creating a place for environmental communication research in sustainability science
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Creating a Place for EnvironmentalCommunication Research inSustainability ScienceLaura A. Lindenfeld , Damon M. Hall , Bridie McGreavy , LindaSilka & David HartPublished online: 07 Mar 2012.
To cite this article: Laura A. Lindenfeld , Damon M. Hall , Bridie McGreavy , Linda Silka & DavidHart (2012) Creating a Place for Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science,Environmental Communication, 6:1, 23-43, DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2011.640702
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Creating a Place for EnvironmentalCommunication Research inSustainability ScienceLaura A. Lindenfeld, Damon M. Hall, Bridie McGreavy,Linda Silka & David Hart
Environmental communication scholarship is critical to the success of sustainability
science. This essay outlines three pressing areas of intersection between the two fields.
First, environmental communication scholarship on public participation processes is
essential for sustainability science’s efforts to link knowledge with action. Second,
sustainability science requires collaborations across diverse institutional and disciplinary
boundaries. Environmental communication can play a vital role in reorganizing the
production and application of disciplinary knowledge. Third, science communication
bridges environmental communication and sustainability science and can move
communication processes away from one-way transmission models toward engaged
approaches. The essay draws on Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative to illustrate
key outcomes of a large project that has integrated environmental communication into
sustainability science.
Keywords: Sustainability; Public Participation; Interdisciplinarity; Science
Communication; Stakeholder Engagement
Introduction
The growing field of sustainability science acknowledges that science-as-usual has
been complicit in creating our current unsustainable moment (Latour, 2004).
Sustainability science calls for a revision of science that requires different interactions
among practitioners, publics, and businesses (Cash, Borck, & Patt, 2006; Clark &
Dickson, 2003; Kates et al., 2001; McNie, 2007; Speth, 1992). Building on critiques of
science, sustainability science aims to support the long-term health of ecological and
Laura Lindenfeld is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism and the
Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. Correspondence to: Laura Lindenfeld, 5784
York Complex #4, Orono, ME 04469, USA. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1752-4032 (print)/ISSN 1752-4040 (online) # 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2011.640702
Environmental Communication
Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 23�43
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socio-cultural functioning, where both leverage rather than compromise each other.
To achieve its goals, the field must attend to complex social�ecological interactions
and understand how to work with communities in novel ways. We maintain that
environmental communication scholarship is critical to the success of sustainability
science.
Sustainability science builds on ideas regarding sustainable development and thus
faces similar definitional challenges (Kates, Parris, & Leiserowitz, 2005). Our
definition builds on Chapin et al.’s (2010) concept that sustainability science is:
use-inspired research (Stokes, 1997) that spans and integrates a broad range ofscience, engineering, and policy disciplines and is directed towards the manage-ment of human-environment systems in ways that meet needs for humanlivelihoods while protecting ecosystem and environmental integrity. (Clark andDickson, 2003; Turner et al., 2003, p. 39)
Despite the existence of multiple definitions and dialogue about their relative
merits, most sustainability scientists focus on a series of dualities, including
interactions between human well-being and ecosystem health; the present and the
future; knowledge and action; local and global; and theory and practice.
Sustainability science aims to create ‘‘useable knowledge’’ (Cash et al., 2006;
McNie, 2007; Pielke, 2007). It emphasizes the coproduction of knowledge with
stakeholders and communities and integrates local knowledge (Clark & Dickson,
2003), rather than deferring to trickle-down models that often characterize university
research (van Kerkhoff & Lebel, 2006). This requires engaging diverse stakeholders to
develop a solutions orientation to research design (Kates et al., 2001) and a place-
based lens (Clark & Dickson, 2003; ICSU, 2002; Kates et al., 2001; Kates & Parris,
2003) focused on contexts where social and ecological systems (SES) interact in
complex, often unexpected ways (Clark & Dickson, 2003). Sustainability science grew
out of the ‘‘collective surge’’ toward sustainable development (Aguirre, 2002) and
calls for rethinking who initiates research, whose needs science serves, and how
parties collectively mobilize research outcomes. It depends on social science
disciplines like communication, economics, sociology, political science, and anthro-
pology. Environmental communication offers particular contributions critical to
sustainability science.
Whereas science has frequently characterized communication scholarship as a
service for improving the transmission of others’ brilliance, sustainability science’s
mission depends on constitutive understandings of communication, as evidenced in
its early reflexive orientations (Cash et al., 2003). This begins with defining problems
from the perspective of stakeholders and developing solutions collaboratively (Clark
& Dickson, 2003). Scientists must understand which sources are accepted as valid to
inform decisions and appreciate how groups define problems. This calls for engaged,
participatory communication research (Morgan, 2009) that interrogates problem
contexts.
Sustainability science acknowledges that the science-as-usual framework has often
developed the ‘‘wrong’’ kinds of information (McNie, 2007) and that science
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communication often fails to deliver useful knowledge (Cash et al., 2003).
Environmental communication scholarship forms a cornerstone to sustainability
science’s ability to achieve its goals, especially its aspirations to create better pathways
for linking knowledge with action (K l A)1 (NRC, 1999). Environmental
communication’s ability to generate critical perspectives on science is central to
sustainability science’s aim to render itself relevant to stakeholders’ needs. Sustain-
ability science calls for the rich lines of inquiry, methodological insight, and
theoretical frameworks that communication scholars have developed.
