• Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics — Publications — Center for Social Media at American University
• MediaShift Idea Lab . The New Era of Media Development, Part 1 | PBS

Making the complexity of climate change something people can relate to is no easy task.

But this month in Copenhagen, ‘green culture’ is everywhere you look.  Subways walls are plastered with signs urging negotiators to ‘seal the deal’, and every museum and city plaza has a special exhibit about climate change.

You can learn a lot about Denmark by how they have taken on their role as host for the climate negotiations known as COP15. With so many art and cultural activities, Denmark is recognizing that sustainability will only catch on if it is linked to social and cultural identity.

Here is an overview of the few climate art exhibits in Copenhagen this week, many of which are also online or will soon travel to a city near you.

It’s a Small World

As a world leader in design, the soul of Denmark seems to lie in the Danish Design Centre.

The exhibit “It’s Small World” offers a welcome concreteness at a time when the global stakes are so high and yet so amorphous. The exhibition is about reconsidering scale – from the small choices we make about what we buy, to big visions like widely adopted electric cards.

The worlds of public policy and design merge in an interactive video-exhibit about the future of energy in Denmark. The video features a conversation between designers and the charismatic lead negotiator of the COP15, Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy.

The participants outlines a serious vision for Denmark in 2020– where half the countries energy comes from windmills that in turn power a new generation of electric cars.  With nearly 5,000 windmills currently powering 20% of the nations energy, Denmark is working hard to position itself as a leader and future exporter of sustainable innovation.

In the basement of the center, an exhibition by young designers portrays a series of winning ‘sustainable fashion’ outfits.  There is a particular burst of creativity here at the fashion totem.

Sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, the exhibition will travel to the US and around Europe starting in February 2010.

100 places to remember before they disappear
Near the central subway station of Norreport, this outdoor photo exhibition puts a stunning human face to climate change. From archipelagos in the Pacific, to the hills of Caracas and the streets of Chicago, the pictures show 100 places on earth that are vulnerable to extreme climate change and other human influences on the environment.

While the photos are beautiful, they are also painful to look at; one can sense the vulnerability of the landscapes.  By offering pictures of the beauty that we have, the exhibit portrays a sense of wonder and value of exactly what is at stake.  One of the goals of the exhibition, sponsored by Care and CO+Life, is to put people living in poverty at the center of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The website is a great learning tool, with an interactive map. The photographs are also available in a hardbound coffee table book.

Consequences

In a round dome just outside of the conference center, Greenpeace is also presenting a photo exhibit.

During the opening Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International spoke about the importance of artists in fighting climate change, comparing it to the role of artists in fighting apartheid in South Africa.

“Artists are using their skills to communicate what is happening and that is a critical component that is coming together here at COP15,” said Naidoo. “We recognize the power of the images to cut through the crap of negotiations and show the face of the frontlines of climate change.”

Ranging from photos of Nenet reindeer herders in Siberia, to people in India living in the shadow of a coal disaster, all of the photos were shot within the past three months.  The exhibit was a collaborative project of ten photographers from the Dutch agency Kadir von Lohuizen with support from Greenpeace.

A slide show of the photos is available on their website.

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With so many people in Copenhagen this week, the art is sure to reach many of the climate faithful, though probably not the government negotiators who are trapped behind closed doors until the late hours of the night.  Hopefully the exhibits will reach many more people as they travel the world, prompting the cultural shift necessary for change.

As one activist explained, climate change is about culture. If you listen to the speeches of negotiators from small islands like Tuvulu and Maldives, projected to disappear within a generation, they are fighting for their lives.  They are thinking about how their children will grow up not knowing their own cultures.

