🌿Wild Ones #80: Environmental Communication Digest

Sustainable Linguistics + Animal Music + Climbers for Bat Conservation + Robin Wall Kimmerer on Re-story-ation + more!

Aug 29, 2023

Portunua pelagicus (Blue Crab) (1737–1770) vintage sea animal illustration by Luigi Balugani. Original public domain image from Yale Center for British Art.

Hi everyone, welcome back to Wild Ones, a (usually) weekly digest by me, Gavin Lamb, about news, ideas, research, and tips in environmental communication. If you’re new, welcome! You can read more about why I started Wild Ones here. Sign up here to get these digests in your inbox:

I just returned from a fun and enlightening workshop at the University of Helsinki on the topic Sustainable linguistics: theories and methods. I really enjoyed connecting with other scholars from a wide range of specializations in language and communication research exploring issues at the intersection of multilingualism, language policy, ecolinguistics, environmental communication and sustainability.

The concept of ‘sustainability’ is admittedly a problematic term. In their 2018 book The Politics in the Anthropocene, for example, John Dryzek and Jonathan Pickering (both environmental political scientists at the University of Canberra) write that “Many governments and businesses have embraced the language of sustainability while doing precious little to restrain their ecologically harmful practices.” Here, they raise concerns about how corporate communication tactics use ‘greenwashing,’ raising questions about whether the term sustainability has run its course, already having been ‘co-opted’ by interests seeking not to sustain a liveable planet, but to sustain business-as-usual. The authors go on to ask:

“…does this mean that the idea of sustainability should be discarded? Not necessarily. The risk of co-option also holds for other values such as justice and democracy, which have been marshaled to serve innumerable unjust and undemocratic projects over time…The risk of co-option is likely to be present whenever a social value is open to contestation; powerful actors can seek to bend the domain of contestation to suit themselves” (Dryzek and Pickering, 2018, p. 85)

I think this is a good point, and it’s a reason why I argue in my presentation that those of us exploring how to communicate sustainability in a way that works outside of and against its co-option might ‘reclaim’ the term and fill it with new meaning. You might recall me writing here on Wild Ones about an earlier (and much more ‘half baked) version of this idea to ‘reclaim sustainability,’ an idea which I presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics conference in Portland, Oregon this past March. But the workshop in Helsinki gave me a chance to bake my ideas up quite a bit more—and hopefully not overcook them (okay that was the last baking reference)—especially with the great feedback I received from the other attendees at the workshop. At the very least, I think, the term sustainability offers a useful ‘boundary object’ that people with a wide range of interests in language and communication can gather around. This suggests to me that it is still worth it for environmental communicators to take it up, especially considering it “doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon” as the organizers of an Environmental Humanities symposium on ‘Reclaiming Sustainability?’ put it to the audience last year.

At the same time, as Dryzek and Pickering (2018) also argue, “…efforts to revitalize sustainability discourse should not crowd out exploration of alternatives to sustainability, such as the Latin American idea of buen vivir (living well)” (p. 86). In the context of Hawai‘i, where I did my undergraduate and graduate studies, the Hawaiian concept of aloha ‘āina offers an important alternative to sustainability. As Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio recently explained in an interview on the wonderful For The Wild podcast describing efforts to “Reclaim Aloha” in Hawai‘i, the word aloha, like sustainability, is often co-opted by an unsustainable tourism industry in the State of Hawai‘i. The work of “reclaiming Aloha” for Osorio therefore means recognizing how “someone is benefiting from this very narrow vision of aloha in the same way that someone has benefited from this very narrow vision of ‘ohana [family], of community, of nation…there are still so many people benefiting from this watered-down policed version of Aloha, it continues to fuel the tourist economy.” Instead, reclaiming aloha from a colonial and capitalist history of co-option will mean ‘returning the word to the longer phrase, alohaʻāina’: “In the same way that Aloha asks us to recognize each other, it also asks us to recognize our relationship to the ʻĀina, to the land, to that which feeds us, that which is around us.”

I’m also inspired by similar efforts to reclaim sustainability, like those of Lesley Green and Nikiwe Solomon at the Environmental Humanities South, University of Cape Town, South Africa. In their project, ‘Sustainability as Pedagogy in South Africa’ they call for ‘generative dissent’ and ask, “Can sustainability discourses be implemented without being captured by the status quo?” and “What dogmas about economy, personhood, earth and knowledge must be challenged?”

These are some of the important guiding questions for me as I think about how my research might offer some small contribution to the wider debates taking shape around various calls to reclaim, reject, or find alternatives to sustainability in environmental communication. This will be a topic I plan to come back to from time to time in the coming months in this newsletter. But I’m curious to hear how you, dear readers, are using, or reclaiming, the concept of sustainability? Or perhaps what alternatives to sustainability have inspired you in your own life and work?

