Inspire, educate, keep it real: communicating about the climate crisis and our built environment
Ask anyone why they work in sustainability, or how they got there, and it’ll normally come back to a moment, image or story. Whether that’s polar bears on ice caps, flooding in your home-town or climate disasters overseas; what the anecdotes have in common is an emotional pull that makes what can seem abstract and far-off, tangible and real. For the built environment, crafting these narratives and creating that emotional reaction can be challenging. Which is why climate communications professionals, like myself, are brought in to shine a light on these stories and make businesses sit up and take meaningful climate action.
Bringing the built environment to life
Unlike our food, clothing, or travel choices, choosing a more sustainable future for our buildings is out of reach, or might even feel impossible.
For me, it starts with the question: how do we visualise the impact our built environment has on our planet? Which is followed by: and how do we make changing how it works seem possible, worthwhile and aspirational?
Our homes, offices, streets, and parks can seem static – the majority were built before our living memory, and in some cases the buildings and street layouts are hundreds of years old. This can make our built environment feel akin to a backdrop, something we live amongst with little control over. Unlike our food, clothing, or travel choices, choosing a more sustainable future for our buildings is out of reach, or might even feel impossible. And because our built environment feels so immutable, paying attention to how it negatively impacts our environment doesn’t even cross our minds.
But the reality is our built environment is always changing, and it has an impact on our environment, a big one. UKGBC’s Net Zero Whole Life Carbon Roadmap found that our built environment is responsible for 25% of UK carbon emissions, and further research demonstrates the impact it has on our ability to adapt to climate change and the damage it causes to ecosystems worldwide.
Creating a vision
Most climate issues have a ready-baked vision of what it is a campaign is trying to achieve. The reduction of plastic waste conjures beautiful plastic free beaches, the switch from fossil fuels brings to mind dark, heavy smoke clouds giving way for clean futuristic tech. In our built environment it can be a little more opaque. Retrofitting a home doesn’t necessarily change its appearance dramatically. Similarly, reusing the structure of a building instead of demolishing and starting again doesn’t lend itself to daydreaming. But both are just as crucial as other climate campaigns – so how do we make it appealing? How do we make sustainability in the built environment sexy?
How do we make sustainability in the built environment sexy?
We need to create a vision of what a regenerative, net zero, nature positive and climate resilient built environment could look like. Behind the scenes, technical teams are working out what it means to achieve these goals, and as a communications professional it’s our job to paint the picture.
At UKGBC, our vision is communities where all homes are warm, safe and cheap to heat, powered by renewable electricity and designed with the families who will live there in mind. We envision office buildings with stylish shutters designed for overheating, and tree-lined avenues prepared for heavy rain. Our ideal urban spaces have nature at their core, bringing biodiversity and the community to our streets, encouraging active travel and a connection with what makes your town unique. Buildings are no longer torn down and, if they have to be, the materials are easily stored and reused. Our built environment is inspiring and restorative, having a positive impact on our climate, nature and communities.
Having a vision is a north star, something to aim towards. But having a vision always opens up the question – how do we get there?
Breaking down the technical
Many of the solutions we have in the built environment are not straightforward, they are complex and many are technical, and can be difficult to grasp as a non-expert.
So, we take these technical concepts and make them accessible. That can be by explaining the basics or creating graphs to bring data to life. The content we make unpacking technical solutions can then be used for a variety of different purposes. Everything from assisting understanding with a graphic in a 50-page report to creating a snapshot for you to stop on as you scroll on social media.
Well-thought through communications can help more of our sector understand and embrace the technologies, policies levers and new ways of working that’ll allow us to achieve our vision.
Well-thought through communications can help more of our sector understand and embrace the technologies, policies levers and new ways of working that’ll allow us to achieve our vision.
Balancing out the message
At UKGBC, solutions drive our climate messaging – to inspire and drive change. However, it’s crucial that our content also reflects the reality of what we’re experiencing and the inaction we see from some stakeholders.
Without this acknowledgement of our reality, we risk falling into greenwashing. It’s important to remind industry why business as usual is not working. But, on the other hand, many of us are bombarded every day with the bad news, so much so that our reaction is to bury our heads in the sand.
A solution? In UKGBC communications we like to reference the problem – remind our audience why what we’re about to say is worth listening to. And then we move onto the solutions, the call to actions. In short, we arm our audiences, with the information to take that next step and forge ahead real climate action. Specifically, we work to demonstrate they can drive change whilst at work, using their expertise and positions to transform our built environment in ways that can seem impossible for most.
Daisy Everingham is the Digital Content and Social Media Officer at UKGBC, you can explore UKGBC’s social media accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Related
Reflections on Leadership and Sustainability in the Built Environment
Retrofit: Operational energy in the spotlight
What’s next for Embodied Ecological Impacts?
Finding my voice: Reflections on the Future Leaders Programme
