By Dr. Michael Shank

As the world plans for the 30th round of international climate talks in Brazil later this year, it’s remarkable to think how much has changed when it comes to global appetites for climate action and policy, especially among national governments and multinational companies.

Ten years ago, on the road to the seminal Paris climate agreement, where the world committed to keeping global warming to within livable limits, I was helping cities, states, regions and businesses step up to support their respective nations.

It was an exciting time bringing global mayors to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis to discuss ambitious climate action, huddling in the West Wing of the White House to discuss how the US government could better partner with cities, launching coalitions of big and bold businesses ready to prioritize the planet, and supporting UN sustainable development goal-setting among subnationals. The sky was the limit.

Much has changed in ten years. National governments responsible for a near majority share of the historical greenhouse gas emissions are backing away from previously pledged ambitious climate action. More worryingly, many of them are tacking far right politically, undermining a whole host of sustainability agendas. Multinational companies have similarly stepped back from ambitious climate and sustainability targets and timelines, and many global investment firms have followed suit.

Where ambition has strengthened in the past ten years, however, is among local governments and local communities. Over 13,000 cities are now committed to long-term climate action plans, and unsurprisingly so, because it is what people want. In the world’s largest survey on climate attitudes, an impressive 72 percent of people globally want their communities to move away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy. And a further 84 percent of people in the world’s biggest economies say there should be more collaboration on climate action.

How do we leverage all of that local leadership and local interest, then, to reinvigorate what we once witnessed at the national and multinational levels? We definitely can’t rest on our laurels as time is of the essence – the last ten years were the hottest ten years on record – and national and corporate commitments continue to be fickle and fleeting.

It will require a rethink in how we do things. If the last 10 years have taught us anything it’s that nothing is guaranteed, and new approaches will be needed to reinstate and lock in the kind of leadership we need to keep the planet and its people alive and well.

A little lesson from nature might help. We hear a lot about nature-based solutions in the climate space, but it’s not often applied to how we communicate or engage on climate action and policy. But it should be.

There are four nature-based lessons worth exploring, and they’re ranked in order of difficulty as well as impact. We start with the easiest, and we end with what has the potential to be the most impactful. Let’s jump in.

The first nature-based lesson: Be multilingual.

Taking both a literal and metaphorical lesson from many-tongued birds, or mimus polyglottos, known as the mockingbird, how can we speak many languages in this work? Speaking the literal languages of the communities we’re working with is a must, of course, and many local governments have upped their game here, though more work is needed to ensure everyone is engaged. But it’s the metaphorical multilingualism that has the potential to bear even more fruit if done right.

What do I mean by metaphorical multilingualism? Imagine all the ways our communities create, receive, communicate, process and trust ideas and information. Many of those ways circumvent local government, unintentionally or intentionally. And yet devoted monolingualism in government persists, hoping that communities will learn the climate and carbon language and get on board. It’s time to let go of this monolingualism.

We’ve spent the last ten years trying to Rosetta Stone a new math-based language of net zero this and carbon neutrality that. And we’ve spent less time figuring out where, when, why, and how people process ideas and information and with whom. For example, are the most trusted languages scriptural, delivered by religious leaders, or medical, prescribed by health practitioners? Are they fiscal or safety-focused, and are they spoken in local investment firms and banks or community centers and neighborhood text threads or WhatsApp groups?

Our default to monolingualism has asked communities to leave their multilingualism and learn our language. And it’s largely been mono-emotional, if emotional at all. Many of our inherently human emotional languages have been completely absent from government communiques on climate. Our linguistic tools have been predominantly reports, dashboards, websites, government venues and other places and spaces that limit our translative capacity. It’s time to change that default.

It's time to learn new languages.

If you’re interested in doing so, first take a look at the following resources and then reach out to me directly if you’re keen to discuss further how any of these strategies could be deployed in a coordinated fashion. This is a useful checklist when thinking through all the ways in which our communities communicate and how we can meet them where they’re at with the languages they’re using.

Here are the resources: Huffington Post originally published my 12-point checklist here, and Apolitical published updated versions in half-dozen portions, the first six of which are available here and the second six are available here. After reviewing these resources, let’s discuss what languages are missing in our local government outreach and how we can make our work more multilingual going forward.

The second nature-based lesson: Be sweet.

Be the pollen that attracts the pollinator. If we want our local communities to come willingly to this work, we need to lead with the nectar. In other words, how will life be better after acting on climate? This is a pretty simple nature-based lesson and yet we rarely lead with it. In fact, we often lead with the opposite and illustrate how life will be worse if we don’t act in time. But since that rarely compels people to change behavior, how do we flip the script and instead lead with the pollen that pulls people in and the nectar that nudges behavior change.

From a behavioral science perspective, there are many ways to promote and position pollen appropriately in the climate space. Motivating communities to consider climate action is more than just learning the languages identified in the previous nature-based lesson on multilingualism. Just because someone is speaking a religious, economic, health or safety language fluently doesn’t mean they’ll act on it. There are a whole host of potential obstacles that might get in the way of them reaching for and accessing that nectar.

For example, we may be overwhelming them with too many urgent options to act on in the climate space, leading to choice overload. Or we may fail to consider how fatigued or distracted they are from the state of the world and too many demands for their attention. We may be underutilizing the power of identity and social norming in our pollen production or underestimating the strength of status quo bias and loss aversion.

All of these considerations and more need to be top of mind when thinking through how to make the nectar of climate action the most appealing, accessible, affordable and available to our communities. Cities around the world are mindfully applying these strategies and considering behavioral science throughout their community engagement processes, as this article illustrates. But more is needed.

