Positive change

Make Green Seen

Sharon Bange - June 2024

The General Election is in full swing, with new policies being announced on an almost daily basis. But the environment doesn’t seem to be top of the policy priority list for either of the main political parties.

The issues people are facing in their everyday lives explain this election focus. Research by King’s College London and Ipsos at the end of last year found that climate change/reaching net zero was joint eleventh on a list of issues Britons said would be very important in deciding their vote in the next election, with healthcare/the NHS, inflation/cost-of-living and managing the economy coming top. But the threat to the planet isn’t going away. The latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the impacts of climate change are widespread and are getting worse.

Here are three ways that communicators who care about sustainability can do their bit to stop the environment getting lost in the election noise:

1. Use your platform to show that people care

The public may have other priorities, but they still care about the planet. Alongside the findings on priority voting issues, the King’s College London and Ipsos research found that 7% of UK adults believe climate change to be the single most important problem facing the UK, with a further 39% stating that climate change is one of the most important problems facing the UK. People also said they were more likely to vote for a party that took strong action on climate change.

Where is the evidence of support for pro-environmental policies amongst your customers and networks? How can your brand or organisation provide a platform for this evidence and the voices of people who represent these views?

2. Present a long-term vision

People are attuned to the short-term nature of the election cycle and this contributes to a sense that it’s futile to expect any Government to provide a strategy that truly benefits the planet in the long-term. A lack of trust in political parties is another factor that can influence the perceived credibility of policies, with political parties the least trusted of all public institutions at a rate of just 12%.

Research shows that, when people believe that environmental policies will be effective, their support for them increases. So how can organisations that are trusted by the public present a compelling vision for a future where such policies are successfully implemented?

3. Use communications to reduce future discounting

Research shows that people tend to ‘discount’ the future benefits of taking pro-environmental actions in favour of alternatives that have a benefit now. However, this concept of temporal discounting assumes that the benefits of climate action are only experienced way into the future. This isn’t the case. For example, reducing carbon emissions now would save lives by improving the quality of the air we breathe and greater biodiversity is associated with greater mental wellbeing.

Communicators can tell a story about the immediate benefits to reduce future discounting and motivate support for pro-environmental policies now.