By Gretta Pecl, Rachel Kelly, Chloe Lucas, Ingrid van Putten, Renuka Badhe, Curtis Champion, I-Ching Chen, Omar Defeo, Juan Gaitán-Espitia, Birgitta Evengard, Damien Fordham, Fengyi Guo, Romina Henriques, Sabine Henry, Jonathan Lenoir, Henry McGhie, Tero Mustonen, Stephen Oliver, Nathalie Pettorelli, Malin Pinsky, Warren Potts, Julia Santana-Garcon, Warwick Sauer, Anna-Sofie Stensgaard, Morgan Tingley, and Adriana Verges.

Read the full paper here.

Global understanding of climate change has developed strongly in the last decades, particularly (and unfortunately) as observable impacts of climate change have increased. However, climate mitigation and adaptation efforts have not progressed at the level or scale that one might expect given this growing knowledge of climate change. A major obstacle to mitigation and adaptation is getting people to understand and relate to climate change – and be able to develop the attitudes and behaviours to take action. Our paper highlights that more effective approaches to engage people on climate change effects are urgently needed. We show that human values, trust networks, and place attachment are critical elements in developing effective and inclusive engagement on climate change.

We place our focus on ‘species-on-the-move’. Plant and animal species around the world are already shifting their distributions in response to climate change. These species-on-the-move impact ecosystem structure and function, food security, human health, livelihoods, culture and even the climate itself through feedbacks to the climate system.

In our paper, we outline how species-on-the-move also present an opportunity to engage people with climate change – specifically, by linking to human values, and connections with the places in which we live, in locally relevant yet globally coherent ways. We highlight how species-on-the-move offer emotional pathways for people to connect with the complex issue of climate change in profound ways that have the potential to engender interest and climate action.