This season represents one of the toughest times of the year for changemakers, climate leaders, and everyone working toward a climate-safe future. To write about COP is to acknowledge the discord, dissonance, and inner struggle that come with watching the gaps grow and the timelines compress.
On one hand, we want to communicate hope; to inspire others to engage, innovate, and believe in the possibility of a better future. On the other hand, it is painful to witness the institutional failings of the world’s most crucial climate forum repeat themselves year after year, as the impacts of climate change hit ever closer to home.
The fragile promise of cooperation
A decade ago, after COP21, I sat down and read the Paris Agreement. Anyone who did the same would have recognised its duality: groundbreaking in vision, yet fragile in accountability.
The document itself relied on two simple assumptions: that governments would recommit to climate action each year, setting progressively stronger targets, and that every participant would take action to meet them.
Every year since, I have looked for these two simple measures of success. I’ve scanned the negotiation room for people whose purpose in being there aligns with the aims of the original agreement. I’ve tried to interpret the outcomes in a way that empowers and supports others in understanding the progress being made.
Ten years on, I glance up from my laptop and catch the eye of my eight-year-old, with the realisation that everything has changed.
It’s time to shift.
The shift we now need
Instead, let’s name the weight of this work.
Let us acknowledge the disconnectedness, the structural failings, the complexity of emotions, and the pressure that builds in every human being who engages with this crisis. The stress that this discord places on those who lead, advocate, and show up.
A healthy approach is not about maintaining optimism while filtering out the rest. It is built on the ability to process the internal struggle of an externally failing system and to allow ourselves to crumble, to feel, and then to rebuild, again and again.
“COP30 can be the moment resilience is reframed, not as failure to prevent but as readiness to lead.”
The World Economic Forum
Resilience is the work now, which, for changemakers, starts with the self.
Quiet resilience
Wales is culturally well prepared for resilient leadership. Britain talks Climate and Nature 2025 analysed public attitudes to climate action in Wales, declaring that we “care more deeply than people realise”.
Our culture embodies a sense of place, groundedness and spirit that radiates beyond borders. The climate crisis asks us to cultivate that same strength within ourselves.
This year, instead of looking for the positive spin on global negotiations, I’ll be allowing a more sustainable form of action to emerge from our community of resilient changemakers.
It’s only when we are able to ground our own nervous systems, that we are able to think holistically and clearly, for the creative, inspired solutions that the world now craves.
Guest reflection by Helen Draper, Trustee of Cynnal Cymru and Founder of Climate Calm™.
About the author: Helen Draper is the Founder of Climate Calm™ and a Trustee of Cynnal Cymru. Drawing on her background in climate leadership and neuroscience-informed wellbeing, she helps changemakers align personal and planetary resilience. For further support, her free eBook Focus: Reclaiming Clarity, Calm and Climate Impact is available now.
Over the last 20 years I have been involved in some form of climate adaptation or resilience work, and I have found gulls a great indicator of whether we are climate ready or not. But first some other lessons.
The tools to help are just the same – we just need to choose one and use it
In 2006 I worked on the first climate risk assessment for an economic investment strategy. We used a tool called ‘Business Areas Climate Impacts Assessment Tool (BACLIAT)’. Since then, there has been an explosion of tools funded by short-term grants. This often creates barriers of confusion over which tools to use. The most successful tool I used was an online risk assessment that small businesses could use and then receive a tailored action plan. This later led to various editions of the weathering the storm guides for businesses and land managers.
Doing something new and long-term requires consistent resource – we won’t get it, so become good at passing the ball
Extreme weather impacts vary – but naming them, putting lines on a map and looking back helps
Heat waves, wildfires, flooding, drought and storms. It isn’t exactly consistent when it happens or what the impact looks like. This can give the impression it is a random series of events that can’t be planned for. Initiatives such as naming storms or our Future Generations Commissioner’s suggestion of naming heatwaves all help to provide more visibility to climate impacts and planning. The conclusion of my PhD was unless you are willing to draw lines on a map, you won’t influence planners. We now have flood, surface water, water abstraction, heat island, and wildfire risk maps or zones to help make the invisible visible. Another tool I found useful was Local Climate Impacts Profile (LCIPs). These involve a review of media reports and interviews with service providers to cover specific past dates during an extreme weather event. This then helped build up a picture of impact for future planning. My Dad is a former history teacher, so he would also argue that looking further back to where churches and wealthy houses were built is a good indicator of where land won’t flood.
Don’t buy a second home – especially not in the Mediterranean
The arguments about second homes, especially in Wales, are well known. But 20 years ago, I was presenting to a wealthy audience in Birmingham around the new development agency investment plans for the next 20 years and how we had tried to consider this new concept called ‘climate risk’. I could tell I was losing them, so I went off script and told them not to buy a second home in the Mediterranean. It immediately got their attention, and that of the local press, but not in the way I had intended. For years I had colleagues posting to me how good their holidays had been in the Med. That hasn’t happened for the last five years.