Following an overview of sustainability science’s emergence, we offer a critique of
the field. We outline three areas of critical intersection and illustrate the complexities
and benefits of these intersections through our experience on a large, interdisci-
plinary project, Maine’s sustainability solutions initiative (SSI). We conclude that
sustainability science’s success depends on integration of environmental communica-
tion, and environmental communication should create deliberate strategies for
participating in this solutions-oriented field.
Diverse Pathways, Overlapping Goals
The concept of sustainability has circulated in natural resource management for
decades. Variations of the term were used to efficiently manage and maximize
renewable natural resource yields (Dixon & Fallon, 1989). Based on concerns of
overexploitation of natural resources in international development, the Brundtland
Report conceptualized interconnectivity among social, economic, cultural, and
environmental systems as ‘‘sustainable development’’ to situate environmental issues
centrally in global politics (Our Common Future, 1987). The Brundtland Report, a
watershed publication, helped to advance a ‘‘collective surge’’ of interest in
sustainable development (Aguirre, 2002) and the use of the term ‘‘sustainability’’
(Peterson, 1997). International development agencies quickly applied the terminol-
ogy to their work, and funding followed. The institution of science turned its
attention after research began to account for global scales of cumulative human
impact on global SES.
Sustainability science understands that the interdependent nature of SES requires a
coordinated effort involving multiple disciplines and the participation of decision
makers, communities, and stakeholders. Sustainability science places great impor-
tance on understanding communication processes within transdisciplinary analyses
and dissemination in social systems that impact ecological systems (Clark, Jaeger, &
van Eijndhoven, 1998), yet communication scholarship has not played a significant
role in this process. The call by Schellnhuber and Wenzel (1998) for ‘‘global
governance’’ of the anthroposphere and the ecosphere emphasizes the need for
multidisciplinary scientific evidence to establish a systems approach, thus laying the
groundwork for the high degrees of interdisciplinarity and integration of knowledge
that characterize sustainability science (Cash et al., 2003).
The National Research Council cemented the concept of sustainability science with a
call to action in Our Common Journey: ATransition toward Sustainability (NRC, 1999).
Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science 25
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This report argues that a sustainable future requires advances in basic knowledge and
‘‘the political will to turn this knowledge and know-how into action’’ (p. 7).
Sustainability science must develop an integrative framework that addresses urgent
needs, particularly through the development of K l A collaboratives (NRC, 1999). In
2001, scholars further laid the foundation by seeking to understand sustainability
problems ‘‘through integrated, place-based models and inverse, novel research
approaches that help society to meet the needs of humans while supporting earth’s
life-support systems’’ (Kates et al., 2001, p. 641). By 2003, sustainability science has
become a ‘‘vibrant arena’’ that combines global and local perspectives (Clark &
Dickson, 2003, p. 8050).
The field now enjoys institutional support and has become a recognized area of
inquiry. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences features a section on
sustainability science in which more than 200 peer-reviewed papers have been
published. Funding in the European Union (especially in Germany, Italy, and UK),
South Africa, and the US have led to global support, while online fora such as Science
and Innovation for Sustainable Development (www.sustainabilityscience.com) support
knowledge exchange and networking. A growing number of universities across the
globe have also created research and education programs focused on advancing the
theory and practice of sustainability science.
One of sustainability science’s primary challenges is to examine prospective future
pathways for coupled SES that operate under varying conditions of uncertainty and
complexity (Swart, Raskin, & Robinson, 2004). A central goal is to develop increased
understanding of factors that limit resilience and create vulnerability for SES (Walker,
Holling, Carpenter, & Kinzig, 2004). Clark and Dickson (2003) conceptualize three key
characteristics: (1) a focus on the coupled interactions of SES; (2) a problem-driven
orientation; and (3) commitment to generating knowledge through collaborations
between scholars and practitioners. Traditional methods of producing knowledge
require fundamental reorganization if we are to address the magnitude of the
interlinked, complex problems that create barriers to long-term sustainability (Speth,
2004). This requires an increased ability to engage in collaboration with diverse
constituents who often have conflicting value systems (Frame, 2008; Jasanoff, 2004;
Kates et al., 2001; Komiyama & Takeuchi, 2006).
Challenges for Sustainability Science
Systematic critiques of sustainability science have yet to be articulated. While
sustainability science holds great promise, it runs the risk of replicating many
problems associated with sustainable development. Critiques of sustainable devel-
opment can help anticipate critiques of sustainability science. Environmental
communication has the capacity to help address some of these areas of vulnerability,
and we outline how environmental communication can bolster sustainability
science’s ability to address these challenges.
