Science Inventory

Messaging on slow impacts: Applying lessons learned from climate change communication to catalyze and improve marine nutrient communication

Citation:

Canfield, Katherine, K. Mulvaney, AND N. Merrill. Messaging on slow impacts: Applying lessons learned from climate change communication to catalyze and improve marine nutrient communication. Frontiers in Environmental Science. Frontiers, Lausanne, Switzerland, 9:619606, (2021). https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.619606

Impact/Purpose:

Communicating the impacts of nutrient pollution is difficult for a number of reasons, including 1) the largely nonpoint source nature of pollution; 2) the time and spatial delay between polluting action,impact, and recovery; and 3) the lack of public urgency to address this complex problem. Climate change also has these three characteristics that make it similarly challenging to communicate about. While there is not significant research in how to overcome these communication difficulties for nutrients, the science of climate change communication has researched how to best tackle these difficulties to increase public awareness and mobilize collective action around climate change. This research identifies the evidence-backed practices for effectively communicating about climate change that can be usefully transferred to improve communication about nutrient pollution, and presents some examples of how scientists and communicators can apply these practices.

Description:

Building publics’ understanding about human-environmental causes and impacts of nutrient pollution is difficult due to the diverse sources and, at times, extended timescales of increasing inputs, consequences to ecosystems, and recovery after remediation. Communicating environmental problems with “slow impacts” has long been a challenge for scientists, public health officials, and science communicators, as the time delay for subsequent consequences to become evident dilutes the sense of urgency to act. Fortunately, scientific research and practice in the field of climate change communication has begun to identify best practices to address these challenges. Climate change demonstrates a delay between environmental stressor and impact, and recommended practices for climate change communication illustrate how to explain and motivate action around this complex environmental problem. Climate change communication research provides scientific understanding of how people evaluate risk and scientific information about climate change. We used a qualitative coding approach to review the science communication and climate change communication literature to identify approaches that could be used for nutrients and how they could be applied. Recognizing the differences between climate change and impacts of nutrient pollution, we also explore how environmental problems with delayed impacts demand nuanced strategies for effective communication and public engagement. Applying generalizable approaches to successfully communicate the slow impacts related to nutrient pollution across geographic contexts will help build publics’ understanding and urgency to act on comprehensive management of nutrient pollution, thereby increasing protection of coastal and marine environments.