Climate impacts are unfair – but tackling them will create stronger communities
Work such as Climate Just has helped to map the multiple impacts and capacity to cope of local communities. It is no surprise that the poorest are often most vulnerable. But there is also an opportunity: by tackling the impacts of climate change we build stronger communities. I always remember a conversation at a conference hosted by the King of Sweden (who wore a name badge). A delegate asked, ‘why do Scandinavian countries have such a strong shared sense of community?’. The answer ‘If we didn’t cooperate, we wouldn’t survive a harsh winter or poor harvest. Those that weren’t willing to help their neighbours died alone.’ We are beginning to see this community response with community centres offer safe warm or cool spaces, a renewed focus on improving our public green spaces, and service providers realising their adaptation plans require a range of partners to work together to succeed.
You can’t predict the future – but there are ‘no-regret’ policies that produce multiple benefits
In work for Ashden we looked at a range of co-benefits or multiple benefits for climate change action. The good news is that often the actions required to improve the resilience of a place have many benefits, so even if the flood or heatwave doesn’t occur every year you still won’t regret the policy or activity. For example, floodplains that are kept as parks and cycle and walking routes, street trees and pocket parks, community centres able to offer a range of local services, and supply chains able to deal with a range of disruptions.
Watch the gulls – gulls are a great indicator for climate readiness
When delivering a range of workshops for 100s of small business around climate risk and resilience planning I was always on the lookout for good or bad examples. These included ‘don’t put your evacuation point opposite the exploding fuel tanks you will be running from’, ‘the hospital is not climate proof if all the access roads are flooded’, ‘get a snow plough fitting for your forklift to clear access points on the estate’, or ‘set up a reciprocal arrangement with another non-competing manufacturer to provide a temporary production line’. But the best example was this – A business hadn’t insulated its roof properly, so it attracted gulls from miles around to enjoy the warm roof. They produced a lot of waste that then blocked up the gutters on the roof. When a storm came, the weight of the water on the roof caused it collapse stopping production for the day.
So, remember “If gulls like your roof, when the storms come your home will flood”
Dr Simon Slater, CEO of Cynnal Cymru
Living in a house, not in the Mediterranean, on a hill, near a church, in an average vulnerability rating on the Climate Just map, with no regular gull visitors.
How can Cynnal Cymru help?
Our training courses on Carbon Literacy and Nature Wise, already incorporate elements of climate resilience. Our real Living Wage accreditation process for employers results in income security and pay rises for 1000s of workers which enables individuals to have more capacity to prepare or respond to extreme weather events. We are also running a members and guest event on climate readiness and are at early stages of developing a climate readiness course.
It might be hard to grasp why some people don’t seem to care about nature or climate change, but for many, life is busy and already full of challenges and priorities. We have also become so disconnected from the natural world that it can be easy to forget that it’s essential to our existence. Unfortunately, just telling people why climate and nature matter, is unlikely to get them to change their mind or their habits. In fact, scare tactics have been shown to switch people off more than get them on board.
To help you improve your approach to talking to your friends, family or colleagues, our training team have drawn on their shared experience to create their five top tips for communicating about nature and climate change.
1. Focus on what’s possible, rather than what isn’t
Create a positive vision of a thriving future, and encourage people to share their own vision – storytelling can be a great tool for this.
2. Appeal to people’s better self and encourage empathy
Most people want to be healthy and happy and would like the same for their family and friends – so highlight the tangible benefits of taking action on climate change.
3. Remember the importance of listening
When communicating about climate change, what you hear is as important as what you say. Understanding why someone thinks the way they do will help you engage with them more effectively.
4. Find some common ground
Avoid polarising arguments or rhetoric that can lead to ‘us and them’ or ‘everybody else’ thinking. Instead, highlight the things we have in common.
5. Normalise positive behaviours
We tend to respond to things we see our peers doing, so provide some real, positive examples of how others are taking action.
If you want to know more? Check out these useful resources.
Colli Cymru i’r Môr – three-part series on iPlayer and S4C Clic looking at climate change in Wales and further afield. It’s presented in Welsh with English subtitles.
To listen:
Podcast ‘The imam who reached out to rioters’ (Today in Focus) with the imam Adam Kennewick is an incredible example of using depolarising communication techniques in an extreme or even life-threatening situation.
This month, the Cynnal Cymru team have been sharing photos and stories about birds, bees and other wildlife encounters. It is summer, after all, and nature is in full swing! Our Training Administrator Tom also took part in the Wye Valley BuzzWatch: Bee ID and Monitoring workshop, which you can read about below.
Twenty percent of the UK’s cropped area contains crops which are dependent on pollinators, and the value of pollinators to UK agriculture is over £690 million per year.
‘The value of honey produced in Wales is also considerable with a wholesale value in excess of £2 million in 2011.‘Action plan for pollinators in Wales
We have lost 97% of our wildflower-rich meadows since the 1940s, and as the number of flowers in our countryside have declined, so too have our bumblebee pollinators, and they are in desperate need of our help!
The main threats to pollinators include habitat loss, environmental pollution, climate change and the spread of alien species.
