Page 143 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

126 J. Newig

comes to the fore. Recent communication efforts thus aim to generate social
acceptance for ‘low carbon’ regulation or to stimulate grass-roots collective action,
reconciling ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches (Ockwell et al. 2009).

Climate Change, Sustainability Communication
and Participation

Increasingly, the top-down, one-way mode of communication is questioned in
favour of dialogue and discourse. Communication of climate change thus approaches
the sphere of communication about it. Recently, serious failures in climate change
communication have stunned public debate, such as the IPCC’s erroneous scenario
of Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035, which IPCC officials continued to uphold
under doubtful circumstances. This contributed to declining public confidence in
climate scientists (Leake and Hastings 2010).
Not only is the privileged position of science eroding; it is also increasingly
acknowledged that the ‘lay’ public’s perceptions differ fundamentally according to
culture and context. “With this in mind, there is no such thing as an effective com-
munication per se” (Nerlich et al. 2010: 106). Communication strategies, it is rec-
ommended, ought to take into account the different perceptions, views and interests
of publics and policy-makers around the globe. Furthermore, communication of
climate change and related discourses about it are clearly not neutral with respect to
power issues. A multitude of actors with their own vested interests are trying to
frame and shape climate change debates for their own benefit, making it a crucial
issue of equity who communicates to which audience (Feindt and Oels 2005).
These different strands of argument ultimately call for a participatory approach to
climate change communication as an important element of sustainability communi-
cation (Few et al. 2007). “It has to be acknowledged that civil society has an impor-
tant function, alongside the market and state, as an instrument of steering in attaining
sustainable development. Participation has to be understood as a another structural-
policy instrument” (Michelsen 2007: 36). Given the dominant role of science in
climate change discourse, participation can be important both to connect science
with policy-making and, more traditionally, to policy-makers and stakeholders or the
larger public (van den Hove 2000). A variety of methods are at hand (see Chap. 16),
whose success in terms of sustainability gains, however, is not always uncontested
(Newig and Fritsch 2009). Article 6 of the 1992 United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change requires signatory states to promote and facilitate
“public participation in addressing climate change and its effects and developing
adequate responses”. Scholars from social-ecological systems research call for
participatory modes of communication so as to build adaptive capacity in order to
cope with global sustainability issues such as climate change (Adger et al. 2005).
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of sustainability, and climate
change communication is an element of sustainability communication. Whereas
‘sustainability’ as a concept has predominantly been a topic of academic and elite