Conferenza all'Università Internazionale di Venezia su Social Awareness& CommunicationStrategiesconcerningEnvironmentalIssues SuccessfulCase Studies

1. 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

2. 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)

3. 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')

4. 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

5. Environmental communication: what its purpose?
Environmental communication is pragmatic: it educates,
alerts, persuades, mobilizes and helps to solve
environmental problems

6. Infographics summarize information and easy-to-read interpretation
Environmental Communication has clearly to do with Environment

7. 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....”
Why environmental communication is needed?
Source: OECD Environmental Outlook (2012)

8. “If we continue our wasteful ways by 2050 almost 4 billion
people will live in area experiencing severe water stress....”
Why environmental communication is needed?

9. In other words: where's my lake?

10. 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)

11. Why environmental communication is needed?

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. Environmental communication: what's about
Information 50' – 60'
Information and Education 70'-80'
Information, Education
and Communication 90'- currently

16. 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

17. Self(ie) mass of communications
From being in the Internet to be the Internet

18. Environmental communication and environmentalism
John Muir preservation campaign to protect Yosemite Valley
(1870s and 1880s, California – U.S.A.)

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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

23. 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)

24. Risk Communication - NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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.

28. 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.

30. 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

31. 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”.
Media and environmental journalism
 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

32. World Info
Media and environmental journalism: space and time

33. 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

34. Risk and scientific communication, advocacy campaign

35. Risk communication – Advocacy campaign
Media and environmental journalism

36. Public participation in environmental decision making
Participatory budget in Capannori: a bottom up governance

37. Crowdfunding:
Participation, Social marketing advocacy campaign

38. 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

39. Ironic and funny:
is the message this way more effective?

40. Ironic campaigns designed by
GreenPeace to promote eco-
save bulb...and to protect the
forests

41. How to creatively communicate the environment :
Mister wind

42. 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

43. Green consumers boycott companies having a
heavy environmental and social impact

44. Instead, green consumers buycott, reward
companies having a green approach and policy

45. Green Marketing: by means of green consumption one
can save the world, meanwhile taking care of health

46. Green Marketing: by means of green consumption one
can save the world, meanwhile taking care of health

47.  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.
However, quite often green marketing is only greenwashing

48. 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

49. 'Cuochi non fuochi'
Campania campaigned back to restore its reputation

50. Unconventional socio-environmental campaign

Active citizenship
Guerrilla cleaning
Social awreness

51. (e)-Communication, civic engagement
and social awareness

52. Collecitve and shared knowledge turns into
Green activism and Prosumerism

53. 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

54. 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.

55. 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.

56. Where does the stuff you buy (and throw) come from?
'The story of stuff' (just think about it)

57. Symbolic action and the importance of a
trustworthy testimonial

58. Art for the environment
Creativity of the artist Bogdanovic Jovana to make
people aware of Global Warming

59. How to bring about and communicate eco-culture by
dematerializng the economy: the Sharing economy

60. 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

61. 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