Honey bees Vs native pollinators
There is just one species of honey bee in Britain and Europe, the Western or European Honey bee Apis mellifera. In contrast, there are over 1500 other pollinator species in the UK, including over 270 wild bee species, as well as hoverflies, moths and butterflies. Honey bees are not at threat of extinction in the UK. But there is increasing concern worldwide that declines in wild pollinators may be worsened by high densities of honey bees. For example, one honey bee hive can contain over 40,000 bees. That’s 40,000 bees competing with other wild species for food and resources, which could put a strain on the native wild bees. Honey bee hives have also been known to spread disease to wild bees, devastating local populations. If, for example, a honeybee hive was introduced into an area where a rare bumblebee species had made its home, this could result in the end of that population.
The UK has also lost 97% of its wildflower meadows in the last century, which means bumblebees are struggling to find enough food and good nesting spots to survive. The use of insecticides can also directly kill or affect the ability of bumblebees to find food and reproduce, with herbicide use killing flowering plants, a vital food source for bumblebees. Shifts in seasonal patterns and weather also disrupt bumblebee behaviour and impact survival at key life stages, such as spring emergence, nesting, and winter hibernation.
Extreme weather events like floods, droughts and storms also impact bumblebee numbers. Floods can drown hibernating queens and underground nests. Droughts can cause plant deaths, reducing the amount of nectar and pollen available for bumblebees to feed on and collect, with storms preventing bumblebees from foraging for food, as they struggle to fly in wet windy weather.
If you want to learn more about the links between human activity and ecosystem disruption and develop the knowledge to enable you and your organisation to take action for nature recovery, then signing up for our Nature Wise Eco-Literacy course might be the next step for you.
Nature Wise is a science-based, action-focused course to help you to understand the relationships between people and natural systems. It shares knowledge, builds understanding and provide the tools to motivate and catalyse action. You can sign up to our online courses at the below link.
Tom talks about what he learnt at the Bee ID and Monitoring workshop
On World Bee Day May 20th, I was lucky enough to attend a Bee ID and Monitoring workshop that was organised by Wye Valley National Landscapes and delivered by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Our expert for the day was Dr Richard Comont (Bumblebee Conservation Trust Science Manager). During the morning session Richard took us through a presentation on the benefits of bumblebees and other pollinators, and the data showing their unfortunate decline over the years. We looked at what we can do as individuals to allow them to thrive and make sure their much-needed habitats are protected. We learnt how to identify different bees and the differences between the queen, other female workers and male drones.
Fun fact: Female bees, including worker bees and queens, are the only ones that can sting. The stinger is a modified ovipositor; the organ used for laying eggs and is therefore only possessed by females. Male bees (drones) do not have stingers.
After a wonderful lunch put on by the National Landscapes team, we collected our Bee ID kit and went to Trelleck Wet Meadows for an afternoon session of bee identification.
We had a great afternoon carefully catching and identifying bees. I caught three female worker Red-Tailed bumblebees. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of these as I was far too excited at the time. One of the other attendees caught a Brown-Banded Carder bee which was the first time one was recorded in the Wye-Valley National Landscape.
I went away from the day with new knowledge and skills that will allow me to record and document the bumblebees that I come across, and add to the baseline data of bumblebee populations across the Wye-Valley National Landscape to allow them to focus their conservation efforts in the most important areas.
Tom Kirkton is the Training Administrator at Cynnal Cymru
A recent report in Harvard Business Review demonstrated that even small interventions to increase access to nature – in offices from Canada to China – increased staff creativity, productivity and helpfulness. Natural England’s “Links between natural environments and mental health” 2022 paper also affirms that spending time in natural environments is associated with positive outcomes for mental health, stress and psycho-social wellbeing.
Both reports indicate that increasing access to nature need not be large-scale, expensive or onerous to generate these benefits. Whilst not every organisation can invest in a green roof or living wall, even micro spaces can become ‘stepping stones’ to connect up habitats and provide feeding stations for wildlife. For staff too time-pressed to fit in a regular nature walk, daily glimpses of nature at work and a chance to see, smell or hear our incredible biodiversity are also effective in boosting mood and performance.
Public bodies already have a duty, under the Environment (Wales) Act 2016, to maintain and enhance biodiversity and their partners and suppliers are being asked to showcase their biodiversity commitments too when they tender for public contracts.
With all these reasons to incorporate nature more in both our personal and professional lives, we are delighted to share some top tips to help!
How you can take action for nature
Let it grow!
Take part in No Mow May and Let it Bloom June – Plantlife’s annual campaign urging everyone to pack away the lawnmower, let wildflowers grow freely and help nature. Whether you’re in a city, town or the countryside, it’s easy to take part.
No lawn or green space is too small! Even the smallest wild patch can provide vital food needed by bees and butterflies, connecting us with nature and giving nature the best start to summer.
‘Nature isn’t neat’
Check out the MonLife’s ‘Nature isn’t Neat’, approach to establishing joined-up green space management to create wildflower-rich pollinator habitats across Gwent local authority areas. This includes a comprehensive toolkit to support organisations and community groups.
If you are a community or town councillor, you can take part in One Voice Wales Biodiversity Basics (Module 25 – Biodiversity basics Part 1 and Module 26 Part 2) designed by the Cynnal Cymru training team. This course teaches the basics of biodiversity, nature recovery and ecology to enable good decisions and effective Biodiversity Action Plans.
