Page 47 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

30 M. Adomßent and J. Godemann

Such optimism should be tempered with more sceptical assessments. At times
there is even talk of a threatening ‘crisis of environmental communication’, whose
cause however is not its lack of success but its insufficient self-reflection (Schack
2003). There should then be criticism of the criteria used to evaluate the success of
environmental communication (as well as of those it applies to itself). Following
Schack, the actual crisis of environmental communication is thus to be found “in its
reaction to this description of crises with more and more activities before first clari-
fying its goals and requirements and especially its self-understanding” (Schack
2003: 162f). The basic orientations for actors in environmental communication
(problem orientation, action orientation and/or empowerment orientation) represent
constitutive elements, and ones that at the same time contain potential fault lines.
Without greater transparency and reflection there is a danger that should these lines
open up the reaction would largely be helpless (Schack 2003).

Risk Communication

As decisions have consequences that are not predictable, yet they are and must be
taken, societal development is a process that is always accompanied by risks and the
relationship of a society with its future changes as a result of the concern with risks.
There are clearly discursive references between ‘risk’ and ‘sustainable development’.
Risks can be divided into those in which human decisions and actions play a
critical role in their origin, control or regulation and those that exist independently
from human subjects and are neither attributable to nor justifiable by them. There is
no ‘objective’ risk. Risk can be defined as a multi-dimensional construct, the indi-
vidual or social creation of which involves many different aspects. Along with the
perception, definition, calculation, assessment and regulation of the negatively
experienced consequences of risk, there are also the calculable real negative conse-
quences resulting from one’s own decisions or another’s, as well as dealing with
existing risks (Beck 1992; Sellke and Renn 2010). Abstractly formulated, the ques-
tion arises as to how on an individual as on a societal basis uncertainty can be dealt
with in order to influence the future to one’s own advantage. Certainty as well as
health can be seen as ‘concepts of reflection’. The opposite of these terms (uncer-
tainty and illness) are reflected in them but are not realistic states and thus can never
be actually achieved (Japp and Kusche 2008). Similarly the origin of a vision of
sustainable development is tied to the communication of risk, since communication
is essentially based on the perceived newness of the quality and dimension of risk,
as expressed in such aspects as globality, complexity, extent and intensity of the
damage potential, non-perceptibility, persistence and irreversibility as well as high
conflict or mobilisation potential (WBGU 2000).
Theoretical presuppositions define the framework for the field of risk communi-
cation, which originally simply meant how well the public was informed about
technological risks as sources of danger. This kind of risk communication takes
place both preventively as well as in the event of actual damage. Risk communication