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access to education that are occurring worldwide.
The number of children not attending school has dropped
from 108 million to approximately 60 million over the past
two decades 25 . Globally, 91% of primary-school-age students
and 62.5% of secondary-school-age students were enrolled
in school in 2010 (ref.26). Global tertiary enrolment has
also risen, from 19% in 2000 to 29% in 2010 (178 million
students worldwide). Though the percentage of students
enrolled in tertiary education continues to vary significantly
between countries and regions 27 , it is predicted that global
enrolment in higher education will increase by almost
50% to 262 million students by 2025, driven primarily by
increases in educational attainment in China and India 28 .
Students are not only attaining higher levels of education,
but they are also moving to access this education. The
number of university students studying abroad doubled
during the first decade of this century and stood at almost
4.3 million in 2013 (ref.29). With new innovations like
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) altering the
educational landscape, growing numbers of people around
the world will have access to the best academic institutions.
With these increases across all levels of educational
attainment, growing numbers of young people will develop
the foundational, technical and transferable skills that can
make the global population more flexible, adaptable and
innovative.
1.4 Addressing demographics through innovation
Our demographic future is remarkably uncertain. The UN
population forecasts for 2050 range from a high of around
11 billion people to a low of less than 9 billion. Nevertheless,
one thing is clear: the global population is becoming
dramatically older. Changing demographics alter the global
economy and will have a powerful influence over markets
and investment opportunities.
The combination of rising demands on state and private
CASE STUDY
COMMUNICATING THE RISK OF CLIMATE CHANGE
James Lyons (University of Exeter)
30
Environmental scientists have long acknowledged
that global climate change is a “highly complex
and global elusive hazard”, characterized by
“system lags and lack of immediacy” 1 , which makes it
particularly difficult to convey to lay people. Investigating
public perceptions of climate change, Thomas Lowe and
colleagues found that this challenge is compounded
by the fact that “people feel overwhelmed by shocking
images and, although it heightens their concern, it also
reduces their self-efficacy to take action and lessen
these events through personal action” 2 .
Gill Ereaut and Nat Segnit have coined the term
‘climate porn’ to describe the counterproductive
impact of unintentionally thrilling images of sensational
environmental disaster 3 . If, as Susanne C. Moser and Lisa
Dilling propose 1 ,“the goal of effective
risk communication is precisely to
support proper adaptive behavior”,
then it seems particularly important
to use strategies cognizant of the
role played by images and visual
metaphors in the understanding of
climate change risk.
An instructive instance of a highprofile
communication campaign
around climate change is the
award-winning documentary An
Inconvenient Truth, presented
by former US Vice President
Al Gore. Its approach to risk communication is highly
visual, employing numerous graphics, graphs, video
clips and charts as part of the slideshow that forms
the backbone of the film. But just as important to its
approach is the way that it utilizes what psychologists
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have termed the
“availability heuristic” in employing imaginatively vivid
and personalized examples of everyday risk arising
from Gore’s family life, from automobile accidents to
smoking-related lung cancer 4 . In the face of an issue
that can seem remote and abstract, this emphasis on
visually compelling everyday
risk seeks to recalibrate
the audience’s own risk
perception, embodying
what Paul Slovic, in his
work on the affective
dimensions of risk
perception, terms the
“feeling of risk” — making
the issue personally and palpably graspable 5 .
By creating powerful visual metaphors that
help to bring the issue within the ambit of the
everyday, the film is able to sidestep paralyzing
alarmism and abstruse complexity, concentrating
ultimately on modeling what it means to be
an informed citizen capable of exercising
individual agency in relation to an array of
contemporary risks 6 .