Citizen science
If access to land in your work place or at home is limited, why not explore biodiversity in your local area by using the LERC App, contributing to nature conservation, planning, research and education by submitting biodiversity records.
Increasing nature & biodiversity at your business premises
Using the expertise of its Landscape Architecture team, Groundwork has pulled together a free Nature & Biodiversity toolkit which outlines the different nature-based features your business could consider at different scales of investment and impact.
Practical examples of organisations taking action for nature
From small growing initiatives to site-wide biodiversity action plans, the following businesses and organisations are already taking action to increase biodiversity within their community and place of work.
Y Stiwdio in Pembrokeshire is a creative space where wellies are welcome. A place to make, learn and grow. Y Stiwdio volunteers have created a community described as ‘A special place for all of us with secluded seating and a variety of wildlife-friendly plants to enhance the centre of the village’.
4. Cardiff University – Ecosystem resilience and biodiversity action plan 2024-2026
Cynnal Cymru has office space in the Sbarc|Spark building in Cathays Cardiff. While it is located in an urban area, we were pleased to discover the surrounding land was being used to create wildlife friendly spaces including mini meadows, hedgerows and a bug hotel. The Ecosystem Resilience and Biodiversity Action Plan, sets out how Cardiff University are going to maintain and enhance biodiversity and promote ecosystem resilience across Cardiff University’s campuses.
5. Capital Coated Steel – Biodiversity garden
Capital Coated Steel are an excellent example of how a steel manufacturer has made space for nature on a previously derelict site. The Biodiversity garden supports staff well-being, helps to educate visitors and repurposes waste. The project initiated by, Simon Nurse, and co-created with his team, has now taken on a life of it’s own! You can follow the latest updates on Simon’s Linkedin page.
6. Greener Grangetown, Cardiff – Sustainable Drainage Systems
Greener Grange is a nature-based intervention to retrofit a sustainable drainage system into existing urban streets, creating over 100 raingardens while leaving space for parking and other needs. Not only does the system reduce flooding, it has increased biodiversity and provides multiple benefits to the local community. You can read more about the Green Grangetown project on the Nature Based Solutions hub.
The theme of this month’s Cynnal Cymru newsletter is ‘growth’ in its broadest sense. It’s a word that is often associated with positivity. I’m writing this on the first working day of British Summer Time, although it is still very much spring. Growth is in the air – with the daffodils having sprouted and blossom season in full swing. Growth in this context is very much welcome, even to hay fever sufferers like myself. But there are some debates where the concept of growth is more contentious.
Our role as Cynnal Cymru’s Fair Economy team is to make a contribution towards a fairer economy for Wales. Our two core work strands are partnering with the Living Wage Foundation in Wales – hosting Living Wage Wales in-house – and working with the Welsh Government to support their ambitions for Wales’ foundational economy. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the ‘mundane’ areas of the economy that are nonetheless incredibly important in underpinning everyday life – think care and health services, food, utilities, and similar. They haven’t always got the attention from economic policy makers that advanced manufacturing or cutting-edge technology have, but they make up a huge section of the economy – with 51% of Welsh employees working in the foundational economy. Their working lives and the contributions they make deserve attention too.
It’s predominantly through these living wage and foundational economy workstreams that we engage with the concept of growth – the narrower idea of economic growth. Far from springtime flowers to some this concept evokes thoughts of industrialisation and environmental harm. The public policy debate in Wales – particularly where it intersects with the third sector – has seen a debate around whether economic growth is a desirable goal, with efforts to move towards a ‘wellbeing’ approach instead.
Whereas in years past many would look to settle the inherent tensions between development and sustainability via an ambition for ‘sustainable growth’, some in the Welsh policy space are now looking to other concepts, such as ‘degrowth’, or asking for a ‘wellbeing economy’ to replace efforts to increase GDP.
To me, a wellbeing economy is clearly a highly desirable aim. Focusing on a broader set of metrics than simply growth makes a huge amount of sense. We know that a rising tide doesn’t always lift all boats. The gap between the rich and the rest is growing. There is increasing evidence that, to some extent, pay has partly decoupled from productivity. The labour share of national income in the UK has fallen in recent decades, as a greater share goes to those who own, rather than those who work.
But does that mean we should eschew the quest for economic growth in favour of a wellbeing economy? The chart above – which maps life satisfaction and GDP per capita – suggests this may be a false dichotomy. There is a clear correlation between reported life satisfaction (which I would suggest is fairly synonymous with wellbeing) and GDP per capita. It follows that a growth in GDP per capita – economic growth – is very likely to correspond to a growth in wellbeing.
It’s right that we look to a broad set of measures when trying to create a fairer economy for Wales. It is fairly unsurprising that the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland find themselves at the top right of the graph – with some of the highest GDP per capita and life satisfaction in the world.
The Nordic model of strong trade union rights and mass union membership to protect worker incomes is a successful one. It rebalances economies away from the ultra-rich having a unilateral say over how much they pay their workers and how much they keep in their own pockets. Wales would be sensible to emulate it as much as it can. But we shouldn’t forget that this model does include having amongst the highest GDP per capita in the world.
