By Yasmin A. Bowman

REAPING the benefits of the good life is contingent to robust environmental health.

By environmental health, I refer to capacities, both at the individual and governmental level, to control and mitigate the environmental factors that may adversely affect human health or ecological balance essential for long-term wellbeing. Poor environmental practices can result in environmental degradation, with serious consequences to individual and community health. Therefore, the promotion of proper environmental practices is a principal contributor to the Good Life. To achieve this, it is important that we leverage a wide variety of communication tools and media to promote environmentally friendly practices.

In the broad sense, communication is imparting or exchanging information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium. Communication can be categorized into three basic types: (1) verbal communication, in which you listen to a person to understand their meaning; (2) written communication, in which you read their meaning; and (3) nonverbal communication, in which you observe a person and infer meaning. Environmental communication, narrowly speaking, is communication about environmental affairs. As with other forms of communication, environmental communication is both an activity and a field of study that studies the activity.

As an activity, environmental communication is all of the diverse forms of interpersonal, group, public, organizational, and mediated communication that make up the social debate about environmental issues and problems, and our relationship to non-human nature. Loosely speaking, we can refer to discussion about environmental issues and problems as “environmental discourse.” Environmental communication manifests as the discourse about nature, and is communicated in several types of media, ranging from billboards to social media, to print media, to current television, to your local public hearing, and to scientific reports.

In his textbook on Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere, Robert Cox provides a more formal definition that situates environmental communication as a form of symbolic action. In Cox’s words (p.20), environmental communication is “the pragmatic and constitutive vehicle for our understanding of the environment as well as our relationships to the natural world; it is the symbolic medium that we use in constructing environmental problems and negotiating society’s different responses to them.” Pragmatically, Fox points to the instrumental role of environmental communication as a means of educating, alerting, persuading, mobilizing, and problem solving. The eventual adoption of environmentally friendly behaviours depends heavily on communication that aims to educate, alert, persuade when necessary, mobilize support for positive environmental actions, and address and solve issues related to enhancing the environment. With regards to the constitutive function of environmental communication, Fox highlights the shaping of perceptions of nature and the environment during the communicative process.

Additionally, modern technology has enabled the creation of a myriad of new communication tools. Likewise, improvements and additions are constantly being made to maintain the highest quality of communication possible. There are many types of communication available; the choice of tools depends on where you are, what you want to communicate to your audience, what are your objectives, and who your target audience is.
Let me take this opportunity to draw some lessons from the promotional activities aimed at transforming behaviour in sync with the Government’s Green Bartica Initiative (GBI), which I find instructive. The core objectives of the GBI public awareness programme were to bring total awareness of greening the economy at the level of Bartica; build awareness of the importance and benefits of greening the community; influence specific groups on how they can contribute in their various capacities to the process as a whole, and to encourage and secure meaningful participation of defined groups of stakeholders to the project’s aims.

Bearing in mind the demographic differences of the Bartica community, the first step was to agree on the key features of each demographic and their communication needs. This facilitated the targeting of messages and media appropriate to each segment. As such, an external communications mix was developed where the following tools were utilized: press, online, TV, advertising, print and public relations. The choice of tool per audience was dependent on what we wanted to achieve, the level and type of message we wanted to communicate, and the profile of the audience. The target audience was divided into two main groups: namely, primary target audience, which are the key persons/groups you communicate to directly. This group consisted of members of the business community, community leaders, man-in-the-street, etc. The secondary target audience targeted young adults (aged 18-35), adults (aged 35 and over), school-age children (aged 12-17), children (ages 5-11), youth groups and religious organizations.

As stated before, with the advancement of modern technology, the “Online” tool has thus far proven to be quite effective when compared to the others with regard to how it is received and utilised. This particular tool is one of the few that are used across all demographics, with the Green Bartica Facebook page experiencing the heaviest traffic. The TV tool, which took the form of panel discussions thus far, appealed to the younger adults much more than to full adults. The Public Relations tool, which catered to school-age children via the Green Bartica Secondary Schools’ Debate and Green Bartica Spelling Bee (first in the series) competitions, was a tremendous success between this demographic. This particular tool also saw prominent community members endorsing the “Greening of Bartica” and the man-in-the street sharing thoughts and ideas on some of the challenges facing their community, and their suggestions on how it can be improved and contribute to the Greening of Bartica. Additionally, an information booth was set up at the annual Easter Regatta, which provided the opportunity to interact with the residents and visitors alike.

Communication is a vital tool and necessity as we forge ahead with the green economy and the good life. In subsequent articles, I will develop in more specific detail key aspects of environmental communication and its contribution to the good life.

(Comments can be sent to towardsagoodlife@gmail.com)

[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” ]With a BSc in Public Management, Yasmin Bowman has over 20 years of marketing and sales, customer care, public relations as well as events planning and coordinating experience. She is hard-working, organized, detail-oriented and results-driven. She has conceptualized, planned/designed and implemented customer care activities, and has used her extensive knowledge of corporate sales, events coordination, client-relationship management to engine her notable achievements and changes over these years.[/box]