GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Breaking the Gridlock, with Paul Risley
In this episode we explore the complex world of climate communication with Paul Risley, whose communications work spans American political arenas to the global stage with the UNDP. We start our conversation touching upon Paul's early work alongside Al Gore's climate advocacy and then move onto the challenge of matching political will with economic interests to fight the climate crisis. Paul candidly reflects on the juxtaposition of oil-enriched cities like Dubai and Baku playing host to climate summits, offering a nuanced perspective on the balancing act between economic growth and environmental responsibility.
We also talk about insights from the latest UNDP Human Development Report - Breaking the Gridlock - including thoughts around education, gender inequality, and culminating in a look at giving young people a voice through initiatives like the Weather Kids campaign.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to the Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. So this is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester, so this podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Paul Risley, a global communicator for good, we may say. Paul is a strategic communications consultant working for UNDP country offices teams including Turkey, turkey, georgia, armenia and Azerbaijan for the past five years, and he mostly works on communications about sustainability, agenda, disaster preparedness, covid response and conflict.
Speaker 3:So bear with us, Paul, because there's more bio to come. So before 2018, Paul worked in the Asia-Pacific region on development communications for the UN World Bank. In Myanmar, it goes on this World Food Programme focused on humanitarian responses at North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Paul, it's amazing and you also worked in Washington DC in US politics for a bit, on Capitol Hill. So, Paul, thanks so much. And you also worked in Washington DC in US politics for a bit, on Capitol Hill. So, Paul, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to Damla and myself.
Speaker 4:It's great to meet you both.
Speaker 2:It's great to have you with us, paul, today, thank you, thank you very much, so let's start with your own journey. Why and how did you become a communicator of good?
Speaker 4:your own journey? Why and how did you become a communicator of good? That's a great question. I, for the most part, started in domestic American politics and spent 10 years helping candidates mostly win, but many of them lost. But I worked, for example, with a young Senator, albert Gore, when he decided to first run for president. That was the presidency nobody remembers from 1988. Then, of course, he later came back as vice president.
Speaker 4:But I learned a lot in the American political campaigns that I worked with that domestic audiences rarely understand international questions and international challenges. And if you remember, way back in the 80s and 90s, al Gore was one of these prescient people who was publicly saying that climate change would be a big issue, with sort of dotted arrows showing temperature going up as clouds formed overhead, and this was associated with a Danish scientist, I think in the 19th century or something. But you know it was political action, not only by Gore but by like-minded politicians around the world, that began to talk about climate change and made it an issue. You could argue 30 years later that, while climate change is clearly an issue, there still has not been success on the political front in terms of congealing action to stop climate change. But certainly for myself, that was a strong personal motivation to see if I could try to explain international issues both to domestic audiences but also, with the United Nations, to countries around the world, and it's been an adventure and a journey ever since.
Speaker 3:That's amazing, paul. I mean, there's that moment in Al Gore's TED Talk, isn't there where he starts it off by saying hi, I was once upon a time the next president of the United States, and you go. No, it's just. Oh yeah, oh God, al Gore's amazing the um okay, so on that point, paul, you've teed this up perfectly.
Speaker 3:I was going to ask you, in your very wide experience of explaining sustainable development, communicating it to people, um, if you think back to 2015 and that really pivotal moment, when we all signed up to the paris agreement, um, to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees, and because literally last month, we passed that limiting point, it gives for us, I think, for us who work in this space, a moment to reflect and think what could we have done differently in the last 10 years, say, paul, to communicate the climate crisis? Is there a path we should have taken?
Speaker 4:You know, I think it's lives. Lives have been built and lost over the answers to this question, steve, and I think you're absolutely correct about that. You know, what has not taken place is essentially the elephant in the room. It's what people don't want to discuss now, and you can get even more cynical or more grim about it when you think that the conference of parties, which is this sort of once a year exercise in bringing the political leaders together to come up with solutions the last one was held in Dubai, which doesn't produce oil or gas itself, but it is built on the wealth of oil and gas.
