When a crisis suddenly breaks out, crisis communications becomes crucial since it can mitigate the damage or prevent the situation from worsening any further.
“Crisis is an event that brings, or has the potential for bringing, an organization into disrepute and
imperils its future profitability, growth, and, possibly, its very survival” (Lerbinger, 1997).
Organizations are equipped to prepare their teams on crises management plans, and ready their communication professionals with crisis communication plans. These teams are briefed to respond with speed and accuracy, ultimately resulting in maintaining the ‘brand trust’ with the audience.
What if a “certain crisis” is not “sudden” but one that is gradually evolving, with devastating effects? What if that crisis, while impacting the organisation, impacts at a much larger, macro scale? How would it’s “crisis communications” be managed?
Welcome to the global Climate Change and Warming crises.
The climate crisis may be felt as not “sudden” and ‘gradually evolving’-but it has arrived. It continues to worsen by the minute even as we engage in our daily routines –while taking our daily brisk walk, watching a movie or playing with the pets.
Multiple climate modules are predicting the rise in global warming simultaneously. Reports say that the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 40% since the Industrial Revolution.
The real threat from climate change perhaps lies not in its ‘devastation potential’ (yes, that’s ‘bad’ too),
but in the fact that we don’t feel its destructive power in an immediate way similar to other ‘sudden
crises’ would shock us.
Why? Perhaps it is due to the fact that the “Climate Crisis” comes to the surface mostly when a natural
disaster event –a flood, heatwave, snowstorm etc- is reported and people are seen plunging to a
tragedy.
Muddling the situation further is that the complexity of the climate change issue. Unlike a ‘standard’ crisis that erupts and cools off, this is an ongoing scenario. Though series of climate disasters over a period of time continues to unravel, each time the focus mostly falls on the devastation brought by each
isolated event, rather than being highlighted it as part of a series of devastations due to global climate change.
This leads us to the conclusion that usual ‘crisis communication’ templates may not serve us when it comes to climate change and global warming communications.
What would be the comms-template to be used here then?
(To be continued)
