposed accelerator is to reach the shared idea that each individual citizen, in particular young people, with their actions can contribute positively to the reduction of climate change for a better future. In addition, another very important aspect is to be aware of the fact that natural resources are being exhausted and therefore only by adopting an eco-sustainable lifestyle could the damage be limited.
The project, aiming at raising interest and stimulating debate on climate change issues, risks and impacts both for the general public, for policymakers and other stakeholders. Those issues are a growing concern for society today so much so that the consequences can be experienced in daily life. However, the understanding of citizens and their engagement in these topics vary considerably due to the complexity and quantity of information available on media.
The proposal contributes to a global effort, in order to move the campaign for climate change from the “informative” to the “active” phase, through the exchange and dissemination of the best practices, with specific actions aimed at encouraging the involvement of citizens in actions and in dialogues. Through the project, the school’s community itself has strengthened the efforts together with the local institutions in a one-year Communication Action on climate change issues, the “I Do Campaign”, for the dissemination of research results, and has established a dialogue among scientists, stakeholders and the public through participatory practices. They capitalized on their skills in a sustainable web platform that has worked as a “collector”, as well as a “disseminator”, for any organization dealing with public engagement in science.
The principal results obtained during the Local Citizens Debate will be:
- People need a clarification on the effects of climate change, as they expressly ask for. They would need to know to what extent global warming is caused by human activity and to what extent it is a natural phenomenon.
- The panelists, and the citizens in general, ask for more (scientific) information very often; the citizens seem to believe that the more they know, the more they are likely to act.
Imagine
We could ask the students involved in the project to define a set of eco - sustainable actions to be followed in their schools for a correct ethical - social behavior to actively counteract the reduction of climate change. An example insert panels with an indication of how to use water in an eco-sustainable way and do not waste this important resource and that is increasingly at the highest risk of global availability.
The European Council confirmed the need for an integrated approach to climate change and energy policy. The established binding target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% by 2020, and a binding 30% target should other industrialized nations, including the US, take similar steps. Citizens are well-informed by the media on these international commitments, but they are less aware of the impact of European research. They also face difficulties in connecting this information to regional and local actions, as well as the consequences affecting their daily lives (quality of air, desertification, water resources, etc). Moreover, the involvement of society in climate change issues is fundamental for the development of effective adaptation and mitigation strategies, as well as in the implementation of actions to minimize the impacts of climate change.
With the actions proposed, the schools, science museums and researcher centres made a commitment to strengthen the efforts they made at the local level in a global action, by gathering their practices in science communication and public engagement in climate change issues. The model of project took the form of a local participative campaign, where schools and local communities shared their experience under a common framework, and made interactive and participative communication tools available to a large number of citizens.
In this context, three main objectives were identified for the project:
The first one was exchanging practices and integrating synergies among the schools, science centres, engaged in the communication of climate change. That means creating a long-term set of tools (catalogue) for exchanging data and activities among a high number of organisations committed to public engagement in science communication in Europe.
The second one was to implement a global communication action based on the two-way science communication of climate change issues in Europe. All schools will be involve in the project they will concentrate their efforts on the organisation of public programs.
The third one was the engagement of citizens in debates, and the collection of data concerning their perception in Europe on climate change issues, risks and impact, both for the general public and for policymakers and other stakeholders. The project proposed to associate the communication action with a participative approach engaging citizens in the debate of climate change. This approach integrated complex scientific issues with interactive actions. The strategy of engaging citizens in dialogue and discussions about emerging science and technologies, and their social, ethical and legal aspects, was recognized by the European Commission as a fundamental component to create the knowledge economy on the basis of the European Union’s Lisbon Agenda.
Such objectives were achieved through a coordinated work plan of activities during the project.
Create
A large range of activities concerning climate change (hands-on, exhibitions, school labs, science demonstrations, games, lectures and debates) will be organised by each of the institutions interested, as other schools, in order to raise visitors’ knowledge and to engage people in positive actions.
The first step will be dedicated to the selection and cataloguing of existing programmes and activities aimed at raising public awareness of climate change phenomena and the related impacts. A wide range of communication tools will be considere, such as science demonstrations, theatre performances, participatory games, educational activities, workshops, lectures and debates. Each school establish relationships with local research institution groups working on climate change at the European level for the implementation of their public programmes.
The second step will be dedicated to developing the Communication Actions to the Public with two actions: public programmes and Local Citizens Debates. First of all, each school defined the calendar of events , including a list of science demonstrations, theatre performances, participatory games, educational activities, workshops, lectures and debates, involving the general public (citizens, students and teachers), and the organisation of at least two Local Citizens Debates (LCD), involving a representative sample of citizens from young people to senior citizens on a structured discussion about the expectations of climate issues.
All schools coordinated the communication campaign targeted at the public on the latest research on climate change, and the related social and economic aspects. Starting from the activities selected schools chose the best way – according to the local conditions and the target audience – and the communication tools, which became a part of the list of activities and events programmed in their institution.
The main audience of school can be divided into three clusters: schools, families (general public) and interested professionals (scientists, industrials and politicians).
The activities proposed disseminated some research results and their support to the comprehension of the functioning of the climate and the earth system, including the ocean and the polar regions, determining the causes of changes in the past and predicting their probable future evolution.
Finally, all activities of the campaign will be introduced in the general annual promotional tools of the school: catalogues, programmes and websites, as well as in specific ones, such as press releases, printed announcements and posters. The project provided the public with different levels of information, allowing various degrees of depth according to the needs and backgrounds of the public.
All schools organised special communication activities by stimulating the curiosity of students about climate change phenomena. The two-way approach - considering the social, ethical and economic aspects - suggested organising, as much as possible, communication activities with human interface (explainers, researchers and experts) and transforming the school into an “agora” encouraging the meetings of ideas, opinions and stimulating the discussion among people in a place where visitors could compare their ideas, opinions and points of view. For these reasons, the exchange of the best practices among partners privileged activities of engaging the public, such as science demonstrations, performances, participatory games, educational activities, workshops, lectures and debates with scientists.
Two Local Citizens Debates will be organized in each schools involved in the project, including a representative sample of (around 30) citizens, from young people to senior citizens, in order to have a well-structured discussion about the expectations of climate issues.
The “Local Citizens Debate” (LCD) involved various actors: students, teachers, scientists from local research institutes, stakeholders, decision makers at the local level, civil society organizations and, of course, citizens. In this way, citizens had the possibility of dealing with the local dimension of climate change (at the regional and local levels) in relation to the global dimension.
The goals of the LCDs were to identify specific needs and to implement the appropriate processes of agenda-framing, getting people engaged in a real dialogue on the future, where they can freely express their fears concerning the consequences of climate change and their expectations and propositions, in order to offer useful tools for Local decision makers.