Reflections of The Environmental Communication Conference: Critical and Creative Approaches to Environmental Communication – the Politics of Disagreement.
The first session with Professor Leah Sprain gave me many insights, and I smiled to myself in recognition – just by replacing extremist (which seems to be the ugliest word in the American language and in the debate…) with activist, we are right in the high-pitched tones that surround Swedish forest policy today. It is the same accusatory tone, the same reductions, personal attacks and inability to see one’s own role in the lousy debate climate. The same accusations that the other side does not take “facts” into account, and at the same time, the inability to see the other’s perspective.
There are actually periods when I can’t even bear to read news about the forest because of the tone – that’s why it felt liberating to see the phenomenon a little from above, from a researcher’s perspective!
I especially liked the final clip, that there seems to be a counter-movement that longs for common sense, mutual respect and knowledge-based decisions.
I hope it reaches Sweden someday.
After the keynote, I enjoyed the session of Trust and the Politics of Disagreement.
Several interesting short sessions that dealt with the value of trust. How fragile this trust thing is, how quickly it can be destroyed but not least how you can maintain it with “simple” means. Particularly interesting and relevant because much was taken directly from sharp, real cases.
Here I landed in a few thoughts.
1. Trust is a strong, almost unreasonably powerful word that I sometimes feel is being inflated. A marriage, or a relationship without trust, is doomed, a friendship as well. But in working life… Is trust really needed in all contexts? Possibly with a slight authority hubris, I mean that in most contexts there is a “right” and a “wrong”, where soft values such as trust have secondary importance. “Read the law and solve the problem”, like.
But of course, it is not that simple. If the basic trust between state and company, or state and interest organizations for that matter, is missing, even a policy is doomed to fail. Which leads me to thought number two.
2. During the conference (of course between two sessions…) I started daydreaming.
There are trust issues in the forest that sometimes make it difficult to have a constructive, solution-oriented dialogue. That’s how it is. So, imagine being able to conduct a dialogue with representatives from the authorities, forestry, sawmills, forest contractors, non-profit nature conservations, hunting organisations, reindeer herding… only on the theme of trust. We share with each other, in an orderly manner, what we fundamentally trust, and respectively distrust in each other. That would be so liberating! And imagine how many misunderstandings we could sort out, just by discussing in terms of trust instead of matter and activity.
I hereby place an order for the Mistra Environmental Communication gang to arrange an event like that!
When we then slowly begin to understand each other and earn each other’s trust, the desire to solve all forest policy challenges together will probably come. Just as it was intended when the “new” forest policy, with its equal goals, was launched in 1993.
Or, as my house gods Depeche Mode put it:
It’s a question of lust, it’s a question of trust, it’s a question of not letting what we’ve built up crumble to dust…
So beautiful. So true. So Depeche.
Thank you for a very rewarding and well-run conference!
"Is ‘trust’ the missing ingredient in the forest debate?"
Reflections of The Environmental Communication Conference: Critical and Creative Approaches to Environmental Communication – the Politics of Disagreement.
The first session with Professor Leah Sprain gave me many insights, and I smiled to myself in recognition – just by replacing extremist (which seems to be the ugliest word in the American language and in the debate…) with activist, we are right in the high-pitched tones that surround Swedish forest policy today. It is the same accusatory tone, the same reductions, personal attacks and inability to see one’s own role in the lousy debate climate. The same accusations that the other side does not take “facts” into account, and at the same time, the inability to see the other’s perspective.
There are actually periods when I can’t even bear to read news about the forest because of the tone – that’s why it felt liberating to see the phenomenon a little from above, from a researcher’s perspective!
I especially liked the final clip, that there seems to be a counter-movement that longs for common sense, mutual respect and knowledge-based decisions.
I hope it reaches Sweden someday.
After the keynote, I enjoyed the session of Trust and the Politics of Disagreement.
Several interesting short sessions that dealt with the value of trust. How fragile this trust thing is, how quickly it can be destroyed but not least how you can maintain it with “simple” means. Particularly interesting and relevant because much was taken directly from sharp, real cases.
Here I landed in a few thoughts.
1. Trust is a strong, almost unreasonably powerful word that I sometimes feel is being inflated. A marriage, or a relationship without trust, is doomed, a friendship as well. But in working life… Is trust really needed in all contexts? Possibly with a slight authority hubris, I mean that in most contexts there is a “right” and a “wrong”, where soft values such as trust have secondary importance. “Read the law and solve the problem”, like.
But of course, it is not that simple. If the basic trust between state and company, or state and interest organizations for that matter, is missing, even a policy is doomed to fail. Which leads me to thought number two.
2. During the conference (of course between two sessions…) I started daydreaming.
There are trust issues in the forest that sometimes make it difficult to have a constructive, solution-oriented dialogue. That’s how it is. So, imagine being able to conduct a dialogue with representatives from the authorities, forestry, sawmills, forest contractors, non-profit nature conservations, hunting organisations, reindeer herding… only on the theme of trust. We share with each other, in an orderly manner, what we fundamentally trust, and respectively distrust in each other. That would be so liberating! And imagine how many misunderstandings we could sort out, just by discussing in terms of trust instead of matter and activity.
I hereby place an order for the Mistra Environmental Communication gang to arrange an event like that!
When we then slowly begin to understand each other and earn each other’s trust, the desire to solve all forest policy challenges together will probably come. Just as it was intended when the “new” forest policy, with its equal goals, was launched in 1993.
Or, as my house gods Depeche Mode put it:
It’s a question of lust, it’s a question of trust, it’s a question of not letting what we’ve built up crumble to dust…
So beautiful. So true. So Depeche.
Thank you for a very rewarding and well-run conference!