A deep adaptation agenda for public relations: Facing climate collapse

The essay considers public relations’ (PR) contribution to the climate emergency, from a cultural rather than organisational perspective. It suggests that PR has amplified a culture of performance that has privileged communication as performance over communication as a deeper, even spiritual, engagement. This critique is not new and literature will be cited to locate the argument in critical theory. There have also been excellent recent contributions to literature on PR and climate change (Almiron and Xifra, 2020; Bhavnami et al., 2019). However public relations theory has not, to my knowledge, engaged with the Deep Adaptation Agenda (DAA) approach to climate collapse developed by Bendell and Read (2021) which asks how individuals, organisations and academics can best prepare for the unknown. The main value of the DAA approach is that it avoids both inappropriate optimism and assigning blame, unlike much writing in this area. The challenge to reappraise practices and assumptions echoes, to some degree, the spiritual ecology movement led by people like the Buddhist Joanna Macy (2019) and the paper brings insights from their work to public relations: suggestions for new ways of being in the changing world have relevance to PR practice and theory.