As Peterson articulates in her hallmark critique, sustainable development tended to
privilege the term development over sustainable (1997). Sustainability science runs
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similar risk in focusing on development to the exclusion of the complex interlocking
spheres of sustainability. Peterson argues that sustainable development’s focus on
measuring sustainability based on scientific as opposed to ethical or political terms is
deeply problematic, and sustainability science has tended to articulate itself along the
same lines of division. With its focus on linking K l A, sustainability science hopes
to manage the contradiction of producing ‘‘objective’’ science while engaging
communities in decision making. Similarly, scientific research goals often neglect
to consider entrenched cultural differences and the need to govern culturally
pluralistic societies that often find themselves in what seem to be irreconcilable
conflicts (Benhabib, 2002). Peterson’s critique reminds us that cultural norms
frequently determine what is viewed as important to sustain, while scientific research
often reaches different conclusions (1997). We must bridge this divide if we are to
develop sustainable solutions.
Sustainability science runs the risk of ‘‘fetishizing’’ data at the expense of
understanding conflicts that undergird societal decision making at multiple levels
and scales. Positing knowledge as reliable, while not considering the power inherent
in knowledge production, puts sustainability science at risk of undermining its core
tenets. Post-normal science approaches like sustainability science rest on the
understanding that ‘‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions
urgent’’ (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1991, p 137). Decision making under high degrees of
uncertainty requires novel approaches to science communication that move beyond
transmission models to models of engagement. This requires deeper understandings
of conflicts around science production and usage. One need only to look at the
complexity of engaging US citizens around climate change to note how easily science
is politicized (Mooney & Kirshenbaum, 2009). Sustainability science can learn from
more general critiques of science (Kuhn, 1962; Prelli, 1989), and taking these critiques
seriously means placing itself under scrutiny.
Our critique of sustainability science conceptualizes important roles for environ-
mental communication. Critique itself fulfills an important function in post-normal
bodies of research that have both empirical and corrective aims. Peterson emphasizes
criticism’s ability to serve as a ‘‘corrective for humanity’s hypertechnologized state’’
(1997, p. 3). Environmental communication offers complementary frameworks in
this arena. The intersection between the fields provides fertile ground for
collaboration. We frame three of the most urgent areas of intersection and discuss
how these can help sustainability science to address these challenges. We spend
proportionally greater time on the first intersection, as it constitutes a pivotal issue
for both fields.
Intersection I: Linking Knowledge with Action
One of the greatest challenges facing sustainability science results from difficulties in
producing knowledge to support improved decision making, while strengthening
communities’ socioeconomic and cultural assets. Traditional methods of generating
knowledge are ill equipped to further this broader goal. While society clearly needs
Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science 27
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knowledge production in engineering and natural sciences, this is insufficient for
producing a transition to more sustainable communities. Cash et al. (2006) refer to
this as a ‘‘loading dock’’ problem that must be countered to create better K l A
linkages. In the traditional model, scientists decide what to study and make
information available to society by placing it on a ‘‘loading dock,’’ then waiting for
society to pick that information up and use it. This process has largely failed to meet
societal needs (McNie, 2007; van Kerkhoff & Lebel, 2006). To produce more useful
knowledge, academics and communities must manage various boundaries to achieve
and maintain salience, credibility, and legitimacy (Cash et al., 2006). Van Kerkhoff
and Lebel (2006) critique conventional assumptions of K l A processes and argue
for an increased focus on public participation; improved integration of invested
parties; initiatives that stress learning and knowledge sharing; and models that focus
on negotiation and power sharing.
Environmental communication has particular strength in this area, as its objects of
inquiry often focus on everyday practices and vernacular discourses. In particular,
environmental communication has deep expertise in public discourse surrounding
environmental policy (Peterson, 1997, 2004; Peterson & Franks, 2006; Taylor, 2007);
conflict, public participation, and decision making (Beierle & Cayford, 2002; Daniels
& Walker, 2001; Depoe, Delicath, & Elsenbeer, 2004); environmental and anti-
environmental social movement discourse (DeLuca, 1999; Endres, Sprain, &
Peterson, 2009; Moser & Dilling, 2007); and environmental justice (Pezzullo, 2007;
Sandler & Pezzullo, 2007), all of which are pertinent to advancing sustainability
science. While a thorough overview of this literature exceeds the parameters of this
essay, a few issues are especially noteworthy.
The environmental communication research on public participation offers
important insights for sustainability science’s K l A agenda. Heath, Palenchar,
Proutheau, and Hocke (2007) view the study of stakeholder relationships as key to
environmental communication’s mission. With this literature’s origins in conflict
studies, the research lenses applied to collaborative natural resources decision making
and public comment are critically attuned to matters of equity, voice, and power
imbalances. Senecah’s (2004) Trinity of Voice approach includes concepts of access,
standing, and influence, to develop a schematic for more effective public engagement
processes. Building and maintaining trust is central to community cohesiveness and
improved decision making that results from sense of community (Senecah, 2004).
Daniels and Walker (2001) delineate critical attributes of collaboration that
differentiate it from traditional forms of participation, an important distinction for
the forms of engagement that sustainability science seeks to engender. Collaboration
is less competitive, is based on mutual learning and fact-finding, allows for
exploration of differences, focuses on interests rather than positions, and allocates
responsibility across multiple parties. Collaborative engagement is ongoing and
draws conclusions through interactive, reflective practices (Daniels & Walker, 2001).
