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On July 16-17 we attended the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Climate Crossroads second annual meeting, with Morgan on-the-ground in D.C. and Leonor and Geoff attending virtually.
Climate Crossroads was established in 2023 and it’s exciting to learn that they have already tripled their audience since the first convening. In 2024 the in-person and virtual participants were a mix of students, Congressional fellows, researchers, policy folks from local to international scales, funders, entrepreneurs, artists and creatives, journalists and communicators, and more.
Morgan had great in-person conversations with extension agents, policy fellows, academic faculty leading climate initiatives on their campuses, university deans, researchers from diverse natural and social science disciplines, and so many Academies staffers. The meeting offered us a broad and interdisciplinary look at the current state (and some history) of evidence-based climate change initiatives and research with a view to particularly US government/policy needs and interests (the Academies’ work is often in response to requests from the US Congress for expert perspectives).
Themes across sessions included:
- the need to build trusting relationships within and between communities
- the need for more public engagement, centering equity and interdisciplinarity to tackle ‘systems of systems’ challenges
- investing energy and attention to the ‘messy middle’ majority, rather than polarized extremes
- the need to get specific about scale and pace as we tackle various aspects of climate challenges
It’s heartening to hear community-led/centered practices and public engagement emphasized across so many sessions and speakers. Like many areas of societal change, public engagement is continuing to evolve to meet current challenges, repair past mistakes, and engage in learning/unlearning cycles in response to emerging evidence. As practitioners in the public engagement space over the past decade plus, we are encouraged by the amount that building trusting, equitable relationships is now openly discussed, and we see room for growth to move toward action and investment of time and other resources to translate our intentions into impacts that serve communities, particularly within the complexity, nuance, and scale of the climate challenges we face locally and globally. In particular, we see a need for supporting the recruitment and retention of staff expertise that focuses on bridging roles related to public engagement and communication.
We all felt that aspects of the meeting strengthened our sense that Connecting Genetics to Climate is addressing areas where gaps remain, including: 1) connecting how genetic-based biotechnologies may contribute tools as part of a broader toolkit to address climate adaptation and mitigation (this was not represented at the meeting and we are excited to contribute in the future), 2) connecting people developing and implementing technologies across disciplinary boundaries, and 3) connecting communities into the research and technology development process in meaningful ways that build trust and increase efficacy of everyone’s efforts to address the most pressing on-the-ground immediate needs and the long-term planning for generations to come.
We’re excited to follow-up with the connections we made and catch-up on concurrent sessions we weren’t able to attend. Join us in checking out recordings from Climate Crossroads 2024 or engage with other climate resources from NASEM.
Here’s a resource on public engagement co-production.
Have thoughts about public engagement? Share them with us in the comments.
