“Hey Friend,Buy Green”: Social Media Use to Influence Eco-Purchasing Involvement

This study addresses the use of message carriers to convey corporate social responsibility information to promote eco-purchasing involvement. The work tests various media formats transmitted via social media. The effects of corporate vs. peer communication in a corporate social responsibility campaign in stimulating self-reported eco-purchasing involvement are indicated. The research varies communication dimensions of a fictional corporate social responsibility campaign sent through social media. Multiple media formats; new release; article; and advertisement were tested, as was the inclusion of social media persuasive sentiment. The analysis of source/format combinations and source/format/sentiment combinations found statistically significant differences for consumer-to-consumer communication in stimulating eco-purchasing involvement in certain circumstances. This research suggests an emerging role for the consumer communicator as a content co-creator and validates the effective use of articles and news releases instead of advertising on social media, yielding managerial and scholarly implications.     

Places and People: Rhetorical Constructions of “Community” in a Canadian Environmental Risk Assessment

This paper addresses the issue of public engagement in environmental risk contexts through a rhetorical analysis of the key term “community” in a risk assessment of mining-caused soil contamination. Drawing on Burke's concept of terministic screens and method of cluster criticism, the analysis shows the divergent constitutions of “community” in the Sudbury Soils Study's official discourse and the citizen-activist rhetoric of the Community Committee on the Sudbury Soils Study. Tracing the verbal and visual clusters within each organization's articulation of “community” as place and people reveals how the official Study's technical-regulatory ideology of environmental risk and citizen participation is countered by the Community Committee's contestatory environmental justice ideology. These competing views of “community” are mutually constitutive in that the official Study's mainstream risk discourse establishes the terms for the Community Committee's reactive counter-discourse, thus limiting citizen participation mainly to questions of “downstream” impacts. Our rhetorical analysis of “community” suggests a generative method for understanding the complex power relations animating specific risk communication contexts as well as for potentially reinventing “community” in terms more conducive to meaningful citizen engagement.     

A Missed Opportunity?: NOAA’s Use of Social Media to Communicate Climate Science

In the current media landscape, organizations often communicate about science directly with publics through online channels rather than relying on journalist gatekeepers. Online platforms present organizations with the opportunity to participate in two-way communication in order to increase engagement with science. The present study examined how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) utilizes social media to interact with publics. Results suggest that NOAA does not fully utilize the dialogic potential of social media, which could enhance both the public’s science literacy and trust in science regarding climate change specifically. This study informs how public relations theory may complement science communication theory and practice as deficit model-thinking transitions to contemporary approaches for public engagement with science.     

No Longer “Bullying the Rhine:” Giving Narrative a Place in Flood Management

In this paper we explore whether today multiple sources of reasoning are being considered in the discourse of flood management. We examine whether stakeholders are considered and served as an audience of partners in managing rivers. To this end, we reviewed sources of reasoning that people living in river basins use for handling floods and mitigating flood risk. We focus on texts dealing with lowland flooding, taking as an example the Rhine River in historical times and in the present. Our review of river management documentation revealed that the scheme that guides engineers', policy makers', and administrators' actions toward rivers is shifting from correcting rivers toward accommodating their needs for flood plains—while still controlling the rivers. In current European river management reports we found elements of narrative side by side with formal scientific fact reporting.     

No net loss of what,for whom?: stakeholder perspectives to Biodiversity Offsetting in England

Market-based instruments (MBIs) have emerged as a popular approach to balance development and conservation objectives. However, their ability to accomplish this is often beset by poor implementation in practice. This is testament to a widening gap between the rate of policy development and implementation of MBIs and the maturity of research and evaluation on their design, and impact on affected stakeholders. Within this context, this paper examines multi-stakeholder perspectives to the adoption of Biodiversity Offsetting in England, an instrument designed to enable biodiversity losses in one place to be compensated through conservation improvements elsewhere. Analysis reveals issues associated with social and ecological compensation of biodiversity loss. Findings suggest that there is a need for a broader consideration of issues surrounding distributive justice, access to nature and the status of ownership over sites of common heritage when accounting for biodiversity loss and its compensation. This message is salient to both the study context as well as the burgeoning international practice of Biodiversity Offsetting.     