Speaker 4:The next one will be held in Baku, azerbaijan, a city I know very well and a well-intentioned place. A city I know very well and a well-intentioned place, but again, it is a country that is built on its oil. Well, you know. So the good part of this is that the only solution for climate change that will work will be one that takes economic interests at heart. That will work will be one that takes economic interests at heart. We are a world, for better or worse, that is completely controlled by private industry and by capitalism Really, it must be said and the answers to a problem such as how not to burn coal, how not to burn oil, will probably come from the same private sector that presently burns coal and burns oil. Teaching them, training them, learning them, persuading them, taxing them those are the methods that will work, and it really requires that political leadership that we haven't seen so far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were just talking about the energy transition last week with one of our co-agencies Teams in Praxis, alex. He also pinpointed that too. I mean, we have to change, but also the industries have to change. And what you say about Azerbaijan, dubai, everything is so correct I may cry. But I have a question related to this also. You have been working with UNDP country teams for the past five years, including Turkey, georgia, armenia and Azerbaijan. So maybe not Turkey or Armenia, but some of these are, as you said, built on their wealth of oil or natural gases, and when you're working on these countries, when we look at them, these are developing countries. So this is also a very tight question to the question of capitalism and how the economy works at the moment. So I would like to ask your take, not only because they're developing countries, but also they're in a geographical place where there are a lot of conflicts, disasters. There are a lot of conflicts, disasters, political conflicts, plus the developing economy.
Speaker 4:So what are the key points of communicating sustainability in such areas? You know, it's the right question to ask because, especially with the United Nations, especially with the United Nations, communications always tries to predict what will be the most interesting way to present an issue, where will the solutions come from? But in every instance, reality has a way of dramatically changing the picture. You know, and there's always been this, you know this sort of strong belief that we can persuade economies into more sustainable pathways, and we all have to believe that that that works, you know. But then in March 2020, you know COVID came along and it immediately shuttered the world economy Right over the next 18 months, from 2020 to 2022, suddenly the world economy came to a standstill and it was actually a fascinating experience.
Speaker 4:I'm not sure what you might have seen in your global parts, in your parts of the globe, but in Bangkok, thailand, for example, I walked out one morning and there was literally no traffic on the street. There was no buses, there were no cars, there were no people, there were no motorbikes on a street that ordinarily is packed with commuters going back and forth. Suddenly, the air was clean for about a month straight, you know, which, again, was something unheard of. So at least it was giving people, communities around the world, a sense of the importance of the economy to their lives, in both good and bad ways. Right, the economy produces for all of us this tremendous growth in our jobs, in our incomes, in our vitality, in our livelihoods.
Speaker 4:But at the same time, we're all living on borrowed time. Because we are borrowing from the earth, we are burning and creating this sort of pollution that is harmful to all of us. In the Caucasus, for example, in all of these developing countries, you have that simple challenge. But at wintertime you cannot ask a family to go without coal to burn to produce heat, to keep their family warm. Right. So the sustainability choices always have to reflect the livelihoods and the survival of communities and of people. But this is so difficult to get across, especially when you do have COVID or, worse yet, you have war, such as in Ukraine and in Gaza and in other places today. So again, I'm looking at the darker side of the question right now.
Speaker 3:Well, we were looking, damla, and I have been thinking about questions to ask you, paul, and I was really conscious that there are so many issues that you confronted. I was really conscious that there are so many issues that you confronted.
Speaker 3:I've worked hard to just make sure we've got some optimistic questions a little bit later, just to make sure. I'm sure, like us, if you work in this space, you need to balance the optimism of the world with the pessimism of the intellect. But the one thing I find fascinating about COVID covid actually just going back to that point you made and then I want to ask you about the western, the western narrative projected on to other regions. But what was so fascinating about covid is for those working on the climate crisis. During covid, we all reflected on is this a reset moment? Uh, is this the chance for the, the earth, to take a different path? And then we kind of moved on from that and we don't look back and go hang on, we, we, we could have had a different opportunity there.
Speaker 3:And what I find so fascinating about it is the global covid response and the financial support we put into our economies to sustain them through covid is roughly about the same investment we need to make to decarbonize the global economy, which is extraordinary, isn't it?
Speaker 3:We've literally just done a test run. You solved the climate crisis, but that wasn't my question, paul. My question was, as you touched on it is I think it's fascinating for you working in play with the un, the world bank, in place like myanmar, cambodia, laos, um sustainable development and this comes back to your point about um a family trying to heat their way through winter sustainable development I I think we have to recognize there's some a different kind of narrative to the one that we're used to practicing um in the Western developed economies and I think we ignore that, we don't focus enough on that. So I just wondered whether you could explore that a little bit for us. But how do we have a story we tell on sustainability in the West and in North America that just doesn't gain traction in some of those other parts of the world?
