18 pages., via online journal., This essay explores the different meanings of the 1960s’ pesticide controversy
as conveyed by the multiple representations of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
(1962). I argue that to understand the impact of Carson’s work on a heterogeneous audience in the early ’60s, we must move beyond an examination
of the book, Silent Spring, to consider its other media manifestations, as a
serialization for The New Yorker and as a television expose for “CBS Reports.” ´
Each conveyed a unique message stylized for the audience of that particular
media. This analysis demonstrates the problems and opportunities for scholars
attempting to gauge the influence of a book on the public understanding of
science. This argument also suggests that to understand the transition of
environmentalism from a grass-roots movement to near universal consensus,
we need to examine carefully the role of media in shaping divergent messages
for different audiences—a phenomenon that assisted in transforming local
environmental issues into a matter of national concern.
17 pages., Print ISSN: 0889-048X
Online ISSN: 1572-8366, Via online journal., Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times believers. In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States.
18 pages., via online journal., Stakeholder participation is a vital component of successful Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). SEA, an evaluation of environmental and sustainability consequences of strategic initiatives prior to their implementation, seeks to ensure that various stakeholder perspectives are considered early in the strategic decision-making process. However, once the implementation decisions are taken, are the stakeholders consulted with, or involved in, strategy implementation and
SEA follow-up? If so, how can participatory processes benefit delivery of strategies and follow-up? These questions remain largely unexplored due to the conventional focus on ex ante SEA and limited knowledge about SEA follow-up. This paper explores the role and potential of stakeholder participation processes in facilitating SEA follow-up in the case of a 20-year Pasquia-Porcupine Forest Management Plan (FMP), in Saskatchewan (Canada). It explores different forms of stakeholder participation in the FMP and SEA follow-up implementation and identifies the associated benefits for SEA follow-up.
14 pages., via online journal., Although the demand for organic food is growing globally, the mainstream consumption of organic food is far less. The present study attempts to understand the underlying reasons for consumer resistance toward consuming organic food using the theoretical framework of innovation resistance theory (IRT). The study further examines the association between different consumer barriers and purchase decisions (purchase intentions, ethical consumption intentions, and choice behaviour) at different levels of buying involvement and environmental concerns. The collected data, consisting of 452 consumers, were analyzed by structural equation modeling approach. The results showed that value barrier shared a negative association with purchase intentions and ethical consumption intentions. Ethical consumption and purchase intention were found to have a direct influence on choice behaviour. Additionally, the relationship between ethical consumption intention and choice behaviour is mediated by purchase intention. However, no significant differences have emerged based on the level of buying involvement and environment concerns. The findings of the study provide insight into public policymakers, marketers, suppliers, and consumer associations by enhancing their current understanding of buying behaviour of the growing organic food community.
12 pages., via online journal., Development of extension and outreach that effectively engage farmers in climate
change adaptation and/or mitigation activities can be informed by an improved understanding of farmers’ perspectives on climate change and related impacts. This research employed
latent class analysis (LCA) to analyze data from a survey of 4,778 farmers from 11 US Corn
Belt states. The research focused on two related research questions: (1) to what degree do
farmers differ on key measures of beliefs about climate change, experience with extreme
weather, perceived risks to agriculture, efficacy, and level of support for public and private adaptive and mitigative action; and (2) are there potential areas of common ground
among farmers? Results indicate that farmers have highly heterogeneous perspectives, and
six distinct classes of farmers are identified. We label these as the following: the concerned
(14%), the uneasy (25%), the uncertain (25%), the unconcerned (13%), the confident (18%),
and the detached (5%). These groups of farmers differ primarily in terms of beliefs about
climate change, the degree to which they had experienced extreme weather, and risk perceptions. Despite substantial differences on these variables, areas of similarity were discerned
on variables measuring farmers’ (1) confidence that they will be able to deal with increases
in weather variability and (2) support for public and private efforts to help farmers adapt to
increased weather variability. These results can inform segmented approaches to outreach that
target subpopulations of farmers as well as broader engagement strategies that would reach
wider populations. Further, findings suggest that strategies with specific reference to climate
change might be most effective in engaging the subpopulations of farmers who believe that
climate change is occurring and a threat, but that use of less charged terms such as weather
variability would likely be more effective with a broader range of farmers. Outreach efforts
that (1) appeal to farmers’ problem solving capacity and (2) employ terms such as “weather
variability” instead of more charged terms such as “climate change” are more likely to be
effective with a wider farmer audience.