It's time to sweeten the pot.

If you’re interested in doing so, first take a look at Ideas42’s overview of 12 key principles and psychologies that will inform the work we do when applying behavioral science to climate action and policy. Then take a look at the resources that Apolitical has published below wherein I apply Ideas42’s work to local leadership on climate.

Here are the resources: Apolitical has published my 12 applications in two sections, the first of which is available here and the second batch of behavioral science is available here. These are useful checklists for vetting any of your engagement work to ensure it is mindful of all 12 obstacles and opportunities. After reviewing these resources, let’s discuss what’s missing and how you can sweeten the ask so that it’s as attractive as possible.

The third nature-based lesson: Be camouflaged.

Taking a lesson from chameleons in nature, how can we blend in better and be less of a target? Or conversely, how can we green our entire local government so that our climate, environmental or sustainability departments aren’t sticking out like sore (green) thumbs?

Given the national trends identified at the top of this article, it’s become imperative that local climate leaders adapt to survive. So, these questions aren’t theoretical or hypothetical. For some, these prompts will be essential to the survival of this work, even if it’s accomplished by another name.

Local governments are already leaning into this nature-based lesson and embedding their work in other city and county departments. It’s not difficult to think through how all of our climate work could fit into other government agencies. Think about it. There are health and human services angles to our work, economic development aspects, education and workforce components, neighborhood and housing elements, public works and parks and recreation relevance and more.

Our climate work lands in every possible arm of local government and by embedding our work within these departments, not only are we providing camouflage during a political crisis, but we’re also increasing the relevance and reach within our community, as residents are more likely working with or hearing from these other departments on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Cities like Minneapolis are already doing this by embedding some of their sustainability, healthy homes and environment, and environmental health programming in their City’s Health Department. Note how the City of Seattle is locating its green workforce programming within the Office of Economic Development. Check out how Kansas City, Missouri, is utilizing its Neighborhood Services department to handle its environmental quality work and free tree distribution. More of this camouflaging is needed.

It's time to consider wearing camo.

If you’re interested in doing so, first do an audit of what and who exists in other local departments that could be leveraged and leaned on to partner in camouflaging. What’s already happening in allied departments that could be expanded to be a bigger tent for current work within the climate space that might be under attack? What’s not happening in the other agencies that could be proposed as a way of protecting exposed or vulnerable climate action and policy?

After finishing an audit like this, let’s discuss how to best camouflage the work within local government so that climate work isn’t a targetable outlier but rather integrated and embedded across the entire local government.

The fourth nature-based lesson: Be an ecosystem.

Imagine climate action and policy spaces with no or few siloes and monocultures. That’s what an ecosystem is, and that’s nature in its healthiest form. So why not work towards that, where the local government is operating not in siloes but as an ecosystem within the community and in partnership with it?

That’ll require a rethink on what a city should look like and how it operates, of course, but we’ll come out stronger if we can get the ecosystem set-up right. Siloes and monocultures are ultimately more vulnerable to shocks and attacks so the shift to ecosystem thinking is a smart and more secure one.

Cities are already thinking this way and moving in this direction. Cleveland, Ohio, has been using appreciative inquiry processes to ensure the entire citywide ecosystem is represented and engaged in the sustainability design process. While Oslo, Norway, runs all city programs and projects through one office for climate budgeting purposes. The intent is to vet city proposals and ensure they adhere to Oslo’s emissions reduction targets and timelines. But there’s an ecosystem benefit that comes from this climate budgeting process. In streamlining workflow in this way, Oslo is witnessing more seamless working relationships across departments, fewer silos, more collaboration and coordination, and more efficiencies and co-benefits.

Copenhagen, Denmark, is also piloting new ecosystem thinking in how the city serves the community. Copenhagen is reworking its municipal structure, getting rid of city scaffolding that might get in the way of engagement, and embedding local climate officers within the community for up to five years at a time. The new approach restructures the way in which the community engages with the city and vice versa. It begins to decentralize and democratize climate action and policymaking in Copenhagen by ensuring a more seamless and constructive dialogue and partnership between city staff and city residents. More of this ecosystem thinking is needed.

It's time to get your ecosystem on.

If you’re interested in doing so, first map out and visualize what your local government ecosystem looks like, especially in relationship to your local community. Is it completely siloed, or is there a partial ecosystem built out? Are there themes and concepts like heat or resilience that make an ecosystem easier to implement? Chief heat officers and resilience hubs and departments, for example, have been unifying ecosystem concepts through which to rally whole-of-government assets in service to the whole of community. And unsurprisingly so, as the lived experience of rising heat and the corresponding need for community resilience are worlds we live in, versus the more siloed nature of climate action plans and carbon neutrality targets and timelines.

After finishing the mapping of your city, county and community, let’s discuss what’s possible in terms of transforming siloes and enabling ecosystem thinking and design. That’s the long game and brings the highest return on investment. And that’s what we should be working towards as local governments in service to our local communities. We are an ecosystem as a local community. Let’s reflect it in our policy.

There are many more nature-based lessons we can learn from when improving our climate communications and engagement strategies with our local communities. I can think of the nature-based lesson that an octopus offers, for example, in staying nimble, agile, and capable of escaping the most political of traps. Or the nature-based lesson that dolphins offer in traveling in pods and how our climate communities can similarly offer safety and power in numbers, cooperative climate actions, and social bonding and learning. Or the many lessons we can draw from arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.

This article’s four examples, however – in multilingualism, sweetness, camouflage, and ecosystem design – are good places to start. And given that national governments and multinational companies are clawing back their previously bold climate commitments, it’s time for local governments to fill the void and these nature-based lessons show the way.