More climate art:

The World is Yours: Contemporary art at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Rethink: Contemporary Art and Climate Change, four large art exhibitions by Nordic and international artists

Everyday Miracles: an art installation by Presens, real-life climate solutions

While I knew I would run into some unexpected people here in Copenhagen, I never thought one would be Shaggy.   The Jamaican rap star, famous for singing about how his girlfriend caught him with another woman “banging on the bathroom floor” headlined the opening concert.  Suddenly all of us– uptight Nordics and tired delegates, were grinding and waving our hands in the air. It was liberating.  Shaggy and Akon (who didn’t show) were the grand finale, but before him Youssou N’dour, Angelique Kidjo and Khaled played, all of them legends in Africa.  I could not believe I was listening to original  ‘Aisha‘ that plays on repeat in sleepy tourist bars and cars across Africa.

When I told my brother about my new found admiration for Shaggy, he reminded me that ten years ago in 1999 we were at a similar concert in Seattle.   Spearhead was playing the night before the opening of the famous World Trade Organization meeting that gave a new connotation to our city’s name.  I was 19, and I remember watching the concert with my skin tingling thinking: this is why artists are so important, they come to these events and sing on behalf of the people, they can project more emotion than any protesters carrying signs in the streets. I was having a revelation about the role of artists in society.

Last night I had no such thoughts.  I reflected about the implications of public relations for the artists and the conference, that it was too bad more people had not come (we had a huge stadium to fill), how challenging it must of been to get all those artists in one place– and– how the real decision-makers, the delegates, were probably still in meetings or finally sitting down for a meal.

Shaggy did not really say why he had come to Copenhagen, I think he may have half-mumbled something like “climate change is bad”.  But that is OK.  I must admit I am still a bit baffled at people who can spew out all the acronyms necessary for this meeting.  But looking back to 1999, I have had the priviledge of  going to so many of these global meetings that my senses are dulled.  Or maybe it’s not just me, but the multilateral system too is worn; everyone knows the pattern and is burnt out.  It is so tedious to agree among nations and ultimately insufficient.   All of this is about money and power and somehow a frame of consensus is placed over it.  God help us.  Shaggy help us too.

Oh climate crisis!  Alas, these words just don’t inspire me to jump off the couch and do something. But Franke James inspires me.  She is part of new breed– the climate change artist.  Her artistic mission is to make something green and document it.

Her website has a series of visual essays – beautiful mixed media panels that makes science personal. Scrolling through her website is like reading a children’s book online.

James seems to be haunted by the question:  what will you tell your grandchildren you did about climate change? On her website she writes, “I know I want to be able to say I did more than change a lightbulb.” And so far, she has.

She recently launched a book of her green visual essays: Bothered by My Green Conscience: How an SUV-driving, imported strawberry-eating urban dweller can go green.

This week she is at the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen known as COP15 where she will create more art, adding a welcome lightness to the aggressive activists, hardened politicians and contracted negotiations.

She seems to be in a growing company of a few climate communicators, delivering doses of science visually.   For instance, Annie Leonard of ‘Story of Stuff’ fame just recently launched ‘The Story of Cap and Trade’ .  Her simple narration illuminates a tough subject through digestible facts and stick figure cartoons.

We are sure to need artists like Franke and Annie to help to tell our stories as the issues become complicated and more and more becomes at stake.  I’m blogging from Copenhagen this week — so will be sure to post more about climate change and art.

For me, the climate change debate is about communication. To increase supply of clean energy by changing policies, there must be more demand.  To increase the demand, people need to be given clear messages about what to ask for.

Living in Europe, it is interesting to see how the conversation here is different from from the US.  Climate change seems to be in the media regularly, and to limited controversy.   People are contentedly riding their bikes and taking their high-speed trains.  Shopping is not such a passionate recreation as it is in the US.  At the grocery stores, it seems half the products are ‘Bio’, and the prices are good.

I recently heard Dr. Ranier Wend, the director of public policy and responsibility at DHL speak about how the world’s largest shipping company is making changes to reduce their carbon footprint (30% by 2030) because of consumer demand.  But this demand came only from European customers.  He went on to say that “people’s identification with market structures is on the decline”—which I tried to imagine a corporate leader in the US saying, but couldn’t quite get there. In the US, this feeling is currently being called “rising populism” stemming from a fear of people’s own individual economic vulnerability.  I think the Euro-phrasing is more constructive.

