In the lead-up to COP26 – the most anticipated international climate summit ever – the UNDP wanted to remind the world that it’s not just world leaders who have the power. Their challenge was to inspire even the most powerless groups across the globe to speak up about the need for climate action.

Today’s kids will be affected by climate change more than any other generation. But they’re often the ones who feel most powerless.

To empower kids to use their voice, the UNDP published: The Birds & The Bees and the facts of saving life, a children’s book that gets kids to sit parents down for a difficult conversation about our planet’s future.

Since birds and bees are among the most susceptible species to the effects of climate change; the story uses them as the barometer for the health of the planet and the devastating effects of fossil fuels.

From this bleak realisation, the story evolves to leave kids and parents with a simple solution that they can action together. After all, parents can easily ignore climate scientists, but not their kids.

Scientific projections and news stories about what the future of our planet will look like without climate action were cause for people to switch off. Particularly following a pandemic, people of all ages needed stories of hope for a better future.

By empowering today’s youth to talk to adults about protecting the planet, we gave news outlets a climate story with a positive spin.

To achieve this, both digital and physical copies of books were sent to news outlets, as well as celebrities with a passion for climate action.

Given we were speaking to a wide audience spectrum - from young kids to grandparents - the design of our bird and bee needed to be easy for readers of all ages empathise. Accordingly, these characters were designed to feel free and powerful in a time before fossil fuels, and appear more vulnerable as humans continued to burn them. By giving these characters larger, expressive eyes these illustrations were also able to communicate more emotion.

Illustrations also simplified complicated climate science; with the data of our shrinking carbon budget visualised as a ring of black slowly closing in on us.

The integration of a pledge also made readers active participants in the book’s happy ending – by getting them to commit to climate action.

From a product design and materials perspective, even the paper the book is printed on is good for our planet. Using 100% recycled, FSC approved paper.

The book was covered in all forms of media, from TV news, to national newspapers, radio, online publications and was shared by readers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Achieving 17 million earned media impressions, and contributing to the book having been read 915,362 times and counting.

It is also now available in multiple languages as a physical copy and e-book. As well as two audiobooks, one voiced by Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Melanie Zanetti from Emmy-Winning kids’ show Bluey. More importantly, it has become an ongoing tool to discuss the most important issue of our time.