And whilst there is some evidence of productivity growth (which tracks pretty consistently with GDP growth) and pay decoupling, there is no evidence of a total decoupling. Strong growth in GDP still means rising wages – for people of all income brackets. When we talk about how we can tackle poverty in Wales, economic growth is a tried-and-tested method.
Economic growth is good for the rights of workers, too. Harvard University’s Dani Rodrik found in his paper ‘An Industrial Policy for Good Jobs’ that the ‘sine qua non’ (for fellow non-Latin speakers, that’s ‘without which, not’ – an indispensable ingredient) of good jobs is a high enough level of labour productivity. That is, increasing productivity (doing more with less), a key component of economic growth, results in jobs that ‘provide a middle-class living standard, adequate benefits, reasonable levels of personal autonomy, economic security, and career ladders’.
The trade-offs between measures to support economic development and considerations such as equity and environmental protection are complex and multi-faceted. But Wales is one of the poorest areas of Western Europe on many measures. This results in human misery – including child poverty and people trapped in work where they are paid and respected too little. We should be hesitant about well-meaning calls to eschew economic growth.
The ambition of many to become a wellbeing economy is a welcome one. But the increasingly common refrain of ‘wellbeing or growth’ is looking at the issue the wrong way around. We should instead consider how we can continue to decouple growth from carbon emissions and utilise economic growth in Wales to reduce poverty and increase wellbeing.
From American suffragist Helen Todd’s original speech in 1911, labour movements worldwide have used the concept of bread and roses to fight for the circumstances where populations are not just surviving but thriving, too. In the Well-being of Future Generations Act, culture is explicitly written as one of the necessary elements of a thriving Wales. The Act intends for ‘A Wales of Vibrant Culture and Thriving Welsh Language. A society that promotes and protects culture, heritage and the Welsh language, and which encourages people to participate in the arts, and sports and recreation.”
The ongoing pressure on the cost of living, the health service and heritage and arts organisations in Wales illustrates the everyday challenges decision makers are having to make on budgets and priorities. When austerity hits, one of the first things to be cut is cultural services, and we’re seeing that now across Wales and the UK. The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act challenges us all to not neglect our cultural responsibilities and connections in favour of other priorities.
While we’re not a cultural institution at Cynnal Cymru, we care deeply about wellbeing in all its manifestations. Our Fair Economy team accredit the Living Wage and Living Hours Wales, helping organisations to create working conditions that don’t just meet the bare minimum requirements for living, but help their staff to thrive too. We’ve seen huge transformations where individuals no longer have to work multiple jobs and can spend more time with their families, get enough rest, and engage with the culture and community around them.
Culture plays a key part in unlocking sustainability action and is often forgotten in technical debates around carbon reduction. As Gus Speth, US climate scientist put it:
“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
How are our team thriving while surviving?
Sometimes we think about culture as something serious, expensive, and reserved for a few kinds of activities. But just like sustainability is made up of the little changes that add up in all our work, cultural well-being can come from small moments in our everyday lives. Outside of their work at Cynnal Cymru, our staff have rich lives engaging with cultural moments both big and small.
Abi, our Membership Officer, spends one day a week as an apprentice at an antique jeweller, learning how to make and repair fine jewellery. Recently she’s been challenged by learning how to use CAD design as a tool to design and model jewellery, exploring a whole new creative community. Our Head of Business Development, Clare, recently joined a group at the NoFitState circus building to watch part of the Festival Mondial de Cirque de Demain, livestreamed from Paris. When we can take the time for them, these moments of intercultural engagement can inspire us to think outside our daily spheres and even try new things.
Fiona, our Finance Officer, stops crunching numbers to write fiction when she’s not at work. She’s currently working on two novels, one that’s nearly finished and one that’s a fresh project – an old school, tongue-in-cheek heist set in the modern day. Our Marketing and Communications Officer, Beli, also writes fiction, having recently written a short story for the Beyond/Tu Hwnt bilingual anthology of Welsh deaf and disabled writers.
As a crafty team, our staff are often sharing ideas and tools. Recently, our Living Wage Programme Lead, Grace, gave Fiona some embroidery frames and she’s started a new project from them, planning to make two pieces of iridescent insects. There are so many ways we can appreciate and explore ecology and sustainability in ways that are creative, whether that’s researching beetles for a creative project or photographing the beautiful view on one of our coastal walks in Wales, like our Living Wage and Human Resources Support Officer, Alys, who recently walked some the Pembrokeshire Coast.
Blue Lagoon Quarry photographed by Alys Reid Bacon
Integrating cultural and sustainability work
Too often, we can become siloed in our approach to sustainability. The Well-being for Future Generations Goals challenges us to think about everything that a society needs to thrive. No single person or organisation can do it all, but when we work together, we can make lasting and impactful changes. As a membership organisation, we are inspired by the organisations from outside the sustainability sector who are committing themselves to sustainability work, such as our members Arts Council Wales, Ffilm Cymru, and Media Cymru from the arts sector. We’re all aware of the need to change our behaviour to look after our climate and natural environment, and at Cynnal Cymru we’re committed to empowering organisations from every sector to turn that knowledge into actionable steps.
So how can culture help sustainability?