📚 What I’m reading

Language and Sustainable Development, edited by Lisa J. McEntee-Atalianis and Humphrey Tonkin. Springer (2023) (open access).

“Despite the legacy of the UN with respect to promoting multilingualism for social and educational development, language has been conspicuously absent in recent major global development initiatives of the UN, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”
– from the chapter: “Sustainable Multilingual Education,” by Francis M. Hult (2023, p. 55)

🎧 What I’m listening to

S4E05: Animal Music with Martin Ullrich, on “The Animal Turn” podcast. I finally started listening to this wonderful podcast, and looking forward to exploring the different seasons. Here is a short description of this episode:

“In this episode Claudia talks to musicologist Martin Ullrich about animals and music. Together they touch on the multiple ways in which music and animals intersect from how animals inspire human music, to how animals make and listen to music, and the ethics of more-than-human musical encounters. They find that the focus on animals and music destabilizes anthropocentric understandings of both culture and aesthetics.”

🔍 Tools, Resources & Opportunities I’m exploring

What is ‘Sustainable’ Development?: “A quick guide to the history of a malleable concept, and what it can teach us about creating a sustainable future.” This is actually an old Medium piece I wrote way back in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. It’s missing quite a bit of the ‘history,’ such as the origins of the term in 19th century German forestry management, but I’ve been referring back to it recently to remind me of some of the more recent events and ideas behind the emergence of sustainable development.
Just transition framework from Climate Justice Alliance

JT Framework Design: Wisdom of Frontline communities and leaders with the support of Movement Generation: “We offer this framework as a humble point of departure for folks interested in building collective vision and action towards Ecological Justice that does not separate humans from nature, or social equity from ecological integrity.”

📰 News, Events & Opportunities

New global biodiversity fund to restore nature worldwide by 2030 officially launches: “Targets include about 20% of funds to support Indigenous and local action to protect and conserve biodiversity and at least 36% of the fund’s resources to support the most vulnerable people, small island developing states, and least developed countries. Some human rights and environmental activists are calling for more contributions needed to operationalize the fund and actions to allocate funds immediately.”

Academic Job: Assistant Professor in Environmental Communication (Deadline October 2)
Online Event: Eco-Swaraj: Pluriversal Pathways out of Global Crises (Sept 4).

“Are there practices, concepts and frameworks that are pathways to a sustainable and equitable future? If yes, what needs to be done to make the transition towards such a future? This presentation will look at a Pluriverse of such alternatives. A framework of radical transformation emerging in India called Eco-swaraj, or Radical Ecological Democracy, will be presented in detail. Other similar radical approaches from around the world will be described in brief, and the commonalities within this pluriverse brought out.”

U.S. Commits to 3 Steps to Save Gulf of Mexico Whale (side note: I really appreciate EarthJustice’s legal explainers on wildlife conservation and other environmental issues!)

📚 Research

The strength and content of climate anger. By Thea Gregersen, Gisle Andersen, Endre Tvinnereim. In Global Environmental Change. (Sept, 2023).
Anger is most powerful emotion by far for spurring climate action, study finds: “Link to climate activism is seven times stronger for anger than it is for hope, say Norwegian researchers”: “The study, which asked 2,000 Norwegian adults how they felt about the climate crisis, found the link to activism was seven times stronger for anger than it was for hope.” By Ajit Niranjan in the Guardian.
- If the topic of emotion in environmental activism is of interest, you might also check out my post on the keyword ‘environmental rage’ from June this year.
Climbers for Bat Conservation: creating a citizen science program in Red River Gorge Kentucky. By Emily E. Gross, Morgan E. Siebka, Robert A. Schorr, Jennifer N. Solomon, and Shawn K. Davis. In Frontiers in Communication:

“Rock-climbing biologists along with recreational climber information can provide route-specific information on hard-to-reach locations where bats may reside…As rock climbing gains popularity, there are new opportunities to learn about bat ecology. Communication through collaborations between rock climbers and biologists may be key to understanding bat population changes and how bats use cliff systems.”

Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling. By Jamie L. Jones (2023). The University of North Carolina Press. Here’s a twitter thread from the author providing an interesting overview of the book:

“I don’t know if we should have that discussion now”: Negotiating procedural frames in collaborative governance of natural resources. By Lars Hallgren, Hanna Bergeå, Emily Montgomerie, and Lotten Westberg. In Language and Dialogue:

“Stakeholders who have very concrete problems in common–for example, how to deal with agriculture crop raiding cranes, high mortality of domestic reindeer due to predator attacks or optimizing biodiversity and log production in forestry–need to sort out these issues in knowledge efficient and democratic procedures….In this paper, we pay attention to how doubtfulness about procedural frames is articulated and negotiated in conversations in collaborative governance about natural resource management in Sweden.”