While collaboration as engagement has limitations (Peterson, Peterson, & Peterson,
2005), environmental communication research on other forms of public participa-
tion can add significant depth to the engagement of stakeholders and public
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audiences. These frameworks can be instrumental in focusing on the definition and
measurement of sustainability, while attending to sustainability’s ethical and political
dimensions. These engagement frameworks are critical to balancing competing
conceptualizations and focusing attention on process and outcomes.
Other conceptual frameworks in environmental communication can address the
problem of privileging development over sustainability. This requires critical
practices to ensure that the field scrutinizes the impact of its undertakings. Cantrill
and Oravec look to language as a space where we ‘‘reify what we take to be real,’’ an
approach that foregrounds communication’s constitutive power (1996, p. 2). If
sustainability aims to create solutions to existing problems, we must remember that
problems themselves are socially constructed creatures. As Cantrill writes, ‘‘while
grave threats may in fact exist in the environment, the perception of such danger,
rather than the reality thereof, is what moves people to action (1996, p. 76).
Sustainability science’s vast reliance on data enables it to model change at the global
level. Yet, SES data tend to focus less on cultural and more on economic and social
issues, and they frequently model populations on large scales. Including environ-
mental communication can remind us of the importance of culture, social networks,
and communication practices at finer scales that are specific, locally based, and often
highly resilient. Adopting a framework that allows for the nuanced, rich analysis that
many environmental communication researchers undertake can balance the need to
produce SES models with important insights into on-the-ground practices.
Environmental communication’s attention to nuanced communication practices
that foster interpersonal and group relationships moves beyond other disciplines’
structure and process lenses. Environmental communication conceptualizes com-
munication as a constitutive process, whereby communication shapes our relation-
ships with each other and the natural environment (Cox, 2010). With its concern for
voice and local knowledge, communication research documents perspectives of
diverse stakeholders and maintains local voices. As Carbaugh writes, our objective
should be in ‘‘formulat[ing] the meaningfulness of conversational interaction to
participants in terms they find resonant, important to them, thereby opening portals
into their communal standards for such action’’ (2005, p. xiii). Communication
practices are essential within decision making because what knowledge gets counted
as valid is as important as the knowledge itself (Latour, 2004). This research
perspective helps identify subtle signs of conflict, power, and marginalization within
decision making discourse before they erupt into intractability of process or harmful
policies with unintended consequences. Natural resources management scholarship
on stakeholder and public participation rarely cites the work of communication
scholars (Hage, Leroy, & Petersen, 2010; Reed, 2008; Siebenhuner, 2004), yet this
research addresses precisely the complexities that sustainability science must address
if it is to engage in successful collaboration.
K l A conceptualizes knowledge production as co-construction rather than as a
top-down model in which universities function as the experts and communities are
perceived as having a knowledge deficit (Aeberhard & Rist, 2009; Anadon,
Gimenez, Ballestar, & Perez, 2009; Hage et al., 2010; Hart & Calhoun, 2010;
Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science 29
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Hordijk & Baud, 2006; Jasanoff, 2004). This requires fundamental rethinking of
how knowledge is produced (Kahan, 2010; Leach, 2007). Increasingly, sustainability
science has begun to emphasize what environmental communication scholars have
long understood to be key to establishing meaningful relationships between
universities and communities: a profound need for ‘‘context-dependency of
participatory knowledge production [and] the importance of reflection and
transparency regarding the role of scientific advisors in the science policy process’’
(Hage et al., 2010). The coproduction framework can also help sustainability
science to avoid the problem of relying on producing models for models’ sake.
Sustainability science requires partnerships with multiple stakeholders and diverse
communities. Scholars must understand what kinds of research and modeling
stakeholders and communities need and remain attuned to the range of issues people
face. This means engaged research that is capable of assessing salient discourses, power
structures, local language, and cultural practices within particular contexts. To listen in
depth to how stakeholders and communities conceptualize and communicate their
relationship to each other and to the landscape requires researchers who do precisely
this. Communication scholarship has called for more grounded, problem-based
(Craig & Tracy, 1995; Tracy, 2007), useful praxis-oriented (Chouliaraki, 2006; Cronen,
2001), and engaged communication scholarship (Deetz, 2008). This praxis-oriented
inquiry addresses problems that matter to people. This culture of merging basic and
applied communication work acknowledges the messiness of situational complexities.
Sprain, Endres, and Petersen (2010) argue that communication that seeks to affect
public communication practices should move to a model of transdisciplinary,
networked research and engagement approaches. Transdisciplinarity, which refers
here to a research strategy that moves both across academic disciplines and beyond the
university walls, parallels many of the tenets that sustainability science implies with its
concept of K l A.
