Looking Back at 16 Years of NNOCCI
By Billy Spitzer
I’ve been involved in NNOCCI since the beginning, and it’s an incredible opportunity to have the opportunity to reflect back on all that has happened since we started about 16 years ago. We started NNOCCI when we realized that climate change is one of the most serious issues facing the ocean (and the planet), but very few people were talking about it in the world of aquariums, zoos, and science/nature centers. Data from the Yale Project on Climate Communication from 2009 showed that about 65-70% of Americans understood the climate change is a big problem, but only 35-40% were regularly talking about it with friends and family. This “communication gap” has been persistent, and you can see it in the Yale data over time (ref1 and ref2).
NNOCCI was a collaborative undertaking from the start. We reached out to other aquariums, and formed relationships with Monterey Bay Aquarium, National Aquarium, Long Beach Aquarium, and others. We started working with the Frameworks Institute, New Knowledge (which became Knology), and others. And, we began to pull together multiple grants from IMLS, NOAA, and NSF.
We started to develop a big vision for how we could help to bridge the communication gap through informal science centers: “If we train enough voices in proven communication techniques we can change the national discourse around climate change to be productive, civic-minded, and solutions-focused.”
NSF funding enabled us to create the Study Circle program, and build a network of 400 trainers that reached more than 40,000 informal educators, and in turn reaching an estimated 150 million visitors. We were able to support many research and evaluation studies, enabling us to make the case for how we were having an impact on knowledge, attitudes, and behavior for informal educators, visitors, and their friends and families. And, we were able to show significant differences in a national public survey between those who visited NNOCCI-trained institutions vs. those who visited institutions without NNOCCI training, and those who didn’t visit informal science institutions at all. It felt like we could start to “see the needle move” on a national level. And, we started to see the “heat trapping blanket” metaphor increasingly popping up in the media.
However, we realized that there was still more work to do. As we started nearing the end of our NSF funding, we realized that we needed to shift gears if NNOCCI was going to be able to continue. Funding from the Pisces Foundation helped us transition from a grant-funded effort led by a Principal Investigator (me) to a sustainable network with a host organization and volunteer governance. We realized that we needed to continue to refine and streamline NNOCCI training so that we could focus on what was most important, and create a more efficient and financially sustainable model. This led to the development of the “crash course” and other workshops and trainings.
I am so inspired that NNOCCI was able to survive the disruptions of COVID, a change in host organization from New England Aquarium to the Marine Mammal Center, and shifts in funding sources. Through all of this, NNOCCI continued to develop new partnerships, targeted parts of the country that were under-represented in the network, incorporated an equity perspective into the training, and developed a new climate solutions toolkit. These are incredible examples of a thriving and resilient network.
And now, here we are in some really challenging times. How can we sustain our hope and momentum? Here are a few things to think about:
1. Climate disruption and impacts are now clearer, more widespread, and more personal (e.g., widespread extreme heat, wildfires, and extreme weather). Climate action is moving ahead, but not fast enough to avoid warming beyond 1.5C.
YET, as Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown recently said “Climate risks increase as warming increases. Therefore, every fraction of a degree of warming avoided matters. Our only option is to work harder and more strategically, taking immediate, ambitious action using solutions already available. With climate change, it’s never game over; it’s game on.” (ref3)
2. We are seeing continued attacks on climate science, climate action, and environmental justice and the institutions that support them.
YET, according to a recent report from the World Resource Institute we continue to see a rise in decarbonization efforts and increases in worldwide availability, affordability, and access to renewable energy, electric vehicles, and sustainable agriculture and forestry practices (ref4).
3. We are seeing more attacks on freedom of speech, and decreasing trust in the government and in many experts and institutions.
YET, museums and other informal learning institutions continue to have a very high level of trust (nearly tied with friends & family, and libraries as the most trusted sources of information). And that trust has only increased in the last 5 years (ref5).
4. We continue to see a big “communication gap.”
YET, as Katherine Hayhoe has said: “Use your voice to talk about why climate change matters to you, here and now. Use it to share what you are doing, what others are doing, what they can do. Use it to advocate for change at every level. Use it to vote and to inform decisions your school, your business, your city, and your country can make. Talk about it in every community that you are part of and whose values and interests you share.” (ref6)
I will close with a quote from a recent Knology newsletter that highlighted how NNOCCI’s work fits into the big picture of tackling climate change: “Building Communities of Practice (CoPs) is another way to weave climate action into the country’s social fabric. As we discovered through our work with the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI), CoPs can speed up the process by which scientific knowledge becomes social action.” (ref7).”
