Environmental Literacy in Science and Society

Environmental Literacy in Science and Society, by R.W. Scholz, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, 631 pp., £80.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0521192712, £45.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-0521183338

Once upon a time, a US President wrote in his Message to the Congress: “It is also vital that our entire society develop a new understanding and a new awareness of man's relation to his environment – what might be called “environmental literacy” (EL). This will require the development and teaching of environmental concepts at every point in the educational process” (Nixon 1970). The President concerned was the Republican incumbent Richard M. Nixon and that the year was 1970. Nixon's clarion call to develop EL may have long since petered out politically but still many people became actively involved in environmental education during the last few decades. It resulted in a large volume of literature on environmental education at least compared to that on EL. This suggests perhaps that educational processes and contexts underlying and leading to an intended goal such as EL were considered by many to be more interesting than the outcome itself. And although an undergraduate level EL course was developed (Nair et al. 2002) and a framework to assess was developed (Hollweg et al. 2011) EL remained difficult to define and enact consistently.

In his recent book “Environmental Literacy in Science and Society” Roland Scholz (2011) defines EL as “the ability to appropriately read and use environmental information and to anticipate rebound effects or to adapt according to information about environmental systems and their dynamics.”

However the subtitle “From Knowledge to Decisions” indicates that the book aims to be much more than to provide an overall perspective on EL. It also presents a thorough discussion of the didactic and educational concepts and processes underlying EL. In fact the book is an ambitious and genuine attempt to produce nothing less than an integrative synthesis of the whole field of environmental sciences and science-based decision making. Ever since its beginning in the early sixties the field gradually emerged from a range of contributing natural and social sciences disciplines. During that 50-year period, it was shaped and codified in innumerable papers and books. Its own journals appeared and its own methodologies were defined, developed and applied. A wide variety of sourcebooks and mainly natural or social sciences oriented textbooks are now available. There is even a complementary academic textbook “Principles of Environmental Sciences” (Boersema and Reijnders 2009). Still one of the grand challenges of any branch of science remained. There was not yet a credible attempt at a unified synthesis of the field. That is until the publication of Scholz' book. In Scholz' own words “although it is a work of theory, it also includes a pragmatic perspective”. For over 20 years, Scholz held the chair of Environmental Sciences Natural and Social Science Interface at ETH Zürich. During that period he and his coworkers constructed a consistent, rigorous and characteristic theoretical, methodological and yet practical approach to the interaction of humans with environment, or as they prefer to call it human - environment systems (HES).

The book is the culmination of these efforts. It starts by mapping the contributions of a necessary and deliberate selection of widely different disciplines, e.g. biology, psychology, sociology, economics and industrial ecology to environmental sciences.

The pros and cons of the selection of disciplines are adequately clarified and elucidated. The choice of the disciplines reflects Scholz' personal preference and background in mathematics, psychology, decision analysis and environmental modeling. Contrary to most existing environmental sciences textbooks and reviews Scholz specifically emphasizes social sciences' disciplines. It makes sense given the prominent position assigned to human–environment interactions. The disciplinary discourse is followed by presenting seven postulates which are deemed necessary to organize the complexity which characterizes many environmental problems: complementarity, hierarchy, inference, feedback, decision, awareness and environment-first. The postulates are meant to be practical devices, “heuristic tools”, for exploring human–environment systems. The first four refer to interactions within and between human and environmental systems. They express in essence the core premise of the book: human and environment systems are fundamentally intertwined and coupled. Postulate five and six, decision and awareness point to the specifics of human environmental decision making. The last postulate, environment-first is the most normative of the seven. Subsequently the seven postulates-based HES framework is contrasted with alternative natural science-accentuated, social science-accentuated and action-oriented approaches. The book ends with practical applications and case studies demonstrating HES literacy written by Scholz and some co authors. Every section ends with key messages reflecting the didactic purpose of the book. The main story line of the book is marked by a highly personal and intriguing treasure trove of over one hundred “boxes” containing illustrative topics of historic or contemporary interest.

Any book as ambitious and wide ranging as this one naturally raises questions concerning possible additions and omissions.

For example referring to another addition besides his choice of disciplines in the first half of his book, Scholz divides the total environment between the material and the social environment. It leads to the somewhat peculiar definition “the environment of a human system is a subset within the complementary set to this human system, referred to as the universe”. One needs to delve deep into the text before appreciating that the definition makes sense in the HES framework. However, it may create confusion in the mind of a superficial reader since in most definitions of science and engineering systems the environment is the part of the universe that lies outside the boundaries of the system.

In any finite text omissions occur since choices have to be made. In this case a reader with a natural sciences background may look in vain for a discussion of relevant disciplines like chemistry, physics and (environmental) health. Equally missing are legal and regulatory aspects. It would be very interesting to see how the seven postulates would have been applied in the case of the latter two aspects.

However the richness and depth of the book easily compensates for these gaps. Summarizing Scholz' magnum opus is both an advanced textbook and an inspirational source of insights and knowledge concerning environmental issues. It also provides a thorough framework for decision making aimed at bringing about sustainable solutions to environmental problems. It is a lasting hallmark of environmental literacy.

© 2012, Anton J.M. Schoot Uiterkamp