Welcome to the Division of Environmental Communication

Our education and research focuses on the relationship between humans and the environment. Environmental Communication is a subject which responds to the assumption that environmental and natural resource problems can not be solved by technical means, but that sustainable development requires social and communicative understanding and competence.

It is us humans who decide on what is desirable and problematic in the environment. We have the prerogative. This in turns means that if there is a wish to change the environment, the people who decide on, live their lives in, manage, influence and get influenced by the same, need to be involved in this process. This is no common practice in much of the natural resource management around the world, and very much so in Europe. It sounds easy but is connected to all sorts of challenges: people’s motives to commit differ and also their wishes and wills might be disparate. The challenge is then to work with participation in a fair and democratic way and in a way that also can deal with conflict situations.

The crucial obstacle to decisions for sustainability is the lack or dysfunction of communication among competing parties. In order to secure that environmental issues have the highest likelihood of being resolved for sustainability, we must understand and build skill capacity in communication dynamics. As a base for this, a good understanding of underlying processes is vital.

Environmental communication is the study of

Emergent processes of social change, aiming at sustainable development

Social interaction of different character as e.g. conflict, learning, negotiation, power, concerning natural resource management

Collective action in the context of environmental issues, investigated at individual, group and/or policy levels