Climate Change

Biography

Biography: Tyrone Hall

Abstract

Increasingly, climate change communication practitioners are applying social marketing techniques— more widely associated with piecemeal change in the health and lifestyle sectors— to tackle systemic challenges associated with climate change. Given the limited resources available to tackle this multidimensional phenomenon and the narrow window of opportunity for action, there is great need for effective praxis. This paper takes a key step in this direction by critically examining the utility of applying social marketing —“technologies developed in the commercial sector to solve social problems” —to realize the Caribbean’s low carbon economy goal (Andreasen, 1995, p3). The paper contemplates the orientation of change needed to achieve this goal, and the limitations and strengths of social marketing in enabling the individual, social and political changes necessary for its fruition. It critiques the assumptions embedded in the marketing mix —the core of the social marketing approach—including its fixation on the individual rather than collective, which limits the nature of change that is possible. The paper reveals that though transtheoretical, social marketing is in great need of augmentation to be suitable for the realization of climate change goals. The paper posits a more progressive approach premised on three principles to ensure sustainable change: 1) appealing to a deeper ethos rather than consumerist ethics (price, gratifications); 2) a guiding principle that connects mundane individual actions to the broader challenge to stabilize segmented outcomes (change) and; 3) strengthening the role of communication to be primarily one of empowerment (improving self-efficacy). These principles are recommended alongside reformulated education programmes. These augmentations are advanced within a socio-ecological framework crafted for climate change social marketing to yield scalable change across domains.