Introducing the Climate Reality Community Conservation Package

This is a guest post by CBSG Member and Climate Reality Leader Madelon Willemsen. Look for more guest posts about this topic in the coming weeks.

Today on 23 September 2014, 120 of the world’s business, political, and religious leaders are meeting in New York City to discuss a way forward on climate change. There has never been a more important time for world leaders to make meaningful commitments to secure a future for our planet. Extreme weather events, new talks on carbon trading benchmarks, leaders being judged on their climate policies, and renewable energy solutions being created every day leaves no excuse for any individual, company, industry, or country to sit by and watch as fossil fuel emissions destroy our planet and its inhabitants. It is with pride that we can say that the zoo and aquaria community have already made good strides in creating climate solutions.

A new zoo-based climate change campaign, the Climate Reality Community Conservation package, will build upon the positive momentum of campaigns, such as EAZA’s Pull the Plug, to show progress and leadership by the world’s zoo and aquaria community on this issue. Through connections with animal collections, this campaign aims to show zoo visitors a clear and consistent message of man-made climate change and offers a call to action to make a difference. As a collective, and as an extension of previous good efforts implemented by Zoos & Aquariums for 350, this consumer-facing campaign will help spread the message and create action in helping zoos and aquaria play a role in positive change.

During the upcoming CBSG Annual Meeting in New Delhi, we will hold a working group to present the idea, introduce its creative assets and roll-out strategy, and receive participants’ valuable feedback on the campaign. We are also interested to receive feedback on the funding of the campaign to create and roll out the physical assets for use.

In the build-up to the CBSG annual meeting and the WAZA conference in New Delhi in November, we will post several blogs to keep you informed of the development of this campaign. This first blog introduces the team that has joined forces to create a climate solution for the global zoo community that is scalable and can be applied by any zoo or aquarium around the world. This team of five has an innate passion for biodiversity and are all Climate Reality Leaders. They are working entirely pro-bono to develop the creative strategy for the campaign.

We are excited to introduce:

 

 

 

Jon Steel
Group Planning Director WPP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bart Pawlak
Executive Creative Director GPY&R

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucielle Vardy
Planning Director GPY&R

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Joubert
Executive Creative Director GPY&R

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madelon Willemsen
PhD Candidate

 

 

 

 

Jon, Bart, Lucielle and David are the creative mights – WPP is well known for their work on global campaigns for climate change. They and a broader global WPP team are currently working with Al Gore, his team from the Climate Reality Project, and the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to put pressure on world leaders, through their citizens, to make meaningful commitments on carbon emission reduction through the “Why? Why Not?” Campaign (http://climaterealityproject.org/initiative/why-why-not). Madelon Willemsen worked in zoos as a senior manager and is currently a PhD candidate. She initiated the development of the campaign through her experience of the predicament and complications of communicating climate change to zoo and aquarium visitors.

This campaign is developed as a component for Z&A for 350 and goes hand in hand with already existing climate change campaigns such as EAZA’s Pull the Plug. To ensure the campaign is completely in sync with needs of the global Z&A institutions, the creative work of the team is informed by different data sources and the comments and feedback during the upcoming CBSG working group. An example of these sources:

•    The Z&A for 350 movement: http://www.cbsg.org/zoos-aquariums-350
•    The visitor survey of the Climate Literacy Zoo Education Network: http://www.clizen.org/
•    The Zoos Victoria CUA model: http://www.animalwelfare.net.au/sites/default/files/Pahlow%20Zoo_0.pdf
•    The IUCN Red List: http://discover.iucnredlist.org/
•    The WAZA reference list of climate change publications: http://www.waza.org/en/site/conservation/climate-change

Look out for our next post that will see the creative team at work.

If you have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to contact us via Madelon.willemsen@gmail.com