The Impact of “No Impact Man”: Alternative Hedonism as Environmental Appeal

As “No Impact Man,” writer Colin Beavan conducted a one-year experiment to determine whether he and his family could reduce their environmental impact to zero while living and working in Manhattan. This article examines the No Impact Man (NIM) experiment both as “alternative hedonism,” a reconceptualization of the “good life” that avoids unduly damaging the natural world, and also as a kind of “eco-stunt,” an attempt to garner significant media coverage about positive environmental behaviors. We use DeLuca's theorization of the “image event” to analyze the No Impact Man franchise—blog, book, and documentary film—though we modify that theory in order to explore how No Impact Man functions as multi-media and new-media spectacle. In particular, we explore the risky double-bind Beavan finds himself in when, through his choice to publicize the NIM eco-stunt, he is critiqued for opportunism, foolishness, and insincerity. We suggest that efforts to publicize eco-stunts, however well conceived, invariably invite backlash. As a result, we find that alternative hedonism theory and practice open a space of invitation to environmentally beneficial behaviors and attitudes that could have potential with some audiences, but their mass appeal is compromised by the limitations of the stunts that publicize them.     

Making Progress? Reproducing Hegemony Through Discourses of “Sustainable Development” in the Australian News Media

While numerous studies have investigated discourses of “sustainable development” in a variety of institutional and academic contexts, media discourses on this issue have remained largely unexamined. But considering the intertwined nature of media and society, the construction of sustainable development in the news may be an important factor shaping future ecological and social outcomes. Proceeding from the thesis that the news is a site in which hegemony may be reproduced, this paper critically analyses discourses used to construct sustainable development in news texts published over the 10-year period 2004–2013 across the eight most widely circulated newspapers in Australia. The findings show that sustainable development news is confined to a narrow range of discourses that largely serve to perpetuate the status quo, which is broadly consistent with the media hegemony thesis. Finally, I discuss the implications of these findings, propose possible explanations, and explore avenues for future research.     

“Double carousel” of the succession process in a regional ecosystem

Southern taiga forests of Western Siberia are used as an example to demonstrate the mechanism of “flickering“ in the mosaic pattern of plant cover, which reflects natural, regular cycles of progressive succession starting at different times in each contour of the geobotanical map. The primary plant formation with time depletes the resources of its ecotope, transferring biophilic elements from the soil to the phytomass, fruits, and seeds. Its immunity is gradually impaired, making the formation vulnerable to the attacks of pests, diseases, and fires. Its death is followed by a cycle of progressive succession, which renews the ecotope resources and allows the primary formation to move within its range, despite that the trees are fixed and immobile, which provides for its indefinitely long existence.     

Farmers’ perception and adaptation to climate change: a case study of Sekyedumase district in Ghana

Climate change is projected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts on Ghana, particularly on rural farmers whose livelihoods depend largely on rainfall. The extent of these impacts depends largely on awareness and the level of adaptation in response to climate change. This study examines the perception of farmers in Sekyedumase district of Ashanti region of Ghana on climate change and analyzes farmers’ adaptation responses to climate change. A hundred and eighty farming households were interviewed in February and October 2009. Results showed that about 92% of the respondents perceived increases in temperature, while 87% perceived decrease in precipitation over the years. The major adaptation strategies identified included crop diversification, planting of short season varieties, change in crops species, and a shift in planting date, among others. Results of logit regression analysis indicated that the access to extension services, credit, soil fertility, and land tenure are the four most important factors that influence farmers’ perception and adaptation. The main barriers included lack of information on adaptation strategies, poverty, and lack of information about weather. Even though the communities are highly aware of climate issues, only 44.4% of farmers have adjusted their farming practices to reduce the impacts of increasing temperature and 40.6% to decreasing precipitation, giving lack of funds as the main barrier to implementing adaptation measure. Implications for policymaking will be to make credit facilities more flexible, to invest in training more extension officers and more education on climate change and adaptation strategies.     

