IAMCR is pleased to announce that the 2025 Climate Communication Award will be given to two papers that develop and explore innovative approaches to climate communication. The award-winning papers are:
- “Cultural narratives from female communities of care: silver female surfers on becoming ocean ambassadors", Elena Maydell, Massey University (New Zealand) and Inessa Love, University of Hawaii (USA).
- “Voices in the silence: Human and non-human participation in climate change adaptation stories of fisherfolk in Del Carmen, Siargao Islands, Philippines", Daniel Renz Roc, University of the Philippines Los Baños (the Philippines)
The award will be formally presented at a special session during the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore.
Cultural narratives from female communities of care: silver female surfers on becoming ocean ambassadors
Environment, Science and Risk Communication Section
Abstract
Communicating critical issues about climate change and environmental degradation requires first and foremost to instill environmental conscience among various groups of population. The oppression of nature and the resulting climate and environmental crises are premised on the oppression of different minorities, women being the largest one. Ecofeminist scholars theorize bottom-up care-focused approaches led by women who build communities of care aimed at both social and climate justice on mutual grounds of challenging the power of patriarchy. As part of a larger project with female silver surfers focused on their identity construction and performance, this research examines how they communicate their love for the ocean as the manifestation of the culture of care towards each other and towards global issues of environment degradation and climate change. Using narrative inquiry to analyze semi-structured interviews with 30 female recreational surfers 50+ years old, we investigate how they create the communities of care embracing the identity of ocean ambassadors and expressing the sense of sisterhood with all women who surf, as well as with other surfers. The participants explain how the ocean and all marine creatures provide them with spiritual connection and sense of belonging to something bigger on a planetary level. They demonstrate how their love to the ocean empowers and motivates them to self-educate and deepen their environmental conscience, as well as to promote culture of care not only towards other surfers but also towards nature and all living beings.
Comment by the Selection Committee:
Elena Maydell and Inessa Love’s paper Cultural Narratives from female communities of care: silver surfers on becoming ocean ambassadors focuses on the experiences of another group, older women, whose voices have often been absent from debates on planetary crisis. The state of the oceans, which cover around seventy one per cent of the earth’s surface, is central to the future of a warming planet. Based on interviews with female recreational surfers over fifty the authors explore how surfing, a sport usually promoted as an arena of masculine prowess and conquest, gave their respondents a spiritual connection to the ocean and marine creatures and fostered a sense of belonging to something bigger on a planetary level. Drawing on the care focused approaches developed by ecofeminist scholars, the study details how their participants’ love of the ocean motivated them to deepen their own environmental consciousness and promote a culture of care towards nature and all living beings. For them, the ocean is not simply a resource to be used and exploited. It is space of connection to the deep rhythms of a planet in motion and the human and natural communities who depend on it.
Elena Maydell teaches at the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication at Massey University, New Zealand. She publishes on the issues of social justice, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and minorities’ voices. Her recent publication is titled Decolonizing the gendered history of Aotearoa New Zealand: Weaving Takatāpui identity into queer spaces.
Inessa Love is a Professor of Economics at the University of Hawaii whose research focuses on well-being and gender equity. An avid surfer and environmental advocate, she integrates data analysis, storytelling, and activism. She is also co-founder of Sassy Silver Surfers, a global community of women surfers aged 50 and over.
Voices in the silence: Human and non-human participation in climate change adaptation stories of fisherfolk in Del Carmen, Siargao Islands, the Philippines
Participatory Communication Research Section
Abstract
Climate change is a global, multifaceted issue where diverse stakeholders—especially those from the Global South—struggle to assert their voices within a discourse written primarily in the exclusionary language of science. This narrative reduces a polyphony of perspectives into a monologue, placing disproportionate blame on the public while undermining their agency. Among those marginalized are the silenced voices of fisherfolk and the silent non-human actants. This study aimed to privilege the voices of fisherfolk in two communities in Del Carmen, Siargao Islands, Philippines, while recognizing the roles of non-humans in climate adaptation. It analyzed the stories of sixteen fisherfolk, focusing on their lived experiences adapting to climate change and the roles of both human and non-human actants in the overall narrative. Through Greimas’ actantial model, six actantial classes and three narrative axes were identified, revealing how the fisherfolk negotiated adaptation alongside non-human actants in their environment. Furthermore, framed by Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the study showed that non-humans were not passive objects within the narrative but active agents affording opportunities for adaptation within socio-ecological networks. These findings challenge the dominant monologue and call for a pluralized discourse that acknowledges both human and non-human participation in the movement for climate justice.
Comment of the Selection Committee:
In his paper, Voices in the Silence: Human and non-human participation in climate change adaptation, Daniel Renz Roc explores the stories of disaster and adaptation generated in two fishing communities in Del Carmen, a municipality in the Philippines devastated by Super Typhoon Odette in 2021. One village was partially protected from the meters-high storm surge by mangroves. The other, an island community was totally exposed. Drawing on the structural analysis of narrative developed by Algirdas Greimas and Bruno Latour’s notion of natural phenomena as actants, influencing human action, Daniel unpacks the complex and shifting relations between human agency and natural forces , typhoons and mangroves, in the stories of fisherfolk as they respond to disaster and embark on recovery. The paper combines theoretical sophistication with ethnographic depth to demonstrate the urgent need for participatory communication research that promotes polyphony in the global climate change narrative. As he notes, environmental justice cannot be achieved without the active participation of marginalised communities and full awareness of their deep connections to non- human actants.
Daniel Renz M. Roc holds a PhD in Development Communication from the University of the Philippines. His research interests include narratology, climate change adaptation, science communication, local knowledge systems, community development, and related areas.
Climate Change Communication Award 2025 Selection Committee
- Chair: Graham Murdock
- Members: Hanna Morris and Jeremy Swartz