Social Awareness & Communication Strategies

concerning Environmental Issues

Successful Case Studies

Umberto Mezzacapo senior researcher at

Ces.Co.Com
Center for advanced studies on consumption and communication
University of Bologna
 What's Environmental communication

Environmental communication is the pragmatic and

constitutive vehicle for our understanding of the
environment as well as our relationships to the natural
world; it is the symbolic medium that we use in
constructing environmental problems and negotiating
society's different responses to them
(R. Cox 'Environmental communication and the public sphere', 2010)
 Environmental Communication:
you haven't heard about it, it didn'thappen

Fish or men could die, swimming in the seas and

in the rivers could cause disease, there may be
no more oil at the petrol stations and the
average temperature could rise or fall: as long
as this is not communicated, there will be no
social effects
(N.Luhmann – 'Ecological Communication')
 What does communication have to do with
nature or the study of environmental problems?

Simply put, whatever else 'nature' and 'the

environment' may be, they are also words and
therefore ideas.
And ideas have consequences
Environmental communication: what its purpose?

Environmental communication is pragmatic: it educates,

alerts, persuades, mobilizes and helps to solve
environmental problems
Environmental Communication has clearly to do with Environment

Infographics summarize information and easy-to-read interpretation

Why environmental communication is needed?
Apocalyps is closer than we think:
“a billion and a half more people are using and abusing the
environment. In the coming three decades this number will
approximately double....”

Source: OECD Environmental Outlook (2012)

Why environmental communication is needed?
“If we continue our wasteful ways by 2050 almost 4 billion
people will live in area experiencing severe water stress....”
In other words: where's my lake?
 Why an effective and incisive environmental
communication is needed?
“If there's no action on climate change before
2012, that's too late. What we do now will determine our
future. This is the defining moment”
(Rajendra Pachauri, director of the UN IPCC)
Why environmental communication is needed?
 Why environmental communication is needed?
Although the public's concern for the environment is significant,
considerable differences exist among individuals over how
society should solve environmental problems
Global Warming, for example:
A poll conducted by the WWF in the U.S.A. found that 74% of the
public felt that the problem of warming of the Earth's
atmosphere was either 'somewhat serious' or 'extremely
serious'
Differences were revealed, however, when
people were asked what actions the U.S.A.
should take to reduce the major cause of
global warming
 Why environmental communication is needed?
Respondents were split almost evenly between those who favored
government regulation (37%), those who supported free market
options (32%), and those who felt they lacked enough
information to choose (30%)
The complexity of issues such as global warming makes the finding
of a public consensus difficult.
Different voices (climate scientists, Americans for Balanced Energy
Choices, a group backed by the coal industry, and environmental
groups such as the Sierra Club, enter the
public debate, widely divergent viewpoints
compete for our support
 Environmental communication: the stakeholders

1. Citizens and community groups

2. Environmental groups
3. Scientists
4. Corporations and business lobbysts
5. Anti-environmentalist groups
6. Media and environmental journalism
7. Public officials and regulators
 Environmental communication: what's about

Information 50' – 60'

Information and Education 70'-80'

Information, Education
and Communication 90'- currently
 It's about Communication, which is rapidly changing as paradygm

Communication as we meant it until 90s is turning into a many-to-many

communication, instead of a top-down, one-to-many communication
Self(ie) mass of communications

From being in the Internet to be the Internet

 Environmental communication and environmentalism

John Muir preservation campaign to protect Yosemite Valley

(1870s and 1880s, California – U.S.A.)
Environmental protection has to do with our health
The atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan:
Devasted and polluted environmental resources can affect human
health for ages
 Social/Symbolic constructions of environment:
Public health and urban pollution

In her eloquent book 'Silent spring' (1962) she pointed out the
consequences for human health from insecticides like DDT

She warned that modern agribusiness had armed itself with the
most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turining them
against the insects it has also turned them against the earth
 Advocacy campaign
 The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, activated
20 million Americans from all walks of life and
is widely credited with launching the modern
environmental movement.

 The passage of the landmark Clean Air Act,

Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and
many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed.

 Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with over
22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the
environmental movement.

 More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year,
making it the largest civic observance in the world.
Risk communication: Chernobyl, the first ecological accident
on global scale, the first important case of environmental
communication
On the 26th of April 1986, h. 1.26: a reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Plant blows up
On the 29th of April 1986, h. 21.00: a brief news is issued by a soviet newscast
(at that moment in northern Europe radioactivity was already wide-spread)
Death-toll: 2 victims (according to TASS) – 2000 victims (according to AP)

No coeherence - No transparency – No effectiveness

Chernobyl: (incoherent) technical risk communication
Vegeteables and milk consumption were just proclaimed forbidden,
when the italian Civil Protection Minister Giuseppe Zamberletti declared:
«Situation is under control, the radiations have never been as 10 times as
normal values»
«Measures that have been taken are exaggerated.
I’m having a salade right now»
Felice Ippolito, member of technical-scientific committee
of Civil Protection Ministry

“It’s false that the radioactive cloud is below the limits of risk
to human health. There is a tolerable threshold. Even low
doses of radiation can trigger processes of mutagenesis,
causing cancer, leukemia, alterations that can shorten the life.”
LegAmbiente (Italian ecologist association)
Risk Communication - NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard
 Fukushima: a bottom-up risk communication

On 11 March 2011 Fukushima Nuclear

Power Plant was hit by the tsunami
triggered by the Tōhoku earthquake,
resulting in a meltdown of three of the
plant's six nuclear reactors.
Governement and Tepco failed in
communicating the actual risk
 Social/Symbolic constructions of environment

