Rethinking risk communication about climate change: Reflexive approaches and metamodernist public participation

Abstract

A central purpose of risk communication about climate change is to provide information to publics that induces more sustainable practices and behaviours that avert or limit the predicted negative outcomes of climate change. However, despite broad public knowledge of the risks of climate change, responses to climate change at the various levels of society have been sluggish. One way of explaining the “knowledge-action gap” (Knutti, 2019) may be that risk communication promotes a broadly conservative approach to the anticipated challenges of climate change, as its logics are predicated on preserving a ‘good’ version of the present into the future, although a more transformative approach is increasingly regarded as needed to ensure more environmentally sustainable practices. In keeping with the growing tendency towards reflexivity and public participation in the field of risk communication, I argue that risk communication initiatives may be better positioned to benefit society if a) the values that climate change risk messages may be resting on are critically examined, and b) a collaborative approach is adopted with publics, drawing, for example, on metamodernist frameworks that support individuals’ agency and responsibility.