Climate Change Narrative in Latvia: Business Environment Perceptions

As the European Green Deal has become the European Union’s latest expression of its ambition to become a world leader in addressing climate change, and the biggest half of the world`s population consider climate change (CCh) as one of the most serious global problems today, more and more entrepreneurs must communicate about their actions towards their climate goals. This study seeks to
examine the narratives that are constructed in the Latvian business environment. It explores public communication found in websites of the most valuable Latvian enterprises across six sectors – energy, transport, agriculture and forestry, waste management, manufacturing, and retail. Overall, 10% of all information in the researched websites is related to CCh or environment with the highest attention to CCh related issues being observed in the retail and waste management sectors, where as comparatively less articles are found in energy and agriculture & forestry sectors. Across sectors, a narrative of corporate social responsibility dominates emphasizing that Latvian business environment transforms, and entrepreneurs have already become or aim to become environmentally responsible in the nearest future. Narratives demonstrate that enterprises have the potential to lead towards lowcarbon economy by constructing an enabling discursive environment. By communicating about lowcarbon transition and the solutions that every individual can implement in their daily lives, and doing it in informative, educational, and entertaining way, energy enterprises can attract consumers’ attention, enrich their knowledge, and promote climate-friendly choices. Keywords: climate change, Latvia, strategic narrative, business, marketing communication. Acknowledgments: this research has been supported by the Latvian Council of Science within the fundamental and applied research project No. lzp-2020/1-0047 “From indifference to making difference in climate policy: improving the interaction between political narrative and societal perceptions in Latvia”.