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Abstract
One of the main approaches used in communicating environmental issues to citizens is conveying ‘factual’ information about a particular environment. However, despite previous research and recommendations made by critical environmental educators, there still seems to be a belief that the more ‘factual’ information one can convey, the more citizens will become aware of the issue, and this will prompt them to change their behaviours. In this article, I will argue that continuing with a ‘fact’-focused practice in Japan and elsewhere could be problematic for three key reasons: (1) it ignores diversity in the ‘facts’ provided to people; (2) it reinforces the ‘hierarchy of knowledge’; and (3) it ignores the ‘myth of nature’ among information receivers and senders. Key recommendations for incorporating a critical environmental education approach include utilising locally available environmental information on contentious environmental issues; investigating particular terminology used and missing information (including tacit knowledge); and encouraging critical learning about statistics and pictorial representations.
Notes
1. Freire used the term ‘banking education’ (Citation1970) to describe the traditional view of the process of education: placing information in a learner’s empty head.
2. In this article, when I use the term ‘fact’, it means Jensen’s first aspect of knowledge (Effects ‘what’).
3. In this article, texts mean written, visual and photographic documentation, as well as notes of interviews and conversations.
4. For Journal of Environmental Education published in Japan, 350 articles are identified between 1991 and 2010. The journal has three volumes a year. The numbers of original articles, practice reports, conference key note speech summary articles are counted. One article identified with the term ‘critical’ in the title was: Imamura, M., Y. Igarashi, S. Ishikawa, Y. Inoue, S. Shimomura, F. Sugimoto, and H. Morooka. 2009. “Bawazu no Jizokukanona Bunka nimuketeno Kankyo Kyoiku ronno Hihanteki Kento.” [Critical Analysis of Bowers’ “Environmental education for an ecologically sustainable culture”]. Kankyo Kyoiku [Journal of Environmental Education] 19 (2): 3–14.
5. For Environmental Education Research, published in the UK, 445 articles are identified between 1995 and 2010. The journal has three to six issues per year. The numbers of original articles, reviews, critical commentaries, comment articles are included, but not editorial material since most of those do not have titles.
6. Science Council of Japan [Nihon Gakujyutsu Kaigi] was established in 1949 as a ‘special organisation’ under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister, and is the representative organisation of Japanese scientist community ranging over humanities, social sciences, life sciences, natural sciences and engineering. One of its roles is to make policy recommendations to the government and public.
7. These interviews were conducted prior to the main research activities in the field. I had 14 individual and 5 focus group discussions at the various environmental conferences or related visits (a total of 24 people interviewed).
8. Differentiation of groups identified in Isahaya interviews included: a pro-development group and anti-development group; people who live in the area (‘locals’) and people who do not; people who live close to a possible flood area and people who do not; people who understand fishing and the sea and people who do not; fishermen and farmers; fishermen who received compensation and other citizens who did not; fishermen who received compensation and fishermen who did not; fishermen who continued fishing and fishermen who moved to work at the land reclamation construction sites; fishermen who catch fish or shellfish and fishermen who grow nori-seaweed (they received different damages and compensation); people who value nature and people who value money; people who feel one should sacrifice the environment for the project and those who want to look for alternatives to protect the environment; people who are ‘corrupt’ and people who are not; people who value democracy and citizens’ opinions and those who do not; and people who are ‘educated’ and people who are not.
9. Discourse topics for analysis included: science (statistics and probability, scientific evidence); risk (warning of risk, invisible risk characteristics); uncertainty; presentation (presentation of fact, metaphor, pictures and illustrations, balance and style, missing points); values (authorities and power, trust, history and future, differentiation of groups); and others. How the text is talking about risk and uncertainty are the key areas to understand ‘myth of nature’ which might be communicated by the author of the text.
10. This includes meetings such as the ‘Wetland Link International Conference’ (2010, Malaysia), the ‘Society of Ecological Restoration Conference’ (2011, Mexico); the ‘Environment and Advertisement Symposium’ (2012, Japan).
11. In Japan, it is also common for a local government to utilise space in municipal public relation materials, such as Nagasaki Prefectural Newsletter or local cable TV government channels to advertise a construction project which it is promoting. Whether or not it is ethically acceptable for citizens to allow municipal governments to use tax payers’ money to promote one side of arguments is another big issue that needs to be addressed in the future, yet similar environmental communication practice are also observed in other countries such as Korea (e.g. Four river ‘restoration’ projects advertised by the national and local government offices).
12. In 2011, I gave a lecture on this project to 170 students at graduate school level in Nagoya city (700 km away from the project site). In the feedback sheets received from the students, there were three students from Nagasaki, and each confessed that it was the first time that they had learned about or discussed tidal flats project in any school setting.
13. According to Lundgren and McMakin (Citation2004), there are three different types of risk communication: crisis communication (risk communication relating to an immediate threat, e.g. tsunami); care communication (risk communication in which the risk is not in doubt, e.g. smoking tobacco); and consensus communication (risk communication to reach agreement about the way a risk is assessed and managed, e.g. building a hotel by a beach).
In this article, the risk communication which I am discussing mainly falls into a category of ‘consensus communication’ (or ‘consensus communication’ which is presented as ‘care communication’ although the risk is still in doubt). I am not encouraging citizens to question risk information during an imminent natural disaster.