Environmental communication for expert audiences - experimenting three approaches. By Johanna Jämsä, Vilma Sandström, Jani Holopainen, Sirkku Juhola, Tuomo Kalliokoski, Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki. In Applied Environmental Education & Communication (July 2023):

“We studied three novel approaches in environmental science communication for experts: gamification, virtual reality, and art-based scenario workshops and analyze participants’ perceptions through qualitative interviews and a survey. Four dimensions emerged from the interviews: enjoyment, usability, sociability, and learning that were found to be important for scientific communication.”

Promising a Greener Paris: Anne Hidalgo’s Framing of Environmental Issues in Her Mayoral Campaigns. By Lindsey Meeks in Environmental Communication (June 2023):

“While scholarship has explored how candidates discuss environmental issues…these candidates did not center their campaigns on the environment. This study examines a candidate’s campaign who prioritized the environment: Anne Hidalgo and her successful 2014 and 2020 mayoral elections in Paris. As the first study to systematically and quantitatively content analyze Hidalgo’s messages, this study can assess if and how she created cohesive frames across her campaign websites, brochures, and social media posts.”

💡 Ideas

Can a New Genre of Eco-Thrillers Inspire Climate Action?
“Fighting the apocalypse is a timeworn movie trope. But in an era of environmental catastrophe, some filmmakers are creating more down-to-earth heroes.” (Aug. 22, 2023)
Understanding time may be the key to the race against climate change. Ruth Ogden, in The Conversation (July 2023): “Metaphors for time, such as “keep moving forwards”, are not universal, which means you can’t create a global public messaging system. Time feels different depending on who you are, where you come from and what you happen to be doing. While many people are motivated to engage in environmentally friendly behaviour, we need to frame time in a more informed and nuanced way if we want more people to change.”
The race to replace derogatory place names: It’s an opportunity for frank conversations about reckoning with the legacies of trauma. In Grist (Aug 29, 2023).
MIT PhD Candidate Steven Gonzalez on Indigenous futurist science fiction: The HASTS PhD candidate describes his new book, “Sordidez,” a science fiction novella on rebuilding, healing, and indigeneity following civil war and climate disaster. (August 21, 2023).
As Maui Begins to Recover, Travelers Must Help Rebuild: If you have visited Maui in the past, or plan to travel there in the future, know that you too have a responsibility. By Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua in Condé Nast Traveler.

The world is burning. Who can convince the comfortable classes of the radical sacrifices needed? “Simone Weil’s life illustrates the capacity to give up the things we feel we’re owed – such as a carbon-intensive consumer-driven lifestyle.” By Justine Toh in the Guardian.
Carl Sagan testifying before U.S. Congress in 1985 on climate change (video)

🗃️ From the Archive

“A probiotic approach involves using life to manage life…Often probiotic approaches use keystone species, or species with disproportionate agency relative to their ecological abundance, to manage ecosystems. Probiotic enthusiasts tend to stress the importance of biological abundance and diversity for delivering the resilience of their target system— from the body to the farm to the nature reserve…”
– Jamie Lorimer, in The Probiotic Planet (2020).

💬 Quote I’m thinking about

“Somebody far wiser than I said: “you know what the most effective communication technology ever devised by man is? Everyone always says it must be the internet or the printing press, but I think the answer is: the story.” We are hard-wired for story I think: we remember stories, we fill in between the lines in a way that stories leave us open to create relationships with a narrative. And I think stories are a way of weaving relationships. The other thing that I find powerful about stories, especially after years of writing only technical peer reviewed scientific articles where no story is allowed, is that stories embrace the intellect, physical sense, emotion, and spirit. It’s so holistic. We remember in these powerful ways because each part of our being has been touched. Gary Nabhan has said, as we try to heal the earth with restoration, with ecological restoration, that’s well and good but what we really need to do is re-story-ation. We need to tell ourselves a different story about our relationship to place. That’s where I think creation stories, either from antiquity or the creation stories we are in the process of writing today about our relationship to place, really matter. They can become a compass for us.”
—Robin W. Kimmerer, in an interview with Edge Effects podcast on ‘The Stories and Languages of Home’

Thanks so much as always for your interest in my work, and if you found this digest useful, please consider sharing with others who might find it interesting too😊 I'd also love to hear from you. Leave a comment to let me know what you think about this digest, what areas of environmental communication you’re involved in/most interest you, or anything you’d like to see more of in Wild Ones:)

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