Sustainability science stresses the importance of ensuring broad participation of
people and institutions, ranging from industry and government to researchers and
students (Komiyama & Takeuchi, 2006). Environmental communication scholars
have a long-standing record of research that addresses this concern. Building on
Kinsella’s concept of public expertise (2004), Endres (2009) develops the concept of
public scientific argument to articulate how nonscientists engage in public debate
within the context of contemporary technocratic modes of public participation. Yet,
this research has infrequently reached scholars of sustainability science given the
fractured nature of university disciplines and the resulting lack of interface between
these groups (Amey & Brown, 2004). Environmental communication scholars can
help sustainability science and its partner communities identify and develop
improved ways to work in partnership. This requires understanding on the part of
universities that partnerships are often fraught with paradoxes (Silka, 1999). There is
also an increased recognition that university/community engagement tends toward a
‘‘helicopter syndrome’’ in which researchers drop down into a community to spend
time collaborating on a problem, only to then move on to other issues. Sustainability
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science requires long-term commitments that provide ongoing collaboration built on
trust (Senecah, 2004), shared resources, and a common vision.
Our suggested integration of environmental communication can help sustain-
ability science to address sustainability problems and conceptualize enduring
solutions by situating research and engagement across various altitudes, from fine-
scale, place-based communication research that provides rich detail and depth about
communities and stakeholder groups, to large-scale modeling projects that aim to
account for global population change and large-scale natural resource management.
Together, these approaches can bolster sustainability science to address some of its
key challenges.
Intersection II: Reorganizing Disciplinary Knowledge
Linking K l A challenges researchers to engage with groups outside academe. This
rests on the assumption that university researchers themselves are able to work
together. Sustainability science requires unprecedented levels of collaboration across
disciplines and with stakeholders. This work is both transdisciplinary (Sprain et al.,
2010) in that it reaches beyond the institutional walls of higher education, and
interdisciplinary (Amey & Brown, 2004) in that it requires diverse disciplines to come
together in novel ways. Interdisciplinarity requires that diverse constituents who
often have different reward systems and conflicting values navigate the often unruly
and*for many university researchers*frightening territory of working together.
Increasingly, researchers have focused on studying interdisciplinary research
collaboratives (Amey & Brown, 2004; Dewulf, Francois, Pahl-Wostl, & Taillieu,
2007; Lattuca, 2001; Thompson, 2007). While there is much to note about this
scholarship, what is of particular interest here is the recognition that institutional
barriers manifest themselves in behaviors and attitudes of researchers. In short,
interdisciplinary collaboration is complicated and certain forms of engagement
enable success (e.g., the use of framing as a strategy to help researchers develop
collective languages (Dewulf et al., 2007)), while other forms hinder progress (e.g.,
disciplinary arrogance and jockeying for power (Thompson, 2007)).
Environmental communication resembles sustainability science in its employment
of multiple methods from communication and social science theories, but often
incorporates research into the content of the natural sciences and management
disciplines. Environmental communication scholars often have an affinity for
interdisciplinary thinking that can help to bridge gaps that arise within collabora-
tions. Where communication’s disciplinary lenses are hybridizations of social science
theories and methodologies applied to communication practices, environmental
communication also remains conversant with many other disciplines, among others,
environmental sciences and economics. As a field that attends to issues of power,
voice, agency, and participation, environmental communication is attuned to issues
that threaten to undermine interdisciplinary collaboration. Thompson’s ethnographic
research on interdisciplinary research teams demonstrates how environmental
communication research can contribute to interdisciplinarity. She identifies key
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attributes that foster or undermine collective communication competence, a framework
that helps us understand some of the core underpinnings of successful collaboration
(Thompson, 2007). Thompson’s work exemplifies a larger body of literature within
organizational communication, an area that can enhance organizational studies in
sustainability science from the vantage point of communication.
Organizations like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and US Department of
Agriculture have developed funding streams targeted at advancing interdisciplinary
approaches to solving complex research problems. This is especially true in the area
of sustainability. Environmental communication’s attention to how communication
constitutes group identity and enables or disables communication can help
sustainability science teams to study their own collaboration processes and improve
their ability to work together with partners outside of the university walls.
Intersection III: Expanding Approaches to Science Communication
Sustainability science’s aim to create wide-reaching transformation requires
involvement of broader publics in decision making and behavior change at
different scales and across diverse settings. The literature on science communication
and public audiences should play an expanded role in sustainability science. Science
communication overlaps with sustainability science and environmental commu-
nication and bridges the two. Integrating science communication can help to
conceptualize the relationship between on-the-ground daily practices and discourses
that appear across various kinds of media. Media studies scholarship creates
knowledge about how sustainability issues are communicated in diverse contexts
across different channels. This research spans a range of topics (Hansen, 2010) from
the study of Hollywood film (Ingram, 2000) to analysis of advertising campaigns
(Smerecnik & Renegar, 2010) to the study of newspaper coverage of sustainability
issues (Carvalho & Burgess, 2005). Environmental communication provides
particular strengths in the area of cultural and popular representations of nature
(Boyce & Lewis, 2009; Corbett, 2006; Dobrin & Morey, 2009; Meister & Japp, 2002)
and technical and scientific communication within the public sphere and public
understanding of science (Carvalho, 2007; Cox, 2010; Nisbet, 2009; Stamm, Clark,
& Eblacas, 2000).
Environmental and science communication scholarship emphasizes that commu-
nication processes must attend to social values to build trust and collaborative
partnerships. While science communication supports the development of effective
science message frames sensitive to social values, environmental communication
provides analytical tools to reveal the limits of precisely the frames that sustainability
science requires. Citizen science as a participatory form of science communication may
provide an additional boundary field between the two communication disciplines.
