Balancing Data and Human Stories in Climate Research

I met my inspiration at NY Climate Week and the insights she dropped will shape my work for years. Solitaire Townsend shared something uncomfortable: we've been telling the same "running out of time" story for longer than some activists have been alive. After decades at Futerra studying storytelling, here's the truth → Stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered than facts. Yet we keep managing data instead of managing emotion. Three narrative killers plague climate stories: → Sacrifice – telling people they must give up everything → Agency – making people feel powerless → Fatalism – convincing young people (up to 50%) that we're doomed When she started in the '90s, renewable energy was a joke—"what a few weirdos in California did." Now it's cheaper than fossil fuels. The story changed. The world changed. But we're STILL stuck at the inciting incident without moving forward. That's not how society changes. Society changes through punctuated equilibrium. Everything stays the same, then everything changes at once. We're at that moment. Here's what we miss: people engage with climate differently. After testing across markets from China to the US to Europe, Futerra identified three psychographic groups in your boardrooms and buying committees: GREENS (systems-first) → Push lifecycle TCO, Scope 1-3 cuts, resilience scores. Want credible roadmaps, open data and predictive impact metrics. What stalls them: short-termism and vendor lock-in GOLDS (societal-status focused) → Ask "What are peers doing?" Need recognizable logos, benchmarks, case studies. Move on what will make them look good internally and externally What stalls them: jargon and unclear immediate value. BRICKS (pragmatic operators) → Need <18-month payback, concrete playbooks, role-level wins. Track OPEX cuts and cycle time. What stalls them: Vague benefits and unclear ROI The tragedy is that Greens and Bricks fight each other. Greens push systems thinking; Bricks demand immediate ROI. Both try to convert Golds, who follow momentum. The insight: Stop trying to make every stakeholder Green. Your buying committee has all three. Your roadmap needs to speak to all three. If we change the story, we can change the world. We are homo narrativus : the storytelling ape. It's time we acted like it. -- Looking to tell effective stories for GTM in Climate? Check the pinned comment.

The biggest mistake with data? Thinking it speaks for itself. Numbers can be intimidating. A spreadsheet can feel like  a wall of cold, hard facts. But data is never just numbers. Behind every digit, there’s a person, an effort, or a milestone. Think of data as the ingredients.  The story you tell?  That’s the recipe. Together, they create an experience people can taste, feel, and remember. So humanize your data and make it remarkable: 1. Start with a striking number.  - The kind that makes people pause. 2. Pair it with a story.  - Show who’s behind that achievement. 3. Use everyday analogies.  - Break complex data into simple, relatable terms. 4. Highlight the effort.  - Let your audience see the humans behind the milestones. 5. End with impact.  - How does this number change lives? Here’s an example: Instead of saying,  "Our campaign reached 100,000 people," Try this: "A single mother, Archana, found her first job through our campaign.  And she’s one of the 100,000 people we’ve reached so far." See the difference? Numbers give your message depth. Stories give it width. The next time you share a statistic,  ask yourself: “What’s the human story behind this number?” When we pair data with stories,  we don’t just inform, We inspire. 😊

Combining data and storytelling to connect and persuade. Data is essential for building trust in your story—it gives you the credibility and proof people need. But data alone can feel distant and hard to connect with emotionally, which is where storytelling comes in. While a big data set might show a trend, a single, relatable story brings that data to life and makes it easier for people to understand. For example, when we first came up with the idea for It's time to PIVOT, we knew that around 34% of women were experiencing non-inclusive behaviour at work. We created PIVOT to show how this experience FELT through the story of one character. Telling Mel’s story made the data real. It wasn’t just a number anymore—it was someone’s everyday experience, which made the issue far more engaging and emotionally powerful. Striking the right balance between data and storytelling is key. Data supports your message, but the human story draws people in and makes it memorable. And let’s not forget—emotions drive decisions, which creates the starting point for connection and persuasion.

