Awareness is the foundation of action. Any effective action is built on an accurate understanding of the issue.. If global society does not recognize the severity and urgency of the climate crisis, it will not take effective measures to address it. To date, the performance of global climate governance has been mixed, fundamentally due to weak climate crisis awareness among governments and citizens worldwide. As the world’s largest developed country and long-term top emitter, the United States should bear primary responsibility for governance. However, since the Trump administration took office, its resolve in climate governance has wavered, leading to its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, setting a bad example for the international community and causing negative impacts. The U.S.’ s energy and climate policies have not only created obstacles for global efforts but also opened opportunities for China to promote and lead global climate governance. The current priority is to disseminate climate science knowledge and enhance public awareness of the climate crisis.
Human responses to environmental crises are tipically based on sensory perceptions. However, human perception is physiologically limited to small spatial and temporal scales and relies heavily on visual input. As a result, some of the public tend to judge the extent of global warming based on what they can see, rather than relying on scientific understanding and taking mitigation actions. Yet global warming is a large-scale crisis involving atmospheric temperature changes across vast areas. Currently, the dissemination of knowledge about the climate crisis by the international community depends on systematic scientific theories and predictive models. Climate data and global warming models are far from people‘s bodily experiences, making it difficult for the public to reach a global consensus on whether the world is warming and whether urgent action should be taken. This lack of shared understanding has led to delays and difficulties in global climate governance. Only by strengthening public awareness of the climate crisis worldwide can international climate negotiations and governance become more efficient.
In addition to continuing to promote China’s achievements in climate governance, China’s public diplomacy on climate should focus on disseminating climate science knowledge and raising global awareness of the climate crisis. To this end, China can actively promote the following initiatives. First, focusing on climate change in the Himalayas, invite countries around the Himalayas to jointly produce documentaries on glacial melting and its environmental impacts, which will be screened and disseminated at side events and forums of the United Nations Climate Conference. Second, collaborate with the IPCC to form a global team of climate experts, working with relevant national TV stations or print media to deepen the interpretation of IPCC reports, disseminate authoritative information about global warming, enhance the visualization of the climate crisis process, and increase the credibility and urgency of the climate crisis, making it deeply ingrained in people’s minds. Third, work with climate experts from countries severely affected by climate change to produce television documentaries or interviews, which will be uploaded to online platforms. The government could also lead the establishment of a dedicated short video website as a platform for uploading climate crisis videos from around the world, to raise awareness of the climate crisis among the global population.
Company: Institute of International Politics, Zhejiang University
Contact Person: Gan Junxian
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://marx.zju.edu.cn/2018/1115/c23503a896108/page.htm
Telephone: （86）15558128616
City: hangzhou
