Breaking Boundaries

Description

Breaking Boundaries analyzes efforts made by communities and policy makers around the world to push beyond conventional approaches to environmental decision making to enhance public acceptance, sustainability, and the impact of those decisions in local contexts. The current political climate has generated uncertainty among citizens, industry interests, scientists, and other stakeholders, but by applying concepts from various perspectives of environmental communication and deliberative democracy, this book offers a series of lessons learned for both public officials and concerned citizens. The contributors offer a broader understanding of how individuals and groups can get involved effectively in environmental decisions through traditional formats as well as alternative approaches ranging from leadership capacity building to social media activity to civic technology.
List of Illustrations

Introduction: From Public Participation to Community Engagement—and Beyond
Kathleen P. Hunt, Susan Senecah, Gregg B. Walker, and Stephen P. Depoe

Opening Reflections

1. Health, the Environment, and Sustainability: Emergent Communication Lessons Across Highly Diverse Public Participation Activities
Linda Silka, Bridie McGreavy, and David D. Hart

Section I. Exploring Dimensions of Participation Within Policy Frameworks

2. Listening and Learning: Stakeholder Views of Participation and Communication in Forest Planning
Gregg B. Walker, Steve Daniels, Sharon Timko, Carmine Lockwood, and Susan Hansen

3. Rethinking Public Participation: The Case of Public Land Management in the American West
Matthew McKinney

4. Speaking of Place: Analysis of Place-Based Discourse in Participatory Decision Making
Colene J. Lind

5. Cultural Discourses of Public Participation: Insights for Democratic Design and Energy System Transformation
Lydia Reinig and Leah Sprain

6. The Radical Potential of Public Participation Processes: Using Indecorous Voice and Resistance to Expand the Scope of Public Participation
Kathleen P. Hunt, Nicholas S. Paliewicz, and Danielle Endres

Section II. Expanding Pathways of Community Engagement

7. Advancing Practical Theory in Environmental Communication: A Phronetic Analysis of Environmental Participation and Dialogue in New Zealand
Giles Dodson and Anna Palliser

8. Toward Communicative Space: A Maritime Agora of Backrooms and Thoroughfares
Chui-Ling Tam

9. Rare’s Conservation Campaigns: Community Decision Making and Public Participation in Global Contexts
Sarah D. Upton, Carlos A. Tarin, Stacey K. Sowards, and Kenneth C. C. Yang

10. Fracking, the Elsipogtog First Nation, and Disruptive Public Participation: The Role of Images in Amplifying Outrage on Twitter
Molly Simis-Wilkinson and Jill E. Hopke

Section III. Enacting Horizons of Civic Technology

11. Sustainable Stories: Integrated Transmedia as an Ecology of Storymaking
Tyler Quiring

12. Eco-Apps and Environmental Public Participation
Eli Typhina

List of Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Activism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438477077
• Langue: English

Extrait

Breaking Boundaries
SUNY series in Environmental Governance: Local-Regional-Global Interactions