Speaker 4:the world. I mean, what I have noticed is that there's this sense, especially in the United States, but very much in Europe as well, that technology can provide a solution to everything and that the you know, all we need to do is retrofit every home with the latest heat pump and we will solve our needs. Our energy crisis of sorts Southeast Asia, you know, where energy consumption is not so much about you know the traditional needs that you see in Western Europe or the US of heating and such, but rather energy use in Southeast Asia is often directly related to jobs. You know it's industry, it's getting to work, it's things people do. It's getting to work, it's things people do. And again, as a developing country, in all developing countries, pollution is the excess that comes from people having work, being able to work, even plastic bags by the side of the road. That represents a form of prosperity for the people who carried their food in those bags. You know there are so many. You know and again, I think what you're saying about the COVID crisis did present, you know, a few new approaches toward pathways, and that really makes a lot of sense in the tropical countries, in the parts of the globe where the majority of people live, that there have to be new ways of looking at finding wealth and finding livelihoods, of educating people. You know, I think, you know, you know, I think you know.
Speaker 4:So one of the few areas where Western ideas and Global South ideas merge together after COVID was this idea that you could work remotely, you could work from home, you can work from different places. You don't have to be tied to specific locations, have to be tied to specific locations. In a place like Bangkok, which is very much a city controlled by automobiles, one of the more noticeable things is now virtually every family relies on motorcycle-driven messenger transport for food, for groceries, for everything. When people ride on motorcycles in Southeast Asian countries it's a very dangerous experience. There are very high traffic fatality rates. But when you are moving food and when you are moving groceries, you're at least taking a step in the right direction. You're beginning to move people away from the old paradigms of home, supermarket and office, which is sort of the Western paradigm. Maybe, as people use their phones more, they develop ways to work from different places. So again, you know, who knows that that may provide some of the new answers that we look for.
Speaker 2:Well, combining this with what you said with leadership. Okay, we do need the leadership, but also, for that leadership to be effective and also maybe emerge, we also need a mass demand on change and sustainability and so on. So what I was thinking was the paradigm is different in the Western world and the world you are in right now and the coastal countries will be the most affected from the climate crisis. But still, in the Western world or in the other parts of the world, it doesn't matter. If it's too far from us, we think that it's not our job to do something about it or it's not going to affect us. But climate crisis is a real paradigm shift because it's going to affect all of us. This is all of our problem. So here is my question how can we create a storyline, a narrative or a campaign? How can communications play a part to get the masses after this message, after seeking out the leadership that will make this all of our problem?
Speaker 4:I think, at the United Nations and especially at the UNDP, which is just one of many United Nations agencies. But you know there's there's this real frustration. You know that how do you reach the right audiences to tell the story and make sure that these are the audiences that then connect with their political leaders? And, whether it's a democracy or something less than a democracy, how do you make sure that leaders are responsive to what their audiences, what their citizens, what their voters are communicating and are protesting about, are communicating and are protesting about? For example, just this morning UNDP began a global campaign called Weather Kids, and it's a beautiful campaign, it's actually quite fascinating. But they're putting children in the weather television presenters seat, in the weather television presenters seat, and they're asking kids to read the news as if they were the adult telling the world what's coming forward in terms of not only the weather but the climate.
Speaker 4:And the idea of the campaign is that in every country and in different languages and in different regions, undp will help enlist children to help tell the story. You know, and again, it's partly because you do want to touch base with the youth, right, you want the young generation to be aware that their elders, their parents are destroying the world that they will inherit and you hope that by putting children in some sort of a position to talk about this issue will shake their their adult parents, I suppose into action, into movement, and it's a great idea and I hope it gets some play. But again, you know the world we live in today. The news bulletins start with the wars and continue with disasters, and they would consider something like weather kids to be the happy news which would come at the end of this long list of problems. So you know, I I hope it can shake some people up, uh, but let's not hold our breath on it I love.
Speaker 3:I do like the way you framed that, paul, because, um, one of my, one of my frustrations about sustainability communications for many years, um, is you'd sit with a client organization usually quite a big one trying to do really good things and and at some point, somebody around the table would say, well, what we really need to do is to educate the children to not make the mistakes we've made. And you just sit there and go let's just, let's just, let's just dig into that a little bit more. You're literally saying we're going to absolve ourselves of any guilt and responsibility here, create some sort of teaching resource, and then go back to doing all the bad stuff we were doing. And I think it's so amazing now, isn't it, how what you've just described with Weather Kids is where that's shifted now to saying, actually, we're putting your voice around the table, we're giving you power, giving you agency, because we cannot wait for you to become, you know, the decision makers.
