A new YouTube channel from author and researcher Jules Pretty makes the case for stories as a powerful tool for climate action and systems change.
Pretty, an Emeritus Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex, launched Story for Climate and Nature Recovery to explore how people can build agency in the face of today’s most pressing challenges. The channel’s videos, each five to ten minutes in length, cover topics around storytelling, climate, and nature.
“Transformations are hard. They’re psychologically difficult, physically difficult to do,” Pretty tells Food Tank. But, he asks, “how do we talk about these things without increasing anxiety and stress?”
Too often narratives of nature loss and the climate crisis are overwhelmingly negative, Pretty says. And while there is a time and place for this messaging, he voices caution about relying too heavily on fear.
“We have to choose our moments when we talk about the bad stuff really carefully because it’s scaring people,” Pretty states. “Maybe scaring them is not the right thing to do. Maybe people are scared enough.”
But Pretty believes that stories, when crafted skillfully, can inspire action and lend strength, helping communities tackle challenges that are both old and new. The best ones, he argues, do three things: They map multiple pathways forward, create agency, and bring people together.
“It’s about the journey that we go on and how we acquire that inspiration, that feeling that we’re not alone, that humanity has been doing this forever,” says Pretty, noting that imagination will be key.
“Imagine things,” Pretty tells Food Tank, “because that’s going to give us a sense of a range of possibilities in front of us.”
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Jules Pretty on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear about the buy-in that’s needed from communities to drive systems change, the power of rituals and celebrations, and the vulnerability we need to move forward.
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