Environment and Planning A 1998, volume 30, pages 1445 -1460

Environmental communication and the cultural politics of environmental citizenship J Burgess, C M Harrison Department of Geography, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAP, England; e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] P Filius IBN-DBO, Postbus 23, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands Received 3 January 1997; in revised form 12 April 1997

Abstract. This paper presents a comparative analysis of how representatives from the public, private, and voluntary sectors of two cities [Nottingham (United Kingdom) and Eindhoven (The Netherlands)] responded to the challenge of communicating more effectively with citizens about issues of sustainability. The analysis is set in the context of literature about the need to widen participation in the determination of Local Agenda 21 policies, and the drive for more inclusionary forms of communication in planning and politics. Workshop members discussed the results of surveys and in-depth discussion groups with local residents which had revealed considerable scepticism and mistrust of environmental communications and environmental expertise. Three themes are explored. First, there is consensus in attributing responsibility for public alienation and resistance to environmental communications to the content and styles of media reporting. Second, there are contrasting discursive constructions of the 'public', which reflect different political cultures—with the Nottingham workshop supporting a strategy to share power and knowledge more widely than hitherto, whereas the Eindhoven strategy proposed greater rigour, clarity, and authority from the local state. Third, responding to evidence of public resistance to calls for more sustainable practices, workshop participants in both cities focused on what institutions themselves can and should do to progress environmental goals. Workshop participants in both countries acknowledged the urgent need for public, private, and voluntary sector organisations to match their own practices to their environmental rhetoric. Introduction Over the last decade, environmental discourses and their associated cultural politics have been transformed from a seeming preoccupation with limits to growth to a more measured concern with sustainability (IUCN, 1991; U N C E D , 1992; W C E D , 1987). The concept of sustainability with its powerful rhetorical appeal for balance and harmony with nature, the needs of future generations, and improvements in the quality of life for all has rapidly been espoused by governments around the world. Some argue that one of the strongest aspects of 'sustainability' is its mobilisation of moral and ethical concerns whilst actually allowing 'business-as-usual' in the advanced economies of the West (Collins, 1996; McManus