Climate Change Personas Template Template

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What is it?

Personas turn insights about real people into a fictional character, with backgrounds, goals, and values. Using personas can help generate a deeper understanding of their broader needs, underlying challenges they may face, and what might enable them to adapt.

This workshop outline and template can help you to create personas to encourage better understanding of climate change, its impacts and adaptation actions for your place.

Who is it for?

Anyone who wants to design and run creative and engaging conversations about climate change adaptation and develop a more nuanced understanding of how climate change impacts different people. This tool is especially helpful for understanding of climate change impacts on more vulnerable groups (such as women, disabled people, young people, the elderly, or non-human inhabitants of the area).

How to use it

Preparation

Think carefully about who should take part in the session. As well as your project team you could also include others who are knowledgeable about different individuals, organisations and the politics of your place. You may need to provide some information about climate trends and projections or prepare some background information about your place.

During the session

Step 1 Creating a personas library (NB this step can also be carried out in advance through desk-research)

Together with the session participants, brainstorm some potential personas that you feel represent the local population. You could think about:

Which types of people are you trying to influence?
Whose perspectives are important to communicate and frame adaptation?
Who are some of the well-known and recognisable characters in the area?
Who are the high and low income people in the area?
What about non-human personas? Is there a local river, an animal, a forest or a plant that is special to your place?

The more diverse your personas library is, the richer a picture of local climate impacts you will get. Once you’ve got a good number of personas, pick a few (we suggest no more than 5) to develop them in detail. Diversity is your friend here.

Step 2 Developing personas

Use the template (one per persona) to build elements for each persona by answering the following questions:

Personal: What is the name, age, gender, species and occupation of your persona? What do they care most about? What underlying challenges do they face?

Climate change impacts: What climate changes (e.g. heavier rain, drier summers etc.) are affecting them the most now/in future? What are/might be the impacts of these changes be for them? You could use the 15 Key Consequences of Climate Change for Scotland infographics to support your conversations.

Adaptation: What might enable or prevent them from adapting? What adaptation actions can they take? What decisions can they influence to support adaptation on a place/regional/national level?

After the session

Take the information you’ve captured and write this up into a short description which describes your persona. Depending on how you want to use them you could perhaps work with a local designer or artist to develop a visual representation. Remember though that the process of developing personas is likely to be more important than the actual ‘product’ that is produced! Refine and iterate these personas by discussing them with your community. Look at the enablers of adaptation - is there anything your group might choose to focus on and progress? Is there anything preventing your personas from adapting that you can address? Who is missing and is important to include into your analysis?

Adaptation Scotland

Climate Resilience Manager@Adaptation Scotland

At Adaptation Scotland, we provide advice and support to help Scotland be prepared and resilient to the effects of climate change. We help public sector, businesses and communities to understand what climate change will mean across Scotland, and identify the best way for them to plan for the impact – taking the opportunities and preparing for the risks.