At the recent South East Wales Climate Coalition event, our former Board member Andy Middleton reminded the audience that “change happens by those who hold the best parties.” Joy, creativity, and culture must necessarily go hand in hand with our passion for a better society.
One of our members Coleg y Cymoedd have embraced an Every Day Every Decision approach to sustainability to encourage their staff and students to drive the culture of change based on what is important for them. The technical aspects are still happening, but just backstage. These kinds of innovations that think about what drives behaviour change are so important and integral to our ways of working at Cynnal Cymru.
Another change in culture is moving towards long-term thinking. This is one of the ways of working encouraged by the Future Generations Commissioner. We have benefited from attending the Futures Hub training as they begin to build a community of practice around the change of culture.
To quote educator and author Peter Drucker: ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it.’
If we’re too busy looking at the numbers, the facts, the long reports of data, we can neglect to imagine a future that is full of joy, passion, and creativity. Wales is a land of song, literature and culture, and we must savour and treasure these things in little and large ways to create a sustainable future that is authentically Welsh, authentically ours.
This was the takeaway from our latest event, Can Stories Change Our World? , which brought together Cynnal Cymru members and other sustainably-minded businesses. We brought in three speakers to discuss how they use storytelling in their work and talk to us about the power and challenges of storytelling as change. This is clearly a topic on many people’s minds right now. It’s something we talked about in our September newsletter, and drew in a huge number of questions during this event. We discussed questions such as how you deal with apathy and depression in climate conversations, how to use comedy and positivity to tell poignant stories, and how to specifically reach Welsh audiences through storytelling style or platforms.
Ant Green, founder of animation and illustration studio Motion Manor designed for positive change, discussed the importance of telling visual stories that imagine a fair and sustainable future.
“In climate narratives, we’ve created a doom and gloom outlook because it’s the clearest outcome. We know what a bad outcome looks like, but we’re not so sure about the details of that good outcome.”
Motion Manor, a Cynnal Cymru Member, have used their animations and illustrations to visualise this positive future for organisations such as the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations. While they use animation and illustration, Motion Manor ensures that their stories are rooted in reality – for Ant, that’s the key.
“Show a snapshot of real people doing real things, even when using stories or illustration.”
Camille Lovgreen, Cynnal Cymru’s Sustainability Advisor, echoed Ant’s sentiment of needing to situation any storytelling in real life examples, even when writing fiction. Alongside our Sustainability Strategist Karolina Rucinska, Camille wrote a series of fictional stories envisioning Wales in 2051. In their imagination, Wales had implemented all sustainability advice and was seeing a thriving environment and community. Through this set of stories, they were able to begin a conversation around what it looks like to successfully implement climate policy, as well as inspiring the hope that energises this movement.
A similar set of stories was created by the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales (NICW), looking at Wales in 2100. The Chair of the NICW, David Clubb, was our third speaker. David stressed the importance of taking out time when thinking about long-term futures. David also discussed the need to evaluate not just how but where you’re telling your stories. NICW have recently made the decision to leave the big platforms, namely Meta and X, and move to open source versions that fit into their values. This decision comes at a time when many organisations and individuals are moving away from big name platforms in recognition of their censorship, unethical practices, and goals that don’t look out for regular people.
How do we tell our own stories?
For Ffilm Cymru, the development agency for Welsh film and a Cynnal Cymru Member, visual storytelling is embedded into their work.
Films such as this can be used to encourage behaviour change through emotive storytelling.
Ffilm Cymru’s work relies on the power of storytelling:
“Stories have the power to provoke immense transformation in our society, as we’ve seen recently with ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office. They can also affect smaller personal shifts in perception and awareness that can snowball into positive change. It’s up to organisations like ours to help harness that power, and promote action on climate in creative, engaging and entertaining ways.”
Just this month, Media Cymru and Ffilm Cymru Wales have launched a climate themed R&D content fund to support more climate stories and sustainability storytelling.
Is storytelling just for arts or cultural organisations?
Many of the attendees of our event came from organisations outside of the creative sector. The reality is that in every sector, telling your story in a way that reaches the right people is crucial.
Thrive Women’s Aid is a Cynnal Cymru Member organisation that supports women, children, and young people in Neath/Port Talbot who are affected by domestic abuse. They help survivors rebuild their lives and independence in safe communities, supporting entire families to break the cycle of abuse permanently and foster healthier, safer environments for all.
In this video, they tell the impact of their work through simple and effective storytelling.
As we look into the new year, it’s a great time to consider the stories you tell, and how and where you’re telling them.
Can Stories Change Our World? was part of Cynnal Cymru’s quarterly series of Cardiff-based events. Make sure you check out our next event coming soon, Growing the Sustainability Workforce, where we’ll hear from Future Generations Leadership Academy participant Abi Hoare and Finley Povey from Transport for Wales. The event is free for Cynnal Cymru Members, Sparc|Sbarc residents, and we have a limited number of free places for Cardiff University students. Don’t miss it!
Have you ever asked for advice from someone who wasn’t necessarily an ‘expert’ on the situation or topic? What made you do that? Was it that they cared about you and understood you? Was it their profession, a common background, or shared beliefs that led you to trust their judgement? Perhaps you judged their trustworthiness based on how you’d seen them act in other situations?
