Lydia Pedoth

Climate change is not only a technical and environmental challenge but also an emotional and psychological one that affects public engagement, policy acceptance, and long-term sustainability. This study presents a conceptual framework based on the Kübler-Ross model from psychotherapy to explore emotional responses to climate change: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Based on a thematic analysis of the interdisciplinary secondary literature and illustrative cases, we analyse how these emotional dynamics influence climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Each stage reveals specific psychological barriers and entry points for communication, resilience-building, and policy design. We argue that emotional readiness is a critical yet underacknowledged factor in sustainable development and societal transformation. Addressing emotional dimensions can support mental health, increase acceptance of climate measures, and improve the alignment between sustainability strategies and public responses. Our findings emphasise the importance of tailoring sustainability communication and policies to different emotional stages to foster inclusive, effective, and lasting climate action.

This chapter presents experiences and results from the INTERREG Italy-Austria Project RiKoST-Risk communication strategies. The project is a collaboration between partners from research and public authorities and aims at improving target-group-oriented risk communication in South Tyrol (Italy) and Carinthia (Austria). Risk communication plays an essential role for risk governance and may address different aspects and fulfill various purposes, from informing about natural hazards, generating acceptance and awareness for structural and non-structural measures, to triggering participation, increasing resilience, and supporting the development of a risk-competent society. To be effective, risk communication needs, firstly, to acknowledge the needs of different target groups and, secondly, to develop approaches, tools and contents that are most suitable to reach and involve them. This chapter describes the results from different activities carried out in the project: a population survey to better understand people’s risk perception and their knowledge about natural hazards, the information channels they use and trust; awareness raising activities in different municipalities; interactive lessons and a workshop in schools; stakeholder workshops. Our results show that that existing non-structural protection and prevention measures, especially Hazard Zone Plans, are little known among the population, that trust in the responsible authorities is high and that there is a need for a risk dialog through different risk communication activities at different stages to provide targeted information on how individual citizens can contribute to risk management. The chapter concludes on how the presented results can be used by public authorities and policy makers to innovate risk communication strategies and to initiate a risk dialog with the overall aim to improve risk governance at local level.

Participatory methods for researching human–environmental interactions seek detailed inputs on all manner of issues, but the outputs are often only understandable to the technically literate. On the other hand, participatory methods that involve the co-design of structured outputs (maps, models, games, stories, etc.) can be used to represent and integrate the knowledge and views of participants authentically and can be interpretable to both ‘scientist’ and ‘non-scientist’ alike, thereby creating ‘sideways’ rather than top-down or bottom-up perspectives. This paper is both a methodological paper and a treatise that looks at some of the theory underpinning such approaches, drawing on the theory of citizen or ‘bottom-up’ stakeholder engagement in science but also co-created engagement, emphasising the learning and trust-building benefits of this ‘sideways’ engagement. It describes how some established and novel methods (participatory agent-based modelling; co-constructing computer games; and participatory social network mapping), can be used to engage stakeholders in iterative, constructivist communication, allowing researchers and stakeholders to co-create a structured ‘reality’ separate from the reality it represents. We discuss how such approaches support and contribute to scientific outputs that better represent participants’ reality. Our findings show that, when applied to ecosystem services, agricultural adaptation and disaster risk management, such representations provide communication opportunities and spaces for reflection and constructivist learning. The structured outputs allow stakeholders—both participant and researcher—to ‘mirror’ their human-environmental system to collaboratively think about gaps and problems in understanding.

Climate change vulnerability assessments are an essential instrument to identify regions most vulnerable to adverse impacts of climate change and to determine appropriate adaptation measures. Vulnerability assessments directly support countries in developing adaptation plans and in identifying possible measures to reduce adverse consequences of changing climate conditions. Against this background, this paper describes a vulnerability assessment using an integrated and participatory approach that builds on standardized working steps of previously developed ‘Vulnerability Sourcebook’ guidelines. The backbone of this approach is impact chains as a conceptual model of cause–effect relationships as well as a structured selection of indicators according to the three main components of vulnerability, namely exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. We illustrate our approach by reporting the results of a vulnerability assessment conducted in Burundi focusing on climate change impacts on water and soil resources. Our work covers two analysis scales: a national assessment with the aim to identify climate change ‘hotspot regions’ through vulnerability mapping; and a local assessment aiming at identifying local-specific drivers of vulnerability and appropriate adaptation measures. Referring to this vulnerability assessment in Burundi, we discuss the potentials and constraints of the approach. We stress the need to involve stakeholders in every step of the assessment and to communicate limitations and uncertainties of the applied methods, indicators and maps in order to increase the comprehension of the approach and the acceptance of the results by different stakeholders. The study proved the practical usability of the approach at the national level by the selection of three particularly vulnerable areas. The results at a local scale supported the identification of adaption measures through intensive engagement of local rural populations.