Yet, many sustainability scientists still tend to see communication as a one-way
process that occurs at the project’s end. The past decade has seen a growth in the
number of workshops designed to train scientists to communicate more effectively
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with public audiences (Irwin, 2001). These workshops aim to bridge the growing
science-society gap in the US Strategies for training scientists to reach a broad range
of audiences are often based on the problematic trickle-down model of commu-
nication. With a focus on message construction and audience analysis, such
workshops can help scientists develop effective strategies for communicating results
with nonscientists, but they do not challenge scientists to rethink aspects of the
communication process. While efforts to help science become more relevant to
broader publics are necessary, these efforts would benefit from a more sophisticated
understandings of communication to bridge dominant perspectives on communica-
tion and its relevance to science and the more expansive views as articulated by the
field of environmental communication.
Science communication covers a spectrum of research from dissemination of
scientific ‘‘facts’’ to models of public engagement (Bubela et al., 2009; Kurath &
Gisler, 2009; Nisbet & Scheufele, 2009). Science communication also intersects with
sustainability science and environmental communication in its rearticulation of
transmission models of communication. The traditional scientific literacy model
posits a deficit model of communication that reiterates the ‘‘loading dock’’ problem
(Bauer, Allum, & Miller, 2007; Nisbet & Scheufele, 2009). While recent science
communication scholarship critiques the deficit model, the field still emphasizes the
importance of message framing and the role of media (especially new media) in
making science information relevant and understandable to public audiences (Illes
et al., 2010; Nisbet & Mooney, 2007; Schweizer, Thompson, Teel, & Bruyere, 2009).
Given science communication’s emphasis on message frames, researchers largely
articulate the importance of frames sensitive to social values and local contexts (Nisbet
& Scheufele, 2009; Norton, 1998; Schweizer et al., 2009). Communication between
researchers and stakeholders that is respectful of the diverse perspectives that
stakeholders bring to collaborations is more likely to result in meaningful partnerships
(Dewulf et al., 2007; Norton, 1998). Nisbet and Scheufele emphasize the importance of
understanding ‘‘an intended audience’s existing values, knowledge, and attitudes, their
interpersonal and social contexts, and their preferred media sources and commu-
nication channels’’ (2009, p. 1767). The field of science communication tends to focus
on the interplay between researchers and stakeholders in mediated systems of
communication (Nisbet & Scheufele, 2009). Science communication research may be
especially useful in situations where relevant scientific information has already been
produced, but needs to be communicated in ways that build trust, overcome language
barriers, and shift values (Hart & Calhoun, 2010).
Environmental communication faces the challenge of linking media studies and
collaboration/engagement research. It is one thing to understand what kind of
discourses circulate in popular culture; it is another to understand how this impacts
decision making in particular contexts. Bridging these two areas calls for a deeper
understanding of how attitudes about landscape change, sustainability, and resource
management may be cultivated through a variety of print and online media.
Approaches that merge these two areas must remain sensitive to information needs
and cultural values, as outlined in our section on K l A. Knowledge about attitudes,
Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science 33
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values, and concerns can play an instrumental role in anticipating responses to changes
in laws, policies, and social frameworks. Merging knowledge from science commu-
nication with sustainability science and environmental communication can help us
better understand critical boundaries between science and the general public. This
integration is instrumental to knowledge diffusion, application, and transfer, but it
poses challenges for environmental communication scholarship for a number of
intellectual and institutional reasons. By virtue of our training, environmental
communication scholars as a group tend to understand issues of power and voice.
At risk of marginalizing environmental communication, sustainability science must
understand that environmental communication research is not public relations.
Similarly, our role in the research process is far more critical and engaged than to serve
as editors of papers or experts for improving scientific information transmission. The
discipline has long since departed from the fantasy that there are formulaic means by
which social support can automatically be achieved. Environmental communication
scholars can provide a sophisticated view of communication, language, and power to
complement science communication’s focus on information transmission systems.
These fields, taken together, promise to improve democratic decision making.
Overlapping Frameworks, Shared Intersections
Environmental communication and sustainability science have much to offer each
other. In addition to the three areas outlined, the two fields share other commonalities.
Sustainability science’s understanding of sustainability issues as urgent problems
mirrors Cox’s articulation of environmental communication as a crisis discipline (Cox,
2007). There is an increased understanding that SESs are ‘‘messy,’’ that is, interlocking
social and ecological problems frequently include multiple, often competing issues
(Alessa, Kliskey, & Altaweel, 2009). Mirroring this recognition is a body of scholarship
in environmental health (of people and ecosystems) that characterizes sustainability
projects as ‘‘tame’’ or ‘‘wicked,’’ that is, they are ‘‘illusive or difficult to pin down and
influenced by a constellation of complex social and political factors, some of which
change during the process of solving the problem’’ (Kreuter, De Rosa, Howze, &
Baldwin, 2004, p. 442). Environmental communication has a tradition of reflexivity and
critique of rationality in knowledge formation and of analyzing how reality has been
constructed in ways that privilege the human functioning to the detriment of ecological
functioning (Cantrill & Oravec, 1996). Because discourse within the public realm
constructs habitual and pathological realities, it may also be used to deconstruct and re-
construct alternative realities (Ivie, 2001) that align ecological and socio-cultural
functioning. This understanding is pertinent to the conceptualization of SES as messy,
‘‘wicked’’, and often contradictory.
