Founder Diary: Why Sustainability Communicators Must Become World-Builders

Recently, two moments - one creative, one corporate - crystallised something for me about the state of sustainability communication.

For several weeks now, I have been spending my Sunday evenings watching The World Builders Show, hosted by writer and entrepreneur Sharmadean Reid MBE and business consultant Niamh Donoghue. It’s a masterclass in creating not just brands but worlds where audiences see themselves as citizens, not consumers. Sharmadean said something that stayed with me: when building a world, you can’t focus only on the pain points; you have to sell the vision of what could be.

Around the same time, I attended the Green Economy Forum at The Conduit. Titled Re-set and Renewal, the conference brought together world-leading experts to explore how sustainable finance is transforming economies, influencing geopolitics, and unlocking new growth sectors. Across the sessions, one message echoed: the green economy needs more confident and compelling storytelling about the incredible innovations (super-thin solar, anyone!) and the successes. The jobs, regeneration, and purposeful work created to meet the urgency of the climate crisis - yes, but also to create a cleaner, greener world.

It struck me that the two discussions are deeply connected and that a 'world-building' approach can transform sustainability communication. For years, sustainability communicators have relied on the language of emergency and risk -  the last chance, the consequences, the catastrophe. However, emergency alone no longer cuts through.

In an era of perma-crisis, when audiences are fatigued by fear and scepticism, it’s not the warnings that resonate. It’s the worlds we can imagine that will drive action.

As we head into COP30 in Belém, Brazil, sustainability communication must evolve from doomsday warnings to building belief in an alternative, greener world. We must become world-builders.

What does it mean to be a world-builder?

World-building means painting a picture that people can step into. It means showing not only what’s being protected, but what’s being created.

It connects the dots between renewable energy and self-sufficiency, between climate policy and prosperity, between sustainability and community. It invites people to imagine the world they could live in, gives them reasons to believe it’s possible, and fosters action to make it a reality.  

Taking a world-builder approach also encourages you to think more deeply about the world you're building. It enables you to design beyond individual solutions. It allows you to think about the type of society you want, as well as the citizens and their needs (what is important to them, and how they prefer to be communicated with). 

The limits of awareness

The sustainability sector has succeeded in one sense: people now know the stakes. While this is important - and will continue to be so - our current context requires a different approach. In a time of ongoing conflict, cost of living crises, and political upheaval, fear-based communication has diminishing returns. People switch off and even the most urgent messages struggle for attention.

Meanwhile, enormous progress is happening all around us. Global investment in clean energy technologies and infrastructure hit $2 trillion in 2024, a record high and accounted for two-thirds of global energy investment. In the UK, the government has announced a green energy plan that aims to create 400,000 new jobs. Researchers at the National University of Singapore have generated power from water droplets falling through a tube, providing hope for harnessing greater amounts of electricity from falling rain in the future.

Yet too often, these stories are undersold or buried beneath jargon.

Telling the human story, in the language of everyday life

If we want people to care about the green transition, we must make it human. The most powerful force for change is hope.

Sustainability communicators must be able to explain intricately designed technologies and solutions, as well as the reasons for their existence, in a manner that most people easily understand. Jobs. Opportunity. Regeneration. Lower bills.

Similarly, the story of net zero is not just about carbon; it's about community.

When a manufacturing plant closes, the loss is not just economic. It ripples through a community's social and cultural fabric. Studies have shown that after industry closures, towns often see a decline in what researchers call community capacity, the networks, institutions, and sense of collective agency that hold people together.

The green economy has the potential to breathe new life into old manufacturing communities. For example, a former Michelin tyre factory site in Dundee will be revived by Wilkie with a £50 million investment to hire 600 new staff as part of a green manufacturing drive. 

As the renewable energy industry expands, the market for mass-manufactured technologies, such as solar panels and heat pumps, is expected to create 14 million manufacturing jobs globally that support renewable energy, more than twice the number that exists today. 

When green industries take root, they don't just create jobs; they foster pride, a sense of belonging, and new reasons to stay. That’s the story to tell.

To tell these stories well, however, we have to strip away the complexity that alienates people. The average person doesn’t intuitively understand what a terawatt-hour is, or why things like energy storage matter. They do, however, understand the frustration of high bills and the relief that comes when they fall. They know local pride when a wind farm powers their town or an old factory site becomes home to clean-tech jobs.

Sustainability communication must move beyond the comfort of technical language. Our job is not to show how clever we are - through acronyms and amorphous concepts - it's to make these things tangible and help people see themselves in the solutions.

The opportunity ahead

This is an extraordinary moment. The energy transition is not a faraway idea; it’s happening in real time, in real places, driven by real people. But its success depends on our ability to communicate that transformation in ways that inspire rather than overwhelm.

For sustainability communicators, the challenge is clear: stop merely describing what could be lost and start designing the world. Build stories rooted in place, possibility, and people.

Because when the story of climate change becomes the story of human potential, it stops being a crisis and starts becoming a movement.

At POLELE, we help change-driven leaders and organisations shape narratives that cut through complexity and build belief, turning visibility into lasting impact. If you’re ready to sharpen your sustainability story, get in touch.

By Viya Nsumbu, Founder & Director, POLELE