Anyhow, it amazes me that despite the black-hole that the climate change debate has become, that so few messages breakthrough.  When you want to know how to change public opinion, there is only one place to turn: market research. Doesn’t matter where you are, Germany, Kenya, US.  Get out there and do your homework, then prepare your pitch.

So I was glad to see this report “Climate and Energy Truths” about US opinion written by Eco-America and funded by the NRDC and others.   Here are some of the findings – now I only hope they will build some messages around them.

• People are more energized around energy issues than climate change, but they can become engaged if energy is linked to climate change, health or pollution.
• Messaging around climate change is stronger when it is value-oriented rather than policy or scientifically based– and tapping into multiple values is better than one value.  Messaging on climate alone is weaker.
• Leading with words like climate crisis, global warming or climate change can be problematic.  Deteriorating atmosphere was more effective.
• Make messages win-win – economically and environmentally beneficial, not a trade-off.

The most revealing part of the report gets right down to it — confirming some suspicions I have had all along about the words that we use: “Climate crisis seems too alarmist to people, and either makes them anxious, which makes them shut down, or makes them discount the source as histrionic. Climate change is too bland and has also become politicized and polarized.”

In 1791, Thomas Edison started a project– to build a worldwide network for people talk to each other.  And according to experts interviewed last week’s report in The Economist, we can expect to see this project finished in our lifetime—100 per cent global teledensity is expected within the next ten years.  Of course, 100 per cent does not mean absolutely everyone, since some people own several headsets and sim cards, but it comes pretty darn close.

These days it seems everyone has a story about how a cell phone has changed a person living in poverty’s life, but the in-depth research of exactly how mobile telecommunications is spurring economic growth is still being written. That’s why this special report is so exciting; it compares telecom across emerging markets, stringing both anecdotes and research together, and pulling out the trends.

Some of the facts:

• 3 out of the 4 billion mobile phones worldwide are being used by people in the developing countries.
• Studies show that adding ten phones per 100 people in a typical developing country boosts income per person by 8-10 percent.
• India leads the way with adding 128 million new subscribers in the last year, 89 million were added in China and 96 million across Africa.  Indonesia, Vietnam and Brazil are not far behind.
• Despite average customer spending $6.50 per month and .02cent calls, Indian operators still have a 40% profit margin, similar to Western operators.

While the article touches on nearly every region in the world, M-Pesa in Kenya has had the most success with using mobile phones for banking.  Here’s how it works: once a user is signed up using a mobile phone and an ID card, he or she pays cash to a vendor who then credits it to the phone account and gives the consumer a special code.  The code can be used to withdraw cash later or passed along to someone else. Around $2 million is transferred through the system every day, with an average transaction of $20.

There are many benefits to mobile banking–  no more carrying cash on long trips, keeping wealth in only livestock or jewelry, or risking losing the stash kept under the bed to a natural disaster.   Adoption of mobile banking in Kenya was aided by an unexpected cause, the 2008 post-election violence.  People that trapped in their homes in the slums during the violence used the system to send and receive money.  Some banks also lost the public’s trust because they were seen as taking sides in the ethnic conflict.

Many are studying M-Pesa in Kenya– so far there is no other country with such high rates of mobile banking adoption.  It seems only a matter of time before others reproduce the model; in many places the power of mobile brands are much stronger than that of the banks.

There’s much more to say – and hopefully more reports from The Economist to come –  but you should read the article for yourself!

Reporting from Cinton Global Initiative

If so, Ashoka, the leading organization for social entrepreneurs, is an expert. Founder Bill Drayton defines innovation as a combination as: change making, empathy, teamwork & leadership.

Drayton believes that the world is currently going through a breakthrough – from being run by just a few people, to a world that is being run by teams of teams.

If there is one word that sums up this year’s CGI, it is ‘Innovation’.  John Kao, the founder of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, believes that innovation cannot be learned, instead it is a combination of factors that all have to be woven together. He thinks of innovation as a ”property of society, as a set of muscles or capabilities to drive progress.”

