Participatory storyworld building for unlocking climate adaptation

Abstract

Worldwide, local communities are experiencing increasing climate change impacts, for which they are underprepared, and which are predicted to further intensify into the future. Closing this knowledge action gap in local climate adaptation is a socio-political challenge, requiring social science solutions. Recognising the strategic value of local governance actors, we prototyped an innovative participatory storyworld building method with local government decision makers. This method narratively downscaled climate pathways to a collective place-based storyworld. Participants imagined and detailed an alternate version of their real community, presented along near future climate pathways, mapping features, validating climate risks, and scripting individual storylines. Storyworld building proved compelling and useful for a diverse cohort as an innovative and effective form of applied science storytelling that fosters collaboration across difference and discipline. We found that expressing climate change as a local storyworld makes climate science meaningful, increases feelings of agency, and establishes a multilateral flow of knowledge between climate science and local storylines. This method has since been implemented in several local councils, operationalised into online localisation workshops for local government staff and stakeholders, and is gathering momentum as a transferable method for local governments to engage and mobilise coordinated community climate action.