George Marshall, Director of Projects at Climate Outreach, and Shailendra Yashwant, Senior Advisor at Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) and former Programme Director at Greenpeace South East Asia, will present an overview of the Global Narratives project as well as key findings and insight from the pilot project in India. These include the reasons why we need to find national narratives and where to look for them, what works and what doesn’t work, and how this pilot project can be applied to other countries.
Global Narratives is a pioneering initiative launched jointly by Climate Outreach and Climate Action Network International (CAN-I) to test and develop climate change messaging and narratives. It pilots a new model of cooperative design that invests in the skills and capacity of national level organisations and makes high quality research affordable, particularly for low-income countries. The Global Narratives approach is based on Climate Outreach’s Narrative Workshop methodology which focuses on asking searching questions about people’s values, identity and hopes for the future (this methodology will be published in a forthcoming academic article).
The Indian pilot provides a proof of concept: that national level organisations can conduct qualitative research using a rigorous methodology to a high standard with limited resources and relatively quickly. We intend to replicate the Global Narratives method and further develop this approach in other countries. Ultimately, our ambition is that all people, in every country, are able to relate to climate change through language that speaks to their distinct concerns, values, and cultural identity such that they can understand the issues and feel motivated to take action. This project is a first step towards that wider ambition.