Inspiration to Broaden Our Thinking! In our modern professional environments, we often forget that humans are fundamentally storytelling creatures; Homo narrans. We increasingly place our trust in "objective" data and models, overlooking that these tools are themselves created and interpreted by a us as a storytelling species. The report "Listening to Understand" by Thea Snow and Asitha Bandaranayaka (Centre for Public Impact), Rachel Fyfe Dusseldorp Forum), and Lila Wolff Hands Up Mallee) explores this tension between stories and data in government and philanthropy. Their research reveals how stories deepen understanding of policy impacts, influence decision-makers through empathy, center lived experience in policy design, and envision alternative futures. Internal storytelling builds trust within teams and reconnects professionals with their purpose. However, significant barriers prevent effective "storylistening": * The perceived superiority of quantitative data * Lack of narrative skills among professionals * Power imbalances determining which stories are heard * Efficiency imperatives limiting time for storytelling * Unconscious biases and dominant narratives Storytelling belongs in a just city where all narratives have their place. Yet every story requires not only a teller but also a listener—something increasingly scarce in our current era. The art of deep listening is as crucial as the skill of articulation. The authors recommend practical solutions: * Investing in ethnographic skills * Developing decision-makers' storylistening capabilities * Cultivating relationships with storytellers * Creating safe spaces for traditionally marginalized voices * Implementing relational approaches to funding * Bringing together data specialists with frontline workers * Utilizing technologies that combine stories with data This well-documented and accessible report invites readers to reflect and explore further. The balance between narrative and numbers isn't merely aesthetic—it's essential for creating policies and programs that genuinely serve communities. This publication serves as an excellent complement to their earlier work, which I discussed in a previous post: https://lnkd.in/ejJiGBMv #StorylisteningInPolicy #EvidenceBasedDecisionMaking #SystemicChange #PolicyDesign #PhilanthropyInnovation #CommunityVoices #PublicSector #NarrativeData #JustCity Jurjen van der Weg Bauke J.

Same same but different. Which image is more striking to you, left or right? Same data trend, different chart. But entirely different reaction. Recent research has shown that how we present climate information matters just as much as the data itself. Researchers found that while temperature stats often feel abstract, visualising trends in relatable ways—like showing how local lakes freeze later and thaw earlier over time—can jolt people out of apathy. The right hand image led to a much stronger reaction. “This is one of the cleanest effects we’ve ever seen.” This echoes the impact of Ed Hawkins’ iconic #WarmingStripes diagram, which transformed global temperature rise into an instant, visceral story (those blue-to-red stripes we’ve all seen)! Both cases prove that effective [climate] communication needs: ✅ Personal hooks ✅ Clear visuals (binary lands better). ✅ Emotional resonance (colour gradients that make change feel urgent). So whether you’re in sustainability, policy, or marketing, framing data through human experiences and bold design can turn awareness into action. #warmingstripes #climate Trace | Certified B Corp™ Grist

Cass Sunstein's Financial Times piece on how personal experience of extreme weather shapes climate beliefs is a sobering reminder of how human psychology — not data — often drives public opinion. But it also helps explain why, in places like Singapore or Southeast Asia more broadly, climate change may not feel like a pressing issue. We aren’t regularly battered by wildfires, hurricanes, or floods at the same scale as other regions. Even when heatwaves hit (like they have this whole month of July in Singapore), we retreat to air-conditioned malls and offices where it's easy to ignore the reality outside. Without visceral, personal experience, our mental "availability heuristic" doesn't register climate change as an urgent threat; our relative stability may actually insulate us from emotional urgency. But here's where survivorship bias exacerbates the challenge raised in the article; those who remain unaffected/ recover well/ find distracting coping mechanisms come to define the narrative. Communities that bear the brunt of heat stress, water scarcity, or displacement often don’t have the same platform or visibility. In policymaking, funding, or even casual conversation, voices of those who “survive” or “manage fine” crowd out those who do not. So even as (Southeast) Asia becomes more vulnerable — with sea-level rise, crop disruptions, and heat-related health issues — we risk responding too late, too slowly, because the dominant stories are shaped by those spared, not those harmed. The takeaway? Data and lived experiences must be interpreted together and neither can be ignored. As climate risks grow unevenly, we must actively seek out the perspectives we don’t personally experience — before it’s too late. #climatechange #behaviouralscience #survivorshipbias #climateaction #publicpolicy #cognitivebiases #environment