Why Do the Strongest Arguments Keep Losing? What Climate and Development Can Learn from Populist Movements

Populist movements have become highly effective at something climate and development organizations frequently struggle with: making abstract issues feel immediate and personal, creating a sense of identity and belonging, generating emotional resonance, telling stories people remember, and converting attention into action. That creates an uncomfortable question for sectors built around expertise, nuance, and institutional credibility: what can we learn from the mechanics of populist movements without adopting their politics, sacrificing accuracy, or manipulating the people we are trying to reach? Part of the challenge may be cultural. Simplification can feel intellectually irresponsible. Emotion can be treated with suspicion. Meeting people where they are can seem like compromising on where we think the conversation needs to go. But public opinion does not shift simply because the best-evidenced position eventually wins. People need reasons to care, identities they can see themselves within, stories that make complex problems comprehensible, and ways to act on what they believe. This session will examine what makes messages travel and movements grow. How do you build identity and urgency around causes that can feel distant from people's daily lives? How do you communicate complexity without drowning people in it? How do you reach audiences who distrust the institutions delivering the message? And where is the ethical line between effective persuasion and manipulation? Drawing on campaigns that have broken through conventional sector communications, including Africa No Filter's Correct The Map campaign, unconventional climate communications, and political narrative work from the Global South, the conversation will examine what worked, what didn't, and what the sector may still be reluctant to try. Discussion Group Leaders David McNair is Managing Director, ONE Data at The ONE Campaign, advancing data-driven policy and advocacy to address inequality, poverty, and climate change. Jessica Riches is Existential Crisis Comms Strategist at Saturate Media, advancing bold and culturally relevant climate communications that engage new audiences and accelerate climate action. Prachur Goel is CEO at Momentum Shifts, advancing climate action by building narratives that help climate solutions reach communities and mainstream culture. What to expect A candid, practitioner-led conversation moving between political communication, narrative strategy, behavioral science, and real campaign experience. Participants will be encouraged to bring their own examples: messages that traveled, messages that disappeared, campaigns that mobilized people, and carefully researched communications that somehow landed with nobody. The room will also interrogate the discomfort at the heart of the proposition. Which tactics should climate and development organizations learn from? Which should they reject? And when does a commitment to nuance protect integrity versus become an excuse for communicating ineffectively? This is not another session about communicating better. It is a conversation about whether the sector needs to understand a different set of rules for how people come to care, belong, and act. Who this is for This session is for communications and advocacy professionals, campaign strategists, movement builders, policy advocates, funders supporting narrative change, researchers working on public opinion and political communication, and climate and development leaders who have wondered why strong evidence so often fails to generate equivalent public engagement. What you will get out of it A clearer understanding of the mechanics that allow populist movements to build identity, urgency, and participation Lessons from narrative campaigns that have broken through conventional sector communications, including examples from the Global South Practical approaches to creating emotional resonance without abandoning evidence or accuracy A framework for thinking about the ethical boundaries between persuasion, simplification, and manipulation An honest examination of what climate and development organizations are reluctant to try, and whether that reluctance is principled or simply comfortable