10 pages., via online journal., Public engagement in collaborative natural resource management necessitates shared understanding and collaboration. Empathic perspective-taking is a critical facilitator of shared understanding and positive social interactions, such as collaboration. Yet there is currently little understanding about how to reliably generate empathic perspective-taking and collaboration, particularly in situations involving the unequal distribution of environmental resources or power. Here we examine how experiencing the loss or gain of social power influenced empathic perspective-taking and behavior within a computer-mediated scenario. Participants (n = 180) were randomly assigned to each condition: high resources, low resources, lose resources, gain resources. Contrary to our expectations, participants in the perspective-taking condition, specifically those who lost resources, also lost perspective taking and exhibited egoistic behavior. This finding suggests that resource control within the collaborative process is a key contextual variable that influences perspective-taking and collaborative behavior. Moreover, the observed relationship between perspective-taking and egoistic behavior within a collaborative resource sharing exercise suggests that when resource control or access is unequal, interventions to promote perspective-taking deserve careful consideration.
13 pages., via online journal., Many rice farmers decide to spray insecticides based on their perception of potential damage and losses caused by pest species. Farmers generally overestimate the seriousness of the rice leaf folder from visible damage and apply insecticides early, and therefore, changing perceptions may help reduce the perceived benefits of unnecessary spraying. Farmers in Long An province, Vietnam, were motivated to ‘test’ a heuristic or rule of thumb, ‘insecticide spraying for leaf folder control in the first 40 days after sowing is not needed’, by the distribution of carefully designed communication media materials. The media reached 97% of the farmers in the study sites. Leaflets, radio drama and posters had the most effective reach. Thirty-one months after the media introduction, the number of insecticide sprays dropped significantly from 3.35 sprays per farmer per season to 1.56. The proportion of farmers spraying at early and late tillering and booting stages was reduced from 59%, 84% and 85% to 0.2%, 19% and 30%, respectively. Those who did not use any insecticides increased from 1% to 32%. Correspondingly, farmers' perceptions of leaf folder damage as indicated in a belief index, decreased significantly from 11.25 to 7.62. The proportion of farmers who believed that leaf folders could cause losses was reduced from 70% to 25%, as did those who believed that early season spraying was required, from 77% to 23%, respectively. Farmers' insecticide spray frequencies and the belief index were significantly correlated and were not significantly different between farmers who had attended farmer field school training and those who had not. The cost (insecticide and labour) saving was the most important incentive for farmers to stop early season spraying as cited by 89% of the farmers. A survey of 12 other districts in Long An showed that 82% of the province's 210000 households were reached. About 20% had not applied any insecticides, 77% had stopped early season spraying and the average number of insecticide sprays was 1.6 (compared with 1.55 in study sites). The approach was readily adopted by extension in 15 provinces that launched their own programmes, extending to the whole Mekong Delta of 2 million farmer households.
5 pages., Article # 5IAW3, via online journal., A storytelling session was successful in raising awareness and understanding of the types of changes in weather patterns farmers are experiencing in Maine, what impacts those changes are having on their operations, and the changes farmers are making in response. Using an outreach approach rooted in farmer stories allowed us to bypass the controversy that often surrounds topics related to climate change. Likewise, focusing on the farmers' experiences and avoiding corrective statements during this introductory session resulted in productive dialogue. We recommend replicating this approach within different agricultural sectors to increase understanding of sector-specific risks and strategies for adaptation.
15 pages., via online journal., Jeju, an island in Korea, became a place to site wind turbines with an unusually high level of public acceptance. Based on interviews, media analyses, and policy research, we found that the collective memory of socio-economic deprivation enabled community engagement to matter to residents, the provincial government, and environmental activists. It was within socio-historically contextualized processes of articulating the vision of a “good” society that an actual form of community engagement, however inadequate it might appear to some, became relevant to stakeholders in a particular locality. We emphasize that community engagement in renewable energy governance does not have one but multiple and situated ways of mattering depending on local contexts.
19 pages., via online journal., The following study looks at how traditional, organic, cooperative farmers
starting a new farming cooperative in the US Southwest communicate
about their farming as a set of (sustainable) cultural practices. The study
draws on environmental communication theory, the theory of the
coordinated management of meaning, and Vandana Shiva’s three-tiered
economic model to construct a communication-based framework
through which to view farmers’ stories about sustainability. This
framework is productive, showing how some Nuevo Mexicano farmers
(and others) orient toward farming, sustenance, and human-nature
relationships through community, family, heritage, and education.
Moreover, in addition to a conceptualization of sustainability as specific
practices for nurturing and enduring in environments, communities, and
organizations/institutions, sustainability can be understood as
embedded ecocultural and historical experience with cross-cultural
parallels in land-based communities. This study advances the ethical
duty of environmental communication to better understand the ways in
which environmental discourse and ecocultural and material realities are
imbricated, as well as the call for such discursive study to be grounded
in phenomenological experience of the natural world.
