UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response Seminar: Associate Prof. Bec Colvin

Title: Unconventional climate advocates: can atypical messengers foster broad based support for climate mitigation?

Abstract: Unconventional advocates are actors who call for action on an issue, whilst doing so from a social identity that is not typically associated with wanting such action. In the public debate about climate mitigation in Australia, such actors include groups of farmers, investors, emergency first responders, political conservatives, and athletes, amongst others, who are challenging stereotypes of ‘who’ calls for action on climate change. This presentation shares findings of an Australian Research Council funded project that sought to understand more about unconventional climate advocates in Australia, with key empirical works led by Dr Jamin Wang and Sarah Boddington, and with the broader team including co-investigators Professor Winnifred Louis and Professor Kelly Fielding, and collaborators Dr Samantha Stanley, Dr Robyn Gulliver and Ajay Adhikari. Findings include unconventional advocates’ public associations with the mainstream environmental movement, the amount and nature of media coverage they receive, the strategies used by unconventional advocates to achieve shifts within their social identity groups and for achieving political influence, the ways that general publics understand unconventional advocates, and the effect of unconventional versus conventional advocates on rural and regional Australians’ views.

Bio: Bec Colvin is an Associate Professor and social scientist at the Australian National University's Crawford School of Public Policy. Bec researches the social dimensions of energy and climate policy, with a particular interest in how regional communities grapple with change to their local energy related infrastructure and industries. Much of her research has been informed by the theoretical lens of the social identity approach, which offers a science for understanding social settings in which an "us" is in conflict with a "them". She has explored social conflict about wind energy, coal seam gas, coal, and climate policy and energy transition more broadly, in settings ranging from local communities through to the public sphere.

Bec is lead investigator on a 2022 Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project that that seeks to understand the influence of ‘unconventional advocates’ – like farmers, business people, and political conservatives – on public opinion about climate policy. She also holds a 2023 Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award that aims to identify ways to establish constructive and community-led dialogue on regional futures in areas experiencing localised impacts of energy transition.

Bec is a non-executive member of the Board of EnergyCo, which is a statutory authority of the New South Wales Government appointed as infrastructure planner to design and deliver the state’s renewable energy zones and priority transmission infrastructure projects. She also serves on the ACT Climate Change Council, which provides advice to the Minister for Climate Change, Environment, Energy and Water on matters to do with mitigating and responding to climate change. She teaches communication for climate and environment policy at the Australian National University. Bec is on the editorial board of Q1 journal Environmental Research Letters, and is a regular contributor to the media on issues to do with climate and energy.