It seems the discussion becomes, not what is innovation, but how can we build infrastructures of innovation?  Here’s the criteria I heard from various speakers at CGI:

-technology
-globalization & interconnectedness
-universities, research, subsidies and venture capitol,
-rotating leadership and teams,
-multi-disciplinary and horizontal approaches,
-policies that support for small and medium businesses,
-coalitions of private sectors, NGOs, government
-crowd-sourcing, user-generated and design thinking

reporting this week from the Clinton Global Initiative

By choosing ‘investing in women and girls’ as the topic for his opening plenary, President Clinton sent a message that women were at the center of his agenda. The panel embodied the CGI spirit of broad and innovative coalitions, with speakers from the government, private sector and women’s organizations.

Two CEOs sat on the stage: Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobile and Llyod Blankfein of Goldman Sachs.  They were joined by Melanne Verveer, the US ambassador for global women’s issues, Zainab Salbi, Women for Women International and Edna Adan, the founder of a maternity hospital in Somaliland.  Twelve new commitments for women in girls were announced at the session including training in entrepreneurship and financial literacy and access to low-cost technology.

On one hand, the unprecedented high-level private sector participation means that the women’s agenda has gone mainstream; real change will not happen if only women are talking to each other. On the other hand, the panel would not have succeeded if it hadn’t had two women from the trenches who could keep the discussion grounded in the life and death realities many women face.

But when the discussion turned to his corporate philosophy for focusing on women, Tillerson said that for empowering women, “money is not the issue”.   Easy for him to say as CEO of the world’s second largest company.

Zainab Salbi was quick to disagree, arguing that it is absolutely about increasing resources and  political commitments for women and girls.

Tillerson tried to backtrack, clarifying his remarks by saying it was about education, training and staff capacity, not just pouring money into a problem.

Still, it was a reminder that even though they may be sitting on the same stage, the reality of a woman’s organization and Exxon Mobile are quite far apart.  While it is “not about the money” for  Exxon, it is all about the money for thousands of women’s organizations like Salbi’s and Adan’s that are struggling to help women every day survive childbirth and rebuild their lives from war.

But the question seemed to open a door, and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs reframed the question, asking: are we making all the investments that we can make in women and girls? are we at capacity?

I think the answer is a resounding no.   Stay tuned for more updates from CGI.

Things are changing for me, I will be moving from New York City to Bonn, Germany in 30 days.   Communication will take on a new meaning living in a place where I do not speak the language.   So I have been researching what to do!  One possibility is becoming a super-blogger and freelance writer.

So in my last days of privileged NYC access, I took a class on how to be a foreign correspondent at Media Bistro.   It was taught by an able-young-overachiever Manuela who got herself to China and kept pitching Newsweek until they listened.   This class helped me focus my writing strategy. For instance, even though I am going to Germany, I don’t plan to become a correspondent on German culture, because it will take ages for me to become ‘an expert’.   A travel writer perhaps.   But here are a few bits of wisdom about freelancing overseas that I took away from the course:

• Have a niche.  If my expertise is international development writing… it will still be that in Germany.  I still may get my best stories through a trip or a skype line.  Manuela’s theory is that despite the current devastation to magazines, niche publications will survive because their audiences are solid.
• To go into a new area, such as travel writing, I need to start from the bottom-up again, getting some clips in free sites to build up my portfolio.
• Joining the Foreign Correspondents association and writing for English-language newspaper is another way to break in.
• Don’t teach English…. but do consider teaching writing in English.
• Building a relationship with an editor is like being in sales — your pitch might not be accepted, but your goal is to get the next meeting, ie.  a response to your next email.
• Be sure of yourself.  Have a card, introduce yourself: I am a journalist.   If you take yourself seriously they will take you seriously.

I love this art by Mary Button, who came to our Kenya Youth Peace Summit.  You can see the entire series of paintings here.