Speaker 4:We blew it. Now it's your turn, I know, but seriously it's, it's. I mean, I encourage you to take a look at this campaign. Weatherkids encourage you to take a look at this campaign weather kits. It's very intricate. They have gotten all of the sort of meteorological associations in every country to sign on, you know, so that the weather casters at local television networks in Turkey, in Thailand, everywhere, will be engaging with children and getting them to come sit at the anchor's desk, provide the news. So it's a great idea and I hope it takes off somewhat. But again, steve, it's exactly what you're saying, you know, rather than going to the political leaders themselves and knocking their heads together and saying, hey, you know, this is real, we're going to the children and we're saying, you go tell the leadership.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I know Absolutely. We've got one more question in just a second, but there is one other one which I wanted to touch on the last human development report that UNDP did and breaking the gridlock, and that talks about, you know, and quite rightly has a number of possible solutions, focused pathways we need to take as humankind. It does touch on that polarization that you just mentioned there as well. That, I think, is really important. So could you just play back for us a couple of headlines from that report, paul?
Speaker 4:Sure, it's a. You know it's a really mixed topic, right, and the United Nations, and especially UNDP, pride themselves on on issuing these sort of global reports. You know that that that give you sort of the photo snap of where we are right this moment on these issues. Three days ago they issued the Human Development Index, and this is a fabulous UNDP report. It's been going for about 25 years now, since the millennium, and it charts the progress of human development.
Speaker 4:How many years of school on average do kids in every country get?
Speaker 4:How long do people live?
Speaker 4:How many bad vices do they have? Do they smoke, do they drink? And generally, when you look at a list of the 193 countries around the world, norway, sweden and Iceland always come out ahead than Nordics, because they're such clean living people, you know, and they throw money on the streets to keep the ice from making their Volvos slide. You know they do all the right things. They don't smoke, they drink in moderation. But other countries are coming up soon as well, and the interesting thing about this index that was released this past week is that, importantly, it shows that the lag that occurred because of COVID during the two years of COVID, as you recall, millions of children weren't able to go to school. So many people lost their work, their employment, their jobs, so you saw this real drop in you know sort of economic and social benefits that people normally get. The good news is now we are now past, that the world's economy has recovered, it's come back, countries are able to spend money on schooling, on transport, on everything that's needed. Everything's coming back. That we are continuing to pollute at higher levels than ever. The energy part, the sustainability part, we're still falling away from. And the worst news is that, in terms of inequality, and especially gender inequality, in those two areas, women's salaries are falling well below men's salaries. And this, of course, up until COVID, we were beginning to see women's salaries increasing enough to catch up, but now it's back to being a very difficult one again.
Speaker 4:So, again, this is the challenge, and it's not only, you know, sort of the minor crack in the road that COVID was, but it's really this increasing sort of I don't know, polarization is the word they use, but gridlock is a much better explanation for this inability, not only of countries to work together with other countries, say, to solve climate change, but also within individual countries. There is no ability to achieve better. Social safety nets to achieve better health care. Social safety nets to achieve better health care. You know, even in the United Kingdom we see lots of the social safety net beginning to fall apart. In the United States it's famously impossible to get any sort of agreement between competing political parties and unfortunately this is the same in huge countries such as India. So again, the UN is great at pointing the way toward a problem and saying this problem will get worse and, if not treated, will be the end of our globe. We're not so good at showing the solution. That's the next step.
Speaker 2:Wow Okay, we're not so good at showing the solution. That's the next step. Wow Okay, we went too dark. I personally like dark, but we also spent most of our time. I can't believe it, paul. We have to talk more, I think. But I have a last question, final question Our network is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we think that we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness in the world. So what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:Say that again. What object?
Speaker 2:Place or person always makes you smile.
Speaker 4:Oh Gosh, that's a tough one, isn't it? I would have to come back to Thailand and to think about the northernmost part of Thailand, up in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, these sort of northern parts that are called the Lana Kingdom. There the food is slightly different from the Thai food of Bangkok, food of Bangkok, and arguably it's a much more sustainable part of Thailand, or so they say. Maybe that area of northern Thailand for a more sustainable path, Getting away from tourism, getting away from large industries and more getting into the sustainable farming that used to occur there and that could occur again.
Speaker 3:So I'll leave you with that hope that other people will explore northern Thailand for those benefits. Amazing, I actually feel like we're all on some promontory in northern Thailand looking out across some sort of future vista of what we could achieve. Paul, it's been absolutely amazing talking to you and I didn't expect to have a slightly fuzzy Al Gore reminiscent moment, but I have, so that's made my day. But it's been amazing talking to you, paul, and I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much, damla.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, paul, and thanks to everyone who has listened to our good guys podcast, brought to you by the do not smile network of agencies and make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people just like paul, about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So see you, paul, see you, damla, see you thank you all, bye, bye.
Speaker 4:Cheers sustainable future. So see you, paul, see you Damla, see you. Thank you all, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Cheers Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability Hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
