Environmental Communication and Management

Practical work in the field of natural resource management and sustainable development also involves communication. How can we manage conflicting interests between people and orginisations?

Communication plays an important role in the facilitation of sustainable management of natural resources and environmental issues. In the ECM program we learn how to understand communication processes, to create communicative strategies for environmental changes, organize collective action and mediate in environmental conflicts in a constructive way.

To work in practice with environmental change and sustainable development mean to work with people and communication. Communication is involved in all environmental issues: industries’ adaptation of environmental technology, governmental protection of wildlife, international governmental agreements etc.

Companies, governmental agencies and environmental organisations are demanding people with professional skills in environmental communication. To facilitate sustainable development, society needs to know about e.g. plants, soils and water. But that is not enough. We also need to know about how to coordinate different resource users, how to motivate consumers to adapt environmental technology, and how to manage environmental conflicts.

Future

When graduated from the ECM program there are good opportunities for being employed in private companies, consultancy offices, governmental institutions or non-governmental organisations. We can, based in our knowledge about the career of former students, identify four different categories of working tasks:

• - Environmental officer: Your task is to monitor environmental consequences of other actors’ action and behaviour, to take decisions about permission and sanction and to explain your decision to the stakeholder, and to give advices.
• - Environmental coordinator: Your task is to plan, organise and pursue communication in order to create environmental change. You investigate peoples motivation, you create information material and organise dialogue with stakeholders. You evaluate process and result of environmental communication.
• - Facilitator of dialogue and conflict management: Your task is to organise dialogue between stakeholders with different views, needs and interests. You are able to help actors involved in conflict to improve their communication with each other.
• - Researcher in environmental communication/sciences: Your task is to organise and pursue scientific studies of environmental communication. You organise investigations, write research reports and apply for research funds.