Talking About Floods: How to Engage Without Backfiring & Inspire Action

James Clarke from Engaging Climate asked Oxford residents, after floods in 2014 and 2024,  what they thought had caused them, some still didn’t see a link with climate change in 2024. Watch the video.  

Be wary conversations about climate can backfire 

A 2014 guide from Climate Outreach highlights that communicating climate change during extreme weather events can backfire.

Another colleague reminded me that during heatwaves, people in the UK, can be enjoying the good weather so it doesn’t land well.

He also suggested asking people ‘how do they feel about the floods?’ so tapping into emotions and empathising with them first of all. 

Talking about others taking action

Another way to talk about the floods from resepcted neueroscientist, Kris De Meyer is to talk about the communities taking action to address it.  This gives people agency and inspiration.  This is a resource developed around this, stories of flood resiliant homes. 

Once people start taking actions, they are more likely to take other actions as ACTIONS DRIVE BELIEFS.

Nature-based solutions 

Here are some examples of personal actions that can be taken:

• 🛢️Divert high water flows and create areas to store water e.g. water butts
• 🌳Plant trees and hedges to increase water absorption, catch rainfall and slow down surface water run-off
• ☘️Improve soil cover with plants to reduce water pollution and run- off

Grey to Green in Sheffield is an example of a project that has transformed areas of tarmac, which is featured in this write-up of nature-based solutions.