Sustainability Storytelling with Beate
Beate, you focus on two elements that play a huge role in our day to day work here at Rupp Public Relations: Sustainability and Storytelling. What a beautiful combination!
How did you get into this field?
I first started working on sustainability in 2010. I remember sitting in the library as a first-year university student, when a summer internship hiring process prodded me to consider how climate change would impact on poorer countries and people, which is what I was studying and the issue I wanted to dedicate my career to. It was a real aha-moment for me, and after that, environmental sustainability became my focus.
I was especially interested in the role of business and finance in solving the climate crisis. I did a masters in Environmental Technology and spent five years working in sustainable finance. Then, over the last year, I’ve become especially interested in how storytelling can catalyse change. Through courses and books, I learned more about the power of storytelling, and I got really excited about the idea of combining my sustainability experience with storytelling.
“To solve the climate and nature crises, we need urgent action from a lot more people and stories can help us engage a much wider audience.”
Why is storytelling so important? And is it more so today than it was in the past?
We humans aren’t rational in our decision-making, most of the time. Emotions really drive our actions, and storytelling appeals to the emotional side of our brains. Storytelling has been a huge part of human culture all over the world for thousands of years, but I think for a while, especially in our professional lives, we forgot that we have traditionally as a species understood the world and norms for living through stories, not facts or numbers.
When a human story has grabbed our attention, after hearing the story we are likely to feel the emotions of the person in the story – and it also leaves us wanting to copy the behaviours of the hero of the story. That’s hugely powerful. To solve the climate and nature crises, we need urgent action from a lot more people and stories can help us engage a much wider audience.
How has storytelling for sustainability topics changed over the years? And where do you see it going in the future?
The push to address the climate crisis initially started with the scientific community, so when it comes to communications around the climate crisis, it has until recently been very focused on rational arguments, facts and science. All that’s important, but it’s not enough on its own, as it doesn’t engage most people. We’ve tried that tactic for decades now, and it hasn’t worked.
More people are realising that now, and we’re seeing sustainability-specific storytelling roles emerge. Sweden’s Viable Cities program, which focuses on creating sustainable cities, has a chief storyteller. Project Drawdown, which identifies the leading climate solutions, is hiring a storyteller manager. I think we will see more and more roles like that cropping up in the sustainability field.
“We have to find a balance between communicating the urgency, while also communicating the amazing initiatives that are happening to tackle the problem.”
What are the difficulties around communicating sustainability topics?
The hardest thing is balancing optimism and realism in communication. The climate emergency and the nature loss crisis are urgent and scary and an existential problem we have to solve in the next few years. But if we only communicate that, people disengage, because our brains are not well-equipped to deal with the fear associated with that narrative.
So, we have to find a balance between communicating the urgency, while also communicating the amazing initiatives that are happening to tackle the problem. Too often, communications around environmental sustainability are all doom, gloom and guilt - and very few people want to feel more of those emotions, so they shy away from the topic all together.
What is your favorite part about storytelling around sustainability?
I love learning about all the fantastic things people are doing to tackle the sustainability challenges we face. So many new initiatives are constantly cropping up, so there’s a lot of material and stories to connect with. I’m really interested in the human element of each of these initiatives.
What inspires certain individual people in a company for example to push through a new sustainability target or policy? What are their stories?
And storytelling as a whole?
Connection. Stories connect us with other people’s experiences. By reading or watching or hearing a story, I can experience something I haven’t experienced directly myself, which enriches my life - through stories, you can live more than one life, in a way.
In a professional context, I love how storytelling brings that connection and the human element into our professionals lives.
“Less shiny stories are often most interesting and create more connection. And details are everything!”
What advice would you give to anyone looking to tell stories for marketing purposes?
Less shiny stories are often most interesting and create more connection. And details are everything! I once heard the author Elizabeth Gilbert say that details are what bring soul to a narrative, and I try to remember that.
Would you mind sharing one of your favorite travel stories with us?
I was in Colombia, visiting two of my close friends from university. We were strolling through a busy food market and finally found a spot on the grass to sit down. For some reason - I can’t quite remember - we got back up and moved further into the park. When we sat down for a second time, I looked in front of me and saw a girl I thought I recognised from half a decade earlier, when I had been an exchange student in the US and gone on a student trip to Hawaii, where for a week, I had shared a room with a girl that looked a lot like the person sitting a few metres away.
I had not spoken to her since, and except for my friends I was visiting, she was literally the only other Colombian person I knew. I got up, walked over and asked if her name happened to be Lina. And of course, it was her. I love that story so much, because that’s travelling at it’s best: unexpected experiences and connections with new people from other parts of the world.
About Beate
Beate is a sustainability expert and storyteller, passionate about communicating solutions to the climate crisis and the destruction of nature. As Content Lead at Global Canopy, she ideates, writes, edits and produces content on nature-related finance and deforestation.