Visualising Peace student Madighan Ryan has been researching the links between peace-building and environmentalism. She has combined this with her interests in journalism, advocacy, public debate and civil resistance – which are all key to how we identify and address conflicts and their causes. In her report on Constructive Climate Communication in Wealth Democracies, Madighan examines the barriers to constructive discussion and action, and explores some solutions that might close the ‘attitude-behaviour gap’, converting fear and false hope into constructive worry, realisable aspirations and positive steps towards both climate security and human security. She also considers the pros and cons of civil disobedience as a peacebuilding tool – in the context of climate change – in a blog on Civil Resistance and Peacebuilding, arguing: ‘My aim is for visualisations of peacebuilding and changemaking to be reoriented to include not just palatable visions of compromise and dialogue, but also more disruptive, grassroots, civil resistance…’.
You can read Madighan’s report on constructive climate communication below, and you might also be interested to listen to a podcast interview she recorded with Dr. Mark Wong, which discusses SEvEN: Seven voices, One Future, a videogame aimed at building an environmentally sustainable future for Scotland by highlighting Minoritized Ethnic people’s voices and the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge.