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This page details the several activities & projects within the Strategic Climate Risk Initiative which the UCL Climate Action Unit has contributed to.
The UCL Climate Action Unit draws on a range of established insights from neuroscience and psychology to help communicators tell different stories about climate change: stories that help their audiences to take climate action by moving beyond traditional ideas about behaviour change.
As part of the Strategic Climate Risk Initiative, the CAU is helping communication professionals tell stories about systemic climate risks which avoid the risk of polarising audiences, and which help specific groups to take more ambitious climate action.
Some recent examples of this work are listed below:
- The Climate Policy Creative Fellowship pilot
Between November 2024 and January 2025, the UCL Climate Action Unit delivered the Climate Policy Creative Fellowship alongside partner organisation Fast Familiar and the SCRI.
Eight creative sector professionals were chosen to participate from an initial 600 applications for this pilot programme.
The aim for the creative fellows was to create story ideas that could help policymakers to see new opportunities for taking action towards a low-carbon society even as the consequences of climate change become harder to manage.
They ultimately co-developed seven creative concepts that aimed to help policymakers experiment with ways to take climate action while navigating numerous other societal challenges that they encounter in their roles. These included ideas for reality TV shows, board games, podcasts and films.
- New communication strategies around 1.5ºC at COP28
In the summer of 2023, the Climate Action Unit helped professionals communicating about climate change to develop new methods for talking about the 1.5ºC global temperature rise limit at COP28.
At previous COPs, discussions about the achievability of this goal were polarising; with disagreements forming between a number of nations and organisations.
Together with the SCRI, the CAU facilitated workshops which convened 50+ journalists and campaigners. The workshops enabled participants to co-create and test different messages about the impacts of climate change and the importance of keeping below the 1.5ºC global temperature rise limit. These messages were designed specifically to avoid the risk of provoking polarisation and inaction.