Peter Stoett and Owen Temby, editors
Breaking Boundaries
Innovative Practices in Environmental Communication and Public Participation
Edited by
Kathleen P. Hunt, Gregg B. Walker, and Stephen P. Depoe
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hunt, Kathleen P., editor | Walker, Gregg B., editor | Depoe, Stephen P., editor
Title: Breaking boundaries: Innovative practices in environmental communication and public participation / Kathleen P. Hunt, Gregg B. Walker, and Stephen P. Depoe, editors.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in Environmental Governance: Local-Regional-Global Interactions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019952340 | ISBN 9781438477053 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438477077 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Peter Stoett and Owen Temby
Introduction: From Public Participation to Community Engagement—and Beyond
Kathleen P. Hunt, Susan Senecah, Gregg B. Walker, and Stephen P. Depoe
O PENING R EFLECTIONS
1. Health, the Environment, and Sustainability: Emergent Communication Lessons Across Highly Diverse Public Participation Activities
Linda Silka, Bridie McGreavy, and David D. Hart
S ECTION I. E XPLORING D IMENSIONS OF P ARTICIPATION W ITHIN P OLICY F RAMEWORKS
2. Listening and Learning: Stakeholder Views of Participation and Communication in Forest Planning
Gregg B. Walker, Steve Daniels, Sharon Timko, Carmine Lockwood, and Susan Hansen
3. Rethinking Public Participation: The Case of Public Land Management in the American West
Matthew McKinney
4. Speaking of Place: Analysis of Place-Based Discourse in Participatory Decision Making
Colene J. Lind
5. Cultural Discourses of Public Participation: Insights for Democratic Design and Energy System Transformation
Lydia Reinig and Leah Sprain
6. The Radical Potential of Public Participation Processes: Using Indecorous Voice and Resistance to Expand the Scope of Public Participation
Kathleen P. Hunt, Nicholas S. Paliewicz, and Danielle Endres
S ECTION II. E XPANDING P ATHWAYS OF C OMMUNITY E NGAGEMENT
7. Advancing Practical Theory in Environmental Communication: A Phronetic Analysis of Environmental Participation and Dialogue in New Zealand
Giles Dodson and Anna Palliser
8. Toward Communicative Space: A Maritime Agora of Backrooms and Thoroughfares
Chui-Ling Tam
9. Rare’s Conservation Campaigns: Community Decision Making and Public Participation in Global Contexts
Sarah D. Upton, Carlos A. Tarin, Stacey K. Sowards, and Kenneth C. C. Yang
10. Fracking, the Elsipogtog First Nation, and Disruptive Public Participation: The Role of Images in Amplifying Outrage on Twitter
Molly Simis-Wilkinson and Jill E. Hopke
S ECTION III. E NACTING H ORIZONS OF C IVIC T ECHNOLOGY
11. Sustainable Stories: Integrated Transmedia as an Ecology of Storymaking
Tyler Quiring
12. Eco-Apps and Environmental Public Participation
Eli Typhina
List of Contributors
Index
Illustrations
Figures 3.1 Blackfoot Challenge Accomplishments. 10.1 Police-protester interaction. 12.1 The WildLab Bird map, which enables users to see each other’s geotagged posts. 12.2 Visualization of the CO 2 saved by participating in a JouleBug challenge. 12.3 Visualization of litter collected. 12.4 Upload screen for Marine Debris Tracker. 12.5 Multiple dimensions to environmental problems.
Tables 10.1 Information about the makeup for each of the six data sets. 10.2 Coding schema for textual analysis of Twitter posts related to Elsipogtog First Nation protests from October 13 to October 27, 2013. Handles (names of users, denoted by an “at” symbol, or “@”) who are not public officials or public figures are redacted. 10.3 Image analysis. Of the 21 images we analyzed, there are 15 distinct images and 3 compilations. 12.1 Eco-apps reviewed in this study.
Foreword
P ETER S TOETT AND O WEN T EMBY
An implication of the ascendant paradigm to environmental governance—that ecosystems are structured as non-linear complex adaptive (social-ecological) systems—is that effective governance starts at the scale at which these systems are structured. The pathologies of one-size-fits-all command-and-control policy are well known to scholars and practitioners alike. Our approaches to governing the environment must complexify to manage social-ecosystem complexity and must embrace reflexivity and adapt in response to new knowledge about the environment and stakeholder goals and interests. Successful stakeholder engagement is central to the process in numerous ways: it is necessary to develop and disseminate better knowledge about human interaction with the environment, generate stakeholder buy-in, mollify resistance to important initiatives and, in many cases, satisfy mandated public consultation requirements.
Experienced environmental managers are well aware of the need for public participation, especially in developing productive collaborative processes with stakeholders, and typically seek to facilitate it. However, public engagement is costly and the barriers are plentiful. Social scientists have generally done an inadequate job of providing environmental practitioners with tools to improve the areas in need, like trust development, knowledge coproduction, and shared problem definitions. Knowledge of the relevant globally linked local contexts, and broader lessons that can be adapted to local social-ecological contexts, is needed to guide decision makers. It will be a great challenge to provide, and it means that social scientists have a lot of work to do.
For this reason, Breaking Boundaries: Innovative Practices in Environmental Communication and Public Participation , is a welcome contribution. This collection, edited by Kathleen P. Hunt, Gregg B. Walker, and Stephen P. Depoe, provides a state-of-the-art overview of public participation theory and practice in environmental governance from the leading scholars on the topic. The broad set of cases and contexts give the reader a sense of the many different ways in which the public engages with policy makers and government officials (and, in doing so, “breaking boundaries”), including the more disruptive communication practices being used in our era of social media and climate science denial. The collection’s valuable lessons (about the importance of allowing for alternative forms of public engagement, of adapting participation infrastructure to the local context, of accounting for power differentials, and of the potential uses and limitations of digital media, to name a few) should inform the work of environmental social scientists seeking to develop the tools enabling government to communicate productively with the public.
We are pleased to include Breaking Boundaries in the SUNY Series in Environmental Governance: Local-Regional-Global Interactions and believe that it will become recognized as a valuable contribution to the emerging literature on environmental communication, public engagement and, more broadly, social-ecological systems governance.
Introduction
From Public Participation to Community Engagement—and Beyond
K ATHLEEN P. H UNT , S USAN S ENECAH , G REGG B. W ALKER, AND S TEPHEN P. D EPOE
T his volume starts with the assumption that effective participation by members of a community in policy decisions that impact their lives and livelihoods should be promoted, both as part of a normative commitment to deliberative democracy and because such participation often results in superior and more politically sustainable solutions to thorny or contentious issues (Dryzek, 2010; Fishin, 2011; Guttman Thompson, 2004). The role of community input in environmental policy making has been a prominent issue for decades, dating back to Rachel Carson’s call for a citizen’s right to know about exposure to poisons in Silent Spring (1962) and the passage of landmark legislation such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, a law that pioneered the creation of explicit pathways for soliciting public comments on proposed governmental actions. Public interest and involvement in environment quality has accelerated in the United States and elsewhere ever since, spurred by the activism and energy of Earth Day in 1970, opposition to nuclear energy, the crisis of hazardous waste disposal, environmental justice concerns, sustainable food and energy choices, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and many other local and global issues (Gottlieb, 1993).
Environmental problems that prompt the consideration of legal remedies or policy options are often multifaceted and complex, and present challenges for effective community involvement. For instance, in many si