What does that mean for climate communication? Inspired by a recent pilot training, our Sustainability Strategist Dr Karolina Rucinska considers the role of trust in climate communications.
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When I was in secondary school, staring at a whiteboard with mathematical equations would fill me with dread. I could not make sense of these abstract concepts at all. But when my friend sat down with me and used plenty of real examples, it would all suddenly click in my mind. In other words, by showing me how the equations mattered in my own life, I was able to truly understand them. Was that school friend more educated or credible than the maths teacher who had been teaching for decades? Certainly not, but he found a way to relay the information in the right way for me. It took me years to realise that I just needed the right messenger for the information to sink in. A recent training by Climate Outreach cemented this idea for me.
Trust is a big deal
Trust is a combination of three factors: the person who seeks it, the person who gives it, and the context. Thus, trust can be interpersonal and institutional, and it is fundamental to all aspects of our lives. According to the 2023 edition of the Ipsos Veracity Index, the top five trusted professions are nurses, pilots, librarians, doctors and engineers, but the least trusted are politicians, government ministers, advertising executives, journalists, and estate agents. This suggests that we can trust unbiased and highly trained people with strong codes of ethics and who can help in life-threatening situations.
But we are all guilty of asking for a second opinion. Even after a long call with an expert, like a doctor, we call our nearest and dearest before making big decisions. Don’t we?
In times when information is distorted, opinions divided, and situations are developing too fast to grasp, we reach out to people who mirror our beliefs. And given that trust in politicians is at an all-time low,, how can citizens trust what is being told to us?
Trust at scale
The good news, according to the 2023 Climate Barometer Tracker survey,is that the UK public do trusts naturalists, conservationists, charities, and NGOs. The bad news, and because climate change impacts all aspects of our lives, is that we listen to other voices too. So, if you are an expert on climate change, pandemics, flooding, vaccinations, and people prefer to call their mums rather than trust you, don’t take it personally. Instead, find voices that resonate with the audiences you want to reach.
The Climate Outreach research report on the issue of climate communication found that trusted people are seen as some combination of:
human
sincere
down to earth
kind
reliable
honest
Who do you think of when you imagine these qualities? Likely those people closest to you, rather than experts putting out reports on climate change.
Earning trust in climate messages, at scale, is desperately needed. With so many conflicting messages and a deep skepticism about the media from many of the general public, there is a lot at stake.
Take low-carbon heating, for example. You can have all the facts and figures, but at the end of the day you’ll likely make the decision because a neighbour or friend made the switch and convinces you to do the same.
Earning trust at scale, therefore, goes beyond finding the right “already trusted” messenger or influencer such as scientists. Earning trust at scale needs everyday messengers who can relate, convey real passion, have a deep, lived experience and are credible. For example, a chef who runs a small restaurant with seasonal foods speaking to other chefs who are looking to diversify their menus and cut food waste. A parent who walks their kids to school speaking to parents who want to stay active and reduce petrol costs but feel alone with the challenge. But earning that long-term trust requires a few more ingredients, plus an unbroken chain of promises, and results.
Now, it has been applied by Climate Outreach in their quest to communicate effectively. They advocate three qualities that communicators need to demonstrate for their audiences to trust them and be open to influence:
Passion: This person really cares about this issue.
Credibility: The person knows what they’re talking about. They’re not just making it up on the spot.
Empathy: The person understands that people have different perspectives. They’re not lecturing or talking down to others.
Crafting a trusted message therefore is about being authentic and knowing yourself as well as the audience. Yes, it is also about showing hard facts, but always within the context and tone of your audience.
Trust starts with your first audience: yourself
’One thing I have learnt from the past few years working in the field of sustainability is that to connect with others, we better know ourselves first. In climate change, where food preferences and chosen mode of transport can lead to arguments, we better know why we do what we do.
To start you crafting a message, begin by asking yourself a few questions:
How reliable am I?
Do I trust myself?
Am I someone that others can trust?
What’s motivating me to communicate?
Do I have a genuine interest in understanding where my audience is coming from?
What non-climate interest makes me feel passionate?
To find out how to use these questions, and to fully appreciate the ideas shared in this piece, and to put them all together, I recommend reading the report Beyond Trusted Messengerand to follow Tara Bryer for further updates about the training.
If you or your organisation would like to take deeper action against climate change – including communicating with staff, customers or wider stakeholders – please get in touch!
Every month in Cynnal Cymru’s excellent newsletter (subscribe here), we explore a different question or topic through the lens of our core organisational aims of a fair and just society, an inclusive low-carbon economy, and healthy, restored ecosystems.
Last month, we thought about how to handle complexity within times of change in our job roles or the wider sustainability conversation. This month, we’re thinking about what it means to craft and build a new future together. We’re a few weeks out from an election that saw the Conservatives leave office for the first time in 14 years, with Labour winning a majority of 172 seats. Labour’s campaign slogan was simple: Change.
The public policy landscape has started to shift already, with 40 pieces of legislation introduced by the new government (and an additional two carried over from the previous parliamentary session).
