Following news reports of a potential conflict of interest for global communications firm Edelman, the role of communications at COP30 is creating controversy – putting the rising importance of strategic climate storytelling at odds with conventional approaches.
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Global communications firm Edelman faced criticism last month for its work representing the Brazilian soy industry, as it is under consideration for the lead communications agency role at the upcoming COP30 climate summit.
Edelman states on its website that it supports clients in advancing a just and equitable energy transition, operating under the guidance of its six Climate Principles. However, like most PR firms, it does not list all clients there.
Public relations firms vary in their level of disclosure about what clients they serve. 170 agencies produce client disclosure reports following standards such as the Client Disclosure Reporting guideline.
Michael Gold, founder of climate communications consultancy Word Clouds Consulting, said strategic communication is “an underrated tool for climate action.”
“COP30 represents a critical inflection point for climate communication. Rather than treating it as just another climate summit, communicators should position it as a measurable accountability moment for the Paris Agreement,” he said.
However, industry specialists dispute how realistic it is to expect a global firm to avoid such clients, while highlighting the importance of professional expertise in the discipline.
“The climate summit faces a dilemma: to deliver the global communications support necessary for an event of this magnitude, it becomes nearly impossible to completely exclude major PR firms with client portfolios that include fossil fuel interests,” Arun Sudhaman, a global PR industry analyst, told Earth.Org, adding that many of those firm may be “far less transparent” than Edelman about that kind of work.
But beyond the task of delivering information on the COP30 event itself, communications experts agree that the more important issue is to leverage storytelling to create better public empowerment on climate action.
“What I wish is that even a percentage of the money that was being spent on PR for COP30 was being spent on public empowerment,” said Solitaire Townsend, a member of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Entertainment and Culture for Climate Action Committee. She argues that storytelling “is the secret key to unlock massive action everywhere.”
“We know what we need to do on finance, policy, and technology – IPCC themselves have set out exactly what we need to do. What we’re missing is the story. We have the logic, but we need the magic,” Townsend told Earth.Org.
Article 12 of the UNFCCC enjoins the parties to cooperate in taking measures to enhance climate change public awareness, public participation and public access to information. Carbon pricing and carbon markets, anticipated to be central issues at COP30, face many challenges such as fundamental understanding, acceptance of the concept, and perceived fairness.
According to Paul Mottram, an independent consultant focused on climate and author of Carbon Costs, these are all complex communications issues rather than technical problems; and, as such, professional communication is crucial to addressing them.
“Multiple surveys have shown that climate change is now seen as a real threat, one people think will affect them,” he said. “But the best slogans, like ‘Just Stop Oil,’ don’t correspond to real solutions. That’s the critical problem that climate communications needs to solve.”
One opportunity could be to leverage rising consumption of independent media.
Gold, who also hosts the Climate Swings podcast, explained that podcasters and other independent media creators have a “unique opportunity” to highlight human stories while also making high-level negotiations accessible to the public.
The need for strategic communication on climate is likely to rise in the near future. According to the World PR Report 2024-2025 by industry body ICCO, sustainability and climate change were the most important social issues that clients were most likely to prioritize.
Featured image: Vugar Ibadov via Flickr.
You might also like: Framing a Crisis: The Evolution of Climate Communication and Storytelling
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