COMMUNICATING THE CLIMATE CHANGE: THE ROLE OF EXPERTS AND POLICY MAKERS

Science experts play important role in spreading the science-related knowledge that can improve societal outcomes by guiding policy in transformative way. Expert communication and its influence on policy decision-makers is particularly important topic when it comes to problems of climate change. This paper explores how European citizens perceive the role of experts and policy makers in science communication in climate change topic. It is based on the international research analysing European citizen’s perception of science communication to better understanding of how beliefs, perceptions and knowledge of science-related issues originate among EU citizens and to enquire their proposals for enhancing the quality of science communication. The findings of this paper come from studies performed within a European project entitled CONCISE which was carried out in five European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Slovakia, and Poland) based on qualitative research method – public consultation. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing structural obstacles that experts and policy makers, currently face when attempting to communicate the climate change successfully and to present the main findings from public consultation about the main proposals for experts and policy makers in communicating the climate change to public.