Mumbai Climate Week is happening this week. Delhi Climate Innovation Week takes place in the following week. Thousands of people will gather to talk about climate action in India’s two largest cities. Most of the conversations would be about the climate crisis-the catastrophe that we are heading towards, innovations and approaches that we should adapt and  underscore that climate change needs urgent attention and action. 

But after watching the evolution of climate communication over the years, I believe that apocalypse narratives, however accurate, have hit a ceiling. People do hear the alarm and acknowledge the crisis, but beyond that, they get stuck. Crisis conversations without pathways to meaningful response is inaction. People feel anxious but do nothing about it.

How do we fix it? Some have figured out this climate communications problem. Kenya spent years telling communities that deforestation was destroying ecosystems and biodiversity. It is true, but abstract. Subsequently health workers started talking about what fewer trees actually meant – kids getting respiratory problems form dust, women walking hours to collect firewood, unreliable rainfall ruining crops. Same facts, but a different story. University of Nairobi and Yale researchers tracked it in 2020. Tree planting participation jumped 60 percent. Not because people suddenly cared more about the environment, but because the story connected to their daily lives.

There is evidence from India too, though we may not always recognize it as climate communication. Ahmedabad’s heat action plan – when officials launched it in 2013, they talked about protecting construction workers, preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed, and keeping elderly people safe during summer. Health and safety, not climate change. That framing brought in labor unions, schools, municipal health departments – groups that might not have resonated with climate messaging in general. The International Institute for Environment and Development studied the program. Heat deaths declined, documented in 2018 research in Natural Hazards. The climate connection was real, but the propagators of this program just didn’t lead with it alone but with framing that people could relate to in their daily lives.