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.

‘The Birds and The Bees’, also known as ‘the facts of life’, is the conversation parents have with kids to explain how babies are made.

To empower kids to speak up about climate action, the UNDP published a book that flips this tradition by getting children to sit parents down for 'the talk' about the planet they will inherit.

Since birds and bees are among the most susceptible animals to the effects of climate change and fossil fuels; the story uses them as the barometer for its devastating consequences. From this bleak realisation, the story evolves to leave kids and parents with a simple solution that they can action together.

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.

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

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

From materials perspective, even the paper the book is printed our planet in mind. With 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.