Unsurprisingly for an organisation called Cynnal Cymru – Sustain Wales, we have a core focus on sustainability. We also want to ensure that action on climate change leads to a better society, and doesn’t leave workers behind – that’s where our Fair Economy team comes in. For an organisation that has this focus on sustainability and a fair economy (such as fair working practices), there is plenty for us to sink our teeth into.
Sustainability
One of the new government’s flagship policies has been the creation of a new organisation called GB Energy – a new, publicly-owned green power company. The UK Government intends to invest over £8bn in this organisation over the next five years – a major spending commitment.
It’s still early days for GB Energy, and there’s more to learn about how it will operate as it comes into life. However, it seems that a core remit will be co-investing in emerging renewable energy technology and scaling up investment in more established technologies. Essentially, it will aim to unlock private sector investment in renewables by de-risking and clearing the way for this investment.
Chris Stark – former Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee – has also been appointed to lead a new ‘Mission Control’ that will aim to break down barriers and accelerate progress on clean energy projects.
UK Labour appears to lean on some of the work of economist Professor Mariana Mazzucato. Labour’s ‘five missions to rebuild Britain’, chime with Mazzucato’s 2021 book ‘Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism’. This book was inspired by the space race, which, in the US, took a ‘missions-based’ systems-engineering approach to coordination of the public and private sectors to put human beings on the moon.
Sound familiar? This appears to very much be the approach of the new UK Labour government with regards to its ‘National Missions’, ‘Mission Control’, and the public-private approach of GB Energy.
This plan is not without controversy. Many will question the need for private sector involvement, with the inevitable siphoning off of proceeds into private profit, particularly where the public purse is de-risking projects – although the government would counter that private expertise and buy-in is necessary.
There is a particular sensitivity in Wales, too. GB Energy has already announced a partnership with the Crown Estate in England and Wales. The Crown Estate owns a substantial amount of Britain’s land, including the majority of the seabed, and public money will be used to lease this land to develop windfarms.
There have been calls for the Crown Estate to be devolved to Wales, a position long supported by the Welsh Government. However, the UK Government does not have this as a proposal in its legislative agenda.
Fair Work: Policy Highlight
There is news on the fair work front, too. The King’s Speech included a new Employment Rights Bill. The UK Government has said this Bill will enhance a long list of working rights:
Banning ‘exploitative’ zero-hours contracts
Ending ‘Fire and Rehire’ and ‘Fire and Replace’
Making parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal available from the first day of employment (whilst retaining the option of probationary periods)
Removing the lower earnings limit for Statutory Sick Pay
Flexible working the default from day-one for all workers
Making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work (except in specific circumstances)
A new Fair Work Agency to strengthen enforcement of workplace rights
A new Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector, with potential expansion to other sectors
Removal of some restrictions on trade union activity
Simplifying the process of statutory recognition for trade unions
Introducing a regulated route to ensure workers and union members have a reasonable right to access a union within workplaces
This appears to be a strong set of proposals to strengthen workers’ rights in the UK. However, the detail will be crucial – for example, the ‘teeth’ that the new Fair Work Agency is given, the exemptions for employers around new rights such as protecting new mothers, and how broad the definition of ‘exploitative’ zero hours contracts is.
The Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector will be particularly interesting, and is under-remarked on. ‘Fair Pay Agreements’ are essentially an industry-wide employment agreement, where government brings together trade unions and employers to agree minimum pay rates and conditions across the sector.
The UK model of collective bargaining currently focuses largely on the firm level. Research has found that this model poses a significant challenge to trade unions, which have to secure agreements workplace-by-workplace. It also found that no country which operates on this model has collective bargaining coverage of over 35%, with collective bargaining coverage only remaining high and stable in countries where multi-employer or sectoral agreements – such as these Fair Pay Agreements – are negotiated.
That the UK Government is now proposing to bring sectoral agreements into the social care sector, potentially as a ‘proof of concept’ for other low-paid sectors, is significant. If rolled out successfully and more extensively, this could be the start of a quiet revolution in the UK’s industrial relations settlement.
Given Cynnal Cymru’s longstanding work on the real Living Wage (we’re the Living Wage Foundation’s Accreditation Partner for Wales and host Living Wage Wales in-house), there’s a particularly interesting commitment to deliver a ‘genuine living wage’. The Low Pay Commission, which suggests the minimum wage rate (or National Living Wage as it’s now called) will now have to consider the cost of living when making its recommendation.
For our part, the real Living Wage is set directly according to the cost of living, based on a basket of household goods and services. That’s a different remit to the one of the new Low Pay Commission, so we’ll be keeping an eye on any differences in the two rates.
What does this mean for our future?
There is so much we could say around policy that relates to fair work and sustainability, and the impacts these changes could mean for our foundational economy too.
There is clearly a huge amount of change being undertaken that speaks to the things we care about at Cynnal Cymru, encompassed by our vision of a fair and just society, an inclusive low-carbon economy, and healthy, restored ecosystems. .
We know that legislation can’t deliver everything and it doesn’t work on its own. We also believe in the power of partners, citizens and action-focused advocacy to bring about the transformative change that we need.
Harry Thompson is Senior Programme and Policy Lead: Fair Work and Economy and manages the Fair Work and Living Wage team, which work towards Cynnal Cymru’s strategic goal of a fair and just society.