On the eve of the 21st century, activist Julia 'Butterfly' Hill (2002)
voiced a quite different view of humans' relationship with the
environment while she lived for two years high in the branches
of an ancient redwood tree (named Luna) to prevent loggers
from cutting it down circleoflife.org
 Social/Symbolic constructions of environment
Guerrilla gardening is the act of gardening on land that the
gardeners do not have the legal rights to utilize, such as
an abandoned site, an area that is not being cared for, or
private property.
 Social/Symbolic constructions of environment
Guerrilla gardening as a form of protest or direct action. This
practice has implications for land rights and land reform;
aiming to promote re-consideration of land ownership in
order to assign a new purpose or reclaim land that is
perceived to be in neglect or misused.
 Media and environmental journalism
Agenda-setting role (refers to the effect of media on the
public's perception of the salience or importance of
issues
Media often have discretion in choosing what events or
information to cover and also how to frame or package
a news story
 Media and environmental journalism
The concept of citizen journalism is based upon public citizens
"playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting,
analyzing, and disseminating news and information”.

 In 2005 was launched in France AgoraVox.

 It became shortly after the first participative journalism web site

in Europe.
 More than1 million users, the second news information source

after Le Figaro
Media and environmental journalism: space and time

World Info
Media and environmental journalism
Fred Pearce is an English author and journalist.
He is a science writer and has reported on
the environment, popular science and
development issues from 64 countries over
the past 20 years. He specializes in global
environmental issues, including water and
climate change

0
Risk and scientific communication, advocacy campaign
Risk communication – Advocacy campaign
Media and environmental journalism
 Public participation in environmental decision making
Participatory budget in Capannori: a bottom up governance
Crowdfunding:
Participation, Social marketing advocacy campaign
 Risk communication – Advocacy campaign
Through toxic tours, CBE(Communities for a
Better Environment) increases public
awareness of the low-income communities
that are most directly impacted by multiple
sources of toxics and pollution. The tours
include visits to oil refineries, ports, metal
recycling facilities and other sources that are
linked to asthma, birth defects and cancer

You will hear personal stories

of local residents
struggling to hold industry
and government officials
accountable for toxic
pollution in their
neighborhoods
 Ironic and funny:
is the message this way more effective?
Ironic campaigns designed by
GreenPeace to promote eco-
save bulb...and to protect the
forests
How to creatively communicate the environment :
Mister wind
Environmental communication pushed by Green consumers
Green consumption as political consumerism

Green consumers have enough information to

BOYCOTT or BUYCOTT brands
Green consumers pick up informations on enterpriese behaviour and act
consequently, rewarding or punishing a company by “economically voting”,
expressed through the daily shopping preferences
Green consumers boycott companies having a
heavy environmental and social impact
 Instead, green consumers buycott, reward
companies having a green approach and policy
Green Marketing: by means of green consumption one
can save the world, meanwhile taking care of health
Green Marketing: by means of green consumption one
can save the world, meanwhile taking care of health
However, quite often green marketing is only greenwashing

 This ad is misleading. Only part of the pen is biodegradable, for one thing.

 Secondly, the pen will never be able to degrade since our waste stream
ends up in landfills which simply do not promote proper decomposition.

 Claiming of being biodegradable (which usually should say compostable)

means manipulate peoples' lack of knowledge about product lifecycle in
terms of how our waste stream actually works.
 Environmental communication and civic engagement:
Terra dei Fuochi
(Effective) Communication on this matter produced two different consequences:
- it succeded in stimulating social awreness and civic engagement
- however, once it reached mainstream and digital media, a national widespread
misunderstanding have been heavily affecting local agriculture business
 'Cuochi non fuochi'
Campania campaigned back to restore its reputation
Unconventional socio-environmental campaign

Active citizenship
Guerrilla cleaning
Social awreness
(e)-Communication, civic engagement
and social awareness
Collecitve and shared knowledge turns into
Green activism and Prosumerism
 Open Data and Open government as
environmental communication
 By taking an Open Data approach, organisations and institutions can:
 become more transparent and accountable, reducing mistrust in the
data, the conclusions, and in themselves.
 stimulate innovation, which is essential for rapid societal or
technological change.
 improve public communication, by allowing and enabling a wide range
of approaches to communicating scientific data and conclusions.
 help politicians to build the will to make required changes, by giving
them reliable and transparent data to back up their arguments
 Environmental communication
350: a clear and defined objective
 350.org is building a global climate movement.
 online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are
coordinated by a global network active in over 188 countries.

The number 350 means climate safety: to preserve a livable planet, scientists
tell us we must reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current
level of 400 parts per million to below 350 ppm.
 Environmental journalism as a way to get
citizens taking action: grist.org
 Grist.org goal is to get people talking, thinking, and taking
action.
 Grist.org reaches a community of more than 2 million
people a month.
 Sixty-five percent of them do something based on grist.org
content.
Where does the stuff you buy (and throw) come from?
'The story of stuff' (just think about it)
Symbolic action and the importance of a
trustworthy testimonial
 Art for the environment
Creativity of the artist Bogdanovic Jovana to make
people aware of Global Warming
How to bring about and communicate eco-culture by
dematerializng the economy: the Sharing economy
We all have the right and duty, as citizens, to know,
understand, participate in what concerns us as
community
We all are stakeholders of such community called
human species
We all are, somehow and at some extent,
environmental communicator
 Thank you for your attention
Umberto Mezzacapo
Senior Researcher at
Ces.Co.Com
Center for advanced studies on consumption and communication
Department of Sociology and Economic Laws
Alma Mater Studiorum
University of Bologna
Umberto.mezzacapo2@unibo.it www.cescocom.eu