The potential for integration and cross-fertilization is tremendous. In the following
section, we describe efforts to integrate environmental communication into Maine’s
Sustainability Solutions Initiative (SSI) and initial outcomes of this integration.
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Environmental communication has played a key role in SSI since the project’s outset,
and we illustrate some complexities and benefits of this collaboration.
Lessons Learned: Environmental communication in Maine’s Sustainability
Solutions Initiative
Since 2009, we have had the opportunity to work with colleagues from over 20
disciplines through the SSI at the University of Maine. The SSI (http://www.umaine.
edu/sustainabilitysolutions/index.htm) grew out of a multiyear collaboration of
faculty from numerous disciplines. Our K l A team has played a central role in the
SSI’s development, and the SSI recognizes the centrality of environmental commu-
nication to its research mission. The K l A team consists of social scientists from
environmental communication, psychology, economics, anthropology, human
ecology, law, and policy, and its primary research focuses on ways in which different
stakeholders and communities interact with the research process. We seek to
understand how collaboration and other forms of engagement can help overcome
obstacles to K l A processes. We develop models of collaboration and test theories
on the ways in which individual- and group-level processes link individual
stakeholders and community actions and how the research process influences and
is influenced by these collaborations.
The SSI seeks to transform Maine’s capacity for addressing the challenges of
developing a sustainable future that aligns with the values, needs, and desires of the
state’s communities. Central to this transformation is a focus on problem-driven
research that strives to identify and implement solutions. Currently, the SSI is funded
in part by a five-year $20 million grant from NSF under the Experimental Program to
Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). A core underpinning to SSI’s approach is
the shared characterization of problems through engagement with stakeholders and
communities. SSI has adopted a portfolio approach to identify alternative scenarios
and characterize their uncertainty; understand the interplay among diverse systems;
create a more nuanced understanding of complexity; and ensure responsive
identification of limits, thresholds, and unintended consequences for Maine’s future.
The project’s ultimate goal is to create meaningful solutions.
Environmental communication research has influenced how SSI conceptualizes
problems and solutions. In spring 2009, we conducted a survey of municipal agents
to understand how this important group of stakeholders characterizes sustainability
problems. We also sought to learn how municipalities would like to collaborate with
us. We are learning that university researchers and municipal agents conceptualize
problems and solutions in strikingly different ways and that we prefer different
collaboration strategies (Hutchins, Lindenfeld, Silka, Leahy, & Bell, 2011). This
research is vital to SSI’s overall effort, because without a clear understanding of not
only what problems people face but also how they conceptualize them, the SSI risks
Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science 35
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approaching collaborations with frames that do not resonate with our stakeholders
and trying to work with them in ways that are unproductive. Other research has
sought to understand the complexity of engaging in transdisciplinary collaboration
from the vantage point of researchers. To this end, we have conducted extensive
interviews with SSI team members to understand what K l A means to them, what
concerns they have about engaged research, and how we might overcome obstacles to
transdisciplinary collaboration.
Our experiences led to a number of recognitions that deserve attention in this
essay. The collaboration between biophysical and social scientists has proven not only
more complex but also more rewarding than anticipated. While many biophysical
colleagues initially thought of communication research as public relations, perspec-
tives have changed over time. One biophysical colleague, Gayle Zydlewski, speaking
on the benefits of interdisciplinarity, summed it up when she said to the SSI team,
‘‘I learned that social scientists are not our outreach coordinators.’’ SSI increasingly
appreciates what environmental communication research offers to our collective
efforts. Barthes wrote that:
[i]nterdisciplinary work is not a peaceful operation: it begins effectively when thesolidarity of the old disciplines breaks down�a process made more violent, perhaps,by the jolts of fashion�to the benefit of a new object and a new language, neither ofwhich is in the domain of those branches of knowledge that one calmly sought toconfront. (1977, p. 155)
Building trust and continually finding new ways to articulate what we bring to the
collective sustainability science enterprise helps our project to identify strategies for
collaborating. This process is slow and cannot be rushed. It involves many meetings
and face-to-face time, and humor plays an important role in building bridges and
creating a common language, two of the key characteristics of successful inter-
disciplinary collaboration (Thompson, 2007). Setting the problem at an altitude that
rests above the ability of any one discipline ensures that the collective actions of the
group override the dominance of any one researcher. Graduate students are a crucial
force in breaking down walls, as they are in the position to approach some of our more
established colleagues and bring fresh energy and new language to the conversation.
As environmental communication researchers, we have learned that it is important
for us to read more deeply in the fields of our respective biophysical partners. We find
ourselves*at the faculty and graduate student level alike*signing up for courses in
areas foreign to our training. The ability to show that we value our collaborators’
knowledge and experience has helped us to gain trust and standing, and enabled us to
have conversations about what our work can contribute. This work requires new
tools that no one discipline can design on its own. Our evolving tool box has
integrated concepts and theories from social psychology, economics, organizational
studies, natural resource management, and other fields with which we have
intersected. In particular, we have found the work of scholars like Elinor Ostrom
to be inspirational in that they transcend any particular disciplinary framework and
call for local models to address local solutions (Ostrom & Cox, 2010).
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The K l A focus makes this research tangible to us in a way that our previous
research often did not. Being involved with diverse groups across Maine heightens
our awareness of people’s needs and creates a deeper sense of respect for what
communities face. This, in turn, makes us feel a deep sense of ethical commitment to
our work. Sustainability problems involve diverse needs, opportunities, assets, and
complications. They also involve funding agency timelines, restrictions, outputs, and
outcomes. Likewise, universities operate within their own unique spheres that create
roadblocks and opportunities unique to higher education. Involving environmental
communication in our K l A research has helped us to conceptualize our work as a
continual process of alignment where we consider these various needs, assets, and
complexities on an ongoing basis and iteratively cycle back to modify our approach.
This work reminds us that research intervenes and changes relationships. There are
deep stakes in the work we are doing. Many of our team conversations revolve around
issues of ethics and considerations of how our research practices and products affect
groups and individuals outside of our research circle. These reflexive conversations
and recognitions are crucially important to sciences that want to remain relevant and
make a positive impact in the world.
Concluding Thoughts, Future Directions
The development of sustainability science will be greatly strengthened by
integrating environmental communication. We have outlined the advantages of
this integration. We conclude by considering how environmental communication
research can benefit from this relationship. Integrating with sustainability science
means that environmental communication works in collaboration with other
disciplines. As we have learned through our own experiences, interdisciplinary
collaboration is hard, but sustainability work is even harder, as it involves long-
term collaborations with communities, cross-campus colleagues, and stakeholders.
Environmental communication stands to benefit from intersecting with sustain-
ability science in that it can be part of a larger, transdisciplinary endeavor focused
on solving problems.
Integration provides new venues for interdisciplinary research funding. We note
NSF’s 2010 establishment of the science, engineering, and education for sustainability
(SEES) investment area that aims to promote research and education geared at
addressing the challenges of creating a sustainable future. SEES provides an
extraordinary opportunity for environmental communication researchers to become
involved in extramurally funded collaborative research. EPSCoR funding provides
opportunities for eligible states in the US to build capacity in areas like sustainability
science. While universities are struggling to find new resources, interdisciplinary
grant funding can provide important, exciting frameworks for rethinking how
institutions of higher education can and should work.
Just as sustainability science will face challenges in integrating environmental
communication, so, too, will environmental communication need to adapt.
Interdisciplinary research often results in multiauthored publications. Many
Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science 37
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communication departments lack experience evaluating collaborative research of
faculty for promotion and tenure. While the biophysical sciences have long utilized a
model where multiple papers constitute a dissertation, communication departments
have been slower to adjust to this framework. These institutional barriers are by no
means insurmountable, but they require thoughtful consideration of what can and
should be changed.
Many environmental communication scholars are comfortable engaging critically
with texts and discourse. Sustainability science requires us to move beyond
criticism to action and solutions. Identifying strategies for linking the sophisticated
critiques of science and scientific endeavors with productive engagement is
challenging. We recognize that not all scholars will want to be involved in engaged
research. As Sprain et al. write, ‘‘we do not assume that making a difference
motivates all communication scholars. If we are to make moves toward expanding
the difference-making capacities of our discipline, we must start by confronting the
reality that scholars may or may not choose to engage in research that makes a
difference’’ (2010, p. 212). Environmental communication scholars who want to
engage in research that makes a difference can find important places in
sustainability science research teams.
We conclude this article with a few caveats. It is not our intent to assert that all
environmental communication scholars should direct their efforts toward sustain-
ability science. Although there is much that environmental communication scholars
can offer to this field, not all areas of our scholarship lend themselves to this focus,
and environmental communication is clearly engaged on a variety of important
fronts other than sustainability science. Second, we recognize that there is a
continued need for critical analysis of the sustainability science enterprise. Our
own engagement with sustainability science reminds us that we must remain attuned
to the development of hierarchies and power differences across disciplines and within
sustainability science.
Regardless of these limitations, there is much to be gained by bringing
environmental communication into the evolving field of sustainability science.
Doing so will likely strengthen environmental communication in ways that are crucial
for addressing the sustainability problems of our era. There is an ethical opportunity
here. As Senecah notes ‘‘the ethical call is for EC folks to help each other apply our
diverse expertise, knowledge, and skills in whatever ways will productively get us
somewhere in addressing the EC crises of our era’’ (2007, p. 32). Engaging in
sustainability science is one meaningful way to engage in this ethical call.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and feedback on
previous versions of this article. This material is based on work supported by the
National Science Foundation award EPS-0904155 to Maine EPSCoR at the University
of Maine.
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Note
[1] We use the term K l A with some reservations. We believe that knowledge is only part of
what motivates action. Colleagues in the field of social psychology remind us that we should
focus on linking changes in behavior with action rather than concentrating on knowledge.
We use the concept of K l A in this essay because it is the concept that circulates in
sustainability science, but it is important to create a more refined understanding of how
action transpires.
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