NNOCCI was a collaborative undertaking from the start. We reached out to other aquariums, and formed relationships with Monterey Bay Aquarium, National Aquarium, Long Beach Aquarium, and others. We started working with the Frameworks Institute, New Knowledge (which became Knology), and others. And, we began to pull together multiple grants from IMLS, NOAA, and NSF.
We started to develop a big vision for how we could help to bridge the communication gap through informal science centers: “If we train enough voices in proven communication techniques we can change the national discourse around climate change to be productive, civic-minded, and solutions-focused.”
NSF funding enabled us to create the Study Circle program, and build a network of 400 trainers that reached more than 40,000 informal educators, and in turn reaching an estimated 150 million visitors. We were able to support many research and evaluation studies, enabling us to make the case for how we were having an impact on knowledge, attitudes, and behavior for informal educators, visitors, and their friends and families. And, we were able to show significant differences in a national public survey between those who visited NNOCCI-trained institutions vs. those who visited institutions without NNOCCI training, and those who didn’t visit informal science institutions at all. It felt like we could start to “see the needle move” on a national level. And, we started to see the “heat trapping blanket” metaphor increasingly popping up in the media.
However, we realized that there was still more work to do. As we started nearing the end of our NSF funding, we realized that we needed to shift gears if NNOCCI was going to be able to continue. Funding from the Pisces Foundation helped us transition from a grant-funded effort led by a Principal Investigator (me) to a sustainable network with a host organization and volunteer governance. We realized that we needed to continue to refine and streamline NNOCCI training so that we could focus on what was most important, and create a more efficient and financially sustainable model. This led to the development of the “crash course” and other workshops and trainings.
I am so inspired that NNOCCI was able to survive the disruptions of COVID, a change in host organization from New England Aquarium to the Marine Mammal Center, and shifts in funding sources. Through all of this, NNOCCI continued to develop new partnerships, targeted parts of the country that were under-represented in the network, incorporated an equity perspective into the training, and developed a new climate solutions toolkit. These are incredible examples of a thriving and resilient network.
And now, here we are in some really challenging times. How can we sustain our hope and momentum? Here are a few things to think about:
1. Climate disruption and impacts are now clearer, more widespread, and more personal (e.g., widespread extreme heat, wildfires, and extreme weather). Climate action is moving ahead, but not fast enough to avoid warming beyond 1.5C.
YET, as Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown recently said “Climate risks increase as warming increases. Therefore, every fraction of a degree of warming avoided matters. Our only option is to work harder and more strategically, taking immediate, ambitious action using solutions already available. With climate change, it’s never game over; it’s game on.” (ref3)
2. We are seeing continued attacks on climate science, climate action, and environmental justice and the institutions that support them.
YET, according to a recent report from the World Resource Institute we continue to see a rise in decarbonization efforts and increases in worldwide availability, affordability, and access to renewable energy, electric vehicles, and sustainable agriculture and forestry practices (ref4).
3. We are seeing more attacks on freedom of speech, and decreasing trust in the government and in many experts and institutions.
YET, museums and other informal learning institutions continue to have a very high level of trust (nearly tied with friends & family, and libraries as the most trusted sources of information). And that trust has only increased in the last 5 years (ref5).
4. We continue to see a big “communication gap.”
YET, as Katherine Hayhoe has said: “Use your voice to talk about why climate change matters to you, here and now. Use it to share what you are doing, what others are doing, what they can do. Use it to advocate for change at every level. Use it to vote and to inform decisions your school, your business, your city, and your country can make. Talk about it in every community that you are part of and whose values and interests you share.” (ref6)
I will close with a quote from a recent Knology newsletter that highlighted how NNOCCI’s work fits into the big picture of tackling climate change: “Building Communities of Practice (CoPs) is another way to weave climate action into the country’s social fabric. As we discovered through our work with the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI), CoPs can speed up the process by which scientific knowledge becomes social action.” (ref7).”