Wayfinding Climate (an IAM Network Event)
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This Integral Life Experience is only available to the supporting members
This is an IAM Network Event. Learn more about IAM: Institute of Applied Metatheory
Wayfinding Climate: Leadership Skills and Knowledge for Navigating the Climate Crisis
About
In today’s uncertain and warming world, leaders in climate need to be skilled in the technical as well as the human. While technical skills regarding climate exceed our human skills, it is on the human aspects where climate action largely stalls. This is the gap we address in Wayfinding Climate. Like the wayfinders of old, we support you in navigating the complex oceans of climate change communications and engagement.
Purpose
The purpose of these sessions is to draw on cutting-edge research on the human dimensions of climate change, providing training in the human skills needed to engage in complex, uncertain social contexts. You will come away with new ideas and vantage points on the social dimensions of climate change, and learn unique, practical tools for engagement – tools that go deeper than and beyond messaging tactics and campaign slogans. This is designed for climate actors in any sector–such as, in non-profit organizations, the private sector, and in public institutions at all levels of government (municipal, provincial and federal); academics and students who may be interested in applications of climate psycho-social research in practice.
You Matter | How to Work with Climate Emotions and Ensure People Feel They Matter
September 11th, 2024 | 1:30-4pm PT
A key part of engaging with publics on climate includes finding ways they can see themselves in the climate story and in the energy transitions going on around them. Frequently, in regards to climate action, we have heard people lament that they are being left behind or that they do not matter. The way climate engagement is carried out – by governments or environmental organizations – often results in people feeling alienated from climate action, as mere objects in what is perceived as a top-down plan. In this session, we will look at how climate action can get past being perceived as top-down, techno-managerial, and objectifying, and instead center people in climate action as key to its success. This includes deep listening, taking sincere stock of what people value and what matters most to them, and enabling agency and creativity from within.
Worldviews | Transformation and Translation
October 9th, 2024 | 1:30-4pm PT
Climate change is complex, and people carry varying mental models of what it is and what we ought to do about it. In today’s ‘post-truth’ media contexts, in which emotions and outrage feed into politically-driven worldview curation, understanding this dimension of the climate challenge is paramount. These worldviews on climate are crucial in effective climate action. This session supports participants in understanding the role of worldviews in finding a way through polarized discourses; in taking climate out of the culture wars; in getting to shared climate-action pathways; and in unleashing unprecedented novelty in regards to solutions.
Values | How to Connect with What People Value
November 13th, 2024 | 1:30-4pm PT
While most Canadians are concerned about climate change, action on climate can falter when it is positioned in competition with other things that people value. This is referred to as the values-action gap. While few actually value parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere, most value their family’s health, their ongoing livelihoods, and their household budget. Looking more deeply, we also find how people value belonging, fitting into society, purpose and joy. In this session, we look at how to align climate engagement with the things that motivate people each day. With that kind of alignment, the values-action gap greatly diminishes, because the climate action that is sought is simply that which is already prioritized by people. Here, we demystify values, including some deep reflective work on the part of practitioners as well as learning new tools and training on how to bring a values-based practice into your climate work.
Climate Change Discourses | Framing Climate Action That Work
December 4th, 2024 | 1:30-4pm PT
We humans are social beings, and the social discourses we inhabit become central to how we make sense of our world. Climate change is no exception. In this session, participants will learn about five distinct climate change discourses that are highly influential in how people make sense of global warming. We will consider this narrative dimension in several ways. One is to acknowledge the complex, often malicious uses of social media to sway public opinion, and then to understand the interplay of climate change discourses within that. We focus both on what as well as how climate leaders today might intervene in a ‘discourse-informed’ manner, proceeding from the deep recognition of this narrative dimension at play within each of us, and informed by the nuanced terrain of how these climate change discourses support or thwart the uptake of action.
Learn more here.
MEET YOUR HOSTS:
Dr. Gail Hochachka, PhD, is a researcher, thought-catalyzer, facilitator, and coach. She has pursued a unique area of research on the human dimensions of climate change: on the diverse ways people make meaning about climate change, on how to find shared meaning in diverse settings, and on how to accelerate climate action in a transformative manner. She does speaking events and convenes novel conversations amongst experts, inviting collaborative wayfinding on the climate challenge. Gail also teaches graduate courses at UBC, such as on Climate Communications and Engagement, and she is an associate-level Integral Coach. With SALT for Climate, she seeks to move research into practice, at the very leverage points where greater climate action can happen.
Lisa Genki Gibson is a systems change consultant, educator, facilitator, and coach, with a background in social justice, gender and development, and community engagement across multiple, complex issues. She specializes in working with individuals, organizations and multistakeholder spaces to embed systemic change, transform belief systems, and construct alliances across diversity towards clarified action. As a Zen teacher in the Soto Zen lineage, Lisa also brings invaluable dexterity and nuance in working with human interiority to the project team.