A few years ago, an international foundation funded a sophisticated peace of research to examine the links between meeting the unmet need for family planning and climate change mitigation. This research, conducted by a leading research institute, involved both economics and climate science. The key findings included the following:
- Meeting the unmet need for family planning by providing women condoms can help abate roughly 1/7th of the entire amount of greenhouse gases we need to abate to prevent catastrophic climate change.
- This is one of the most cost-effective ways of mitigating greenhouse gases.
- This will also have a large number of derivative health benefits for women and children
Since unmet need largely exists in the developing world, the international foundation was keen to communicate these findings in a sensitive and appropriate manner. So, they came to Baird’s CMC. “As a communications strategy firm with years of experience in development and policy work, we were ideally placed to develop the right messages, thereby ensuring that these findings gained traction in policy circles,” explains Aditya Bahadur, our climate change expert. “The idea was to get governments and donors around the world to think of family planning as an activity that also has climate benefits.”
In the first phase of this engagement, we helped our client develop key messages, doing so in a targeted way for different audiences. We also advised them on the following points:
- Policy contexts in which the research would be useful
- Countries that provide conducive environments for discussion
- Ideal ambassadors for the finding of the research
- Ways to enhance traction in the right circles
One of the key components of our engagement was a round table conference in Delhi. Next week, we’ll talk more about this event and how it helped us define our future communications strategy!