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Communications &Â Public Engagement Strategy
If you're a local or state government agency, university, or nonprofit seeking to communicate or engage with your stakeholders in evidence-based ways, we can help.
4 Element Strategy specializes in:
- crafting communications strategy based on the latest climate and environmental psychology research from leading social scientists
- designing community engagement workshops that yield practical input
- helping you build long-term relationships with stakeholders that enable better collaboration
Our Approach
Research on what people feel and believe about climate change has proliferated in recent years, yet social scientists’ discoveries rarely reach the desks of sustainability practitioners, much less inform strategies for communications or public engagement.
For example, Renée Lertzman’s research on “environmental melancholia” emphasizes that people often respond to ecological crises with ambivalence, guilt, or paralysis. Effective communication therefore requires compassionate listening, empathy, and psychological safety—meeting people where they are emotionally rather than overwhelming them with facts. Climate action messages should acknowledge loss, validate anxiety, and then gently guide communities toward agency and meaning.
The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reinforces this with evidence: people respond best when climate communication is local, personal, and solutions-oriented. Instead of abstract planetary threats, effective messages highlight immediate local benefits—cleaner air, healthier children, lower energy bills, safer neighborhoods. Building narratives of shared values, fairness, and community pride is more effective than fear or technical detail alone.
Additional research reveals that the vast majority of people already support stronger climate policies, but that nearly everyone wrongly thinks a small minority wants government climate action. Psychologists call this a false social reality—a collective illusion that isolates us from one another and blocks the very solidarity we need
Psychologist Bob Doppelt argues that we need to build social resilience as much as biophysical resilience to be able to grow from the mental health stressors, crisis management, and triage as climate change intensifies.
Within this work, we leverage the iceberg model to understand the patterns, structures, and mental models beneath events—like a community engagement meeting with disappointing attendance. When undertaking community engagement, many consultants treat these events as checkboxes. We design the format, framing, and facilitation to invest in relationships, forge partnerships, and yield feedback that is genuinely useful.
In the process:
We’ll help you build relationships and partnerships to enable effective community engagement.
We’ll help you analyze the patterns and mental models beneath successful strategies and frustrating missteps.
We incorporate psychological research to support effective communications.
In the outcomes:
We ensure your work leverages climate psychology to build support among your colleagues and community.
We help you tell a story that community members can connect to and resonate with.
We help your work foster social and emotional resilience, as well as resilient infrastructure.