“Science is Everywhere,but No One Knows It”: Assessing the Cultural Distance to Science of Rural South African Publics

ABSTRACT

In science communication, a prerequisite for reaching different parts of a society is to find out how these publics experience and interpret science. Since rural South African publics are perceived to exhibit a large cultural distance to science, the present exploratory study aimed to know in more detail how rural South Africans perceive and understand science in their local and social contexts. Theoretical notions on cultural distance and the methodological approach of segmentation studies were considered. Semi-structured interviews with rural South Africans were carried out in four towns (n?=?52) that differ with respect to having a large scientific installation in their vicinity, or not. Sensitively comparing local and social contexts helped identifying three different publics who differed regarding their perceptions of science; however, the large scientific installations only made a difference in perceptions for those publics who were generally less exposed to and less knowledgeable about science.     

Exposure to traffic-related air pollution and the risk of developing breast cancer among women in eight Canadian provinces: A case–control study

A few recent studies have reported positive associations between long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution and the incidence of breast cancer. We capitalized on an existing Canadian multi-site population-based case–control study to further investigate this association.We used the National Enhanced Cancer Surveillance System, a population-based case–control study conducted in eight of 10 Canadian provinces from 1994 to 1997. A total of 1569 breast cancer cases and 1872 population controls who reported at least 90% complete self-reported addresses over the 1975–1994 exposure period were examined. Mean exposure levels to nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) (an indicator of traffic-related air pollution) were estimated for this period using three different measures: (1) satellite-derived observations; (2) satellite-derived observations scaled with historical fixed-site measurements of NO₂; and (3) a national land-use regression (LUR) model. Proximity to major roads was also examined. Using unconditional logistic regression, stratified by menopausal status, we estimated odds ratios (ORs) adjusted for many individual-level and contextual breast cancer risk factors.We observed positive associations between incident breast cancer and all three measures of NO₂ exposure from 1975 to 1994. In fully adjusted models for premenopausal breast cancer, a 10 ppb increase in NO₂ exposure estimated from the satellite-derived observations, the scaled satellite-derived observations, and the national LUR model produced ORs of 1.26 (95% confidence intervals (CIs): 0.92–1.74), 1.32 (95% CI: 1.05–1.67) and 1.28 (95% CI: 0.92–1.79). For postmenopausal breast cancer, we found corresponding ORs of 1.10 (95% CI: 0.88–1.36), 1.10 (95% CI: 0.94–1.28) and 1.07 (95% CI: 0.86–1.32). Substantial heterogeneity in the ORs was observed across the eight Canadian provinces and reduced ORs were observed when models were restricted to women who had received routine mammography examinations. No associations were found for road proximity measures.This study provides some support for the hypothesis that traffic-related air pollution may be associated with the development of breast cancer, especially in premenopausal women. With the few studies available, further research is clearly needed.     

Participation of plants of different mycotrophic status in the succession leading to “agrosteppe” formation

An analysis is performed of the participation of plant species differing in mycotrophic status in succession leading to ??agrosteppe?? formation, i.e., purposefully initiated progressive succession of the steppe phytocenosis. The proportion of plant species obligatorily associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi increases in the course of this succession, while the proportion of facultative mycotrophic species decreases. The ratio between the species of different mycotrophic status is stabilized after two years of succession, although both total number and composition of plant species continue to change during subsequent period.     

Building resilience to water scarcity in southern Spain: a case study of rice farming in Doñana protected wetlands

Agricultural water management needs to evolve in view of increased water scarcity, especially when farming and natural protected areas are closely linked. In the study site of Doñana (southern Spain), water is shared by rice producers and a world heritage biodiversity ecosystem. Our aim is to contribute to defining adaptation strategies that may build resilience to increasing water scarcity and minimize water conflicts among agricultural and natural systems. The analytical framework links a participatory process with quantitative methods to prioritize the adaptation options. Bottom-up proposed adaptation measures are evaluated by a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) that includes both socioeconomic criteria and criteria of the ecosystem services affected by the adaptation options. Criteria weights are estimated by three different methods—analytic hierarchy process, Likert scale and equal weights—that are then compared. Finally, scores from an MCA are input into an optimization model used to determine the optimal land-use distribution in order to maximize utility and land-use diversification according to different scenarios of funds and water availability. While our results show a spectrum of perceptions of priorities among stakeholders, there is one overriding theme that is to define a way to restore part of the rice fields to natural wetlands. These results hold true under the current climate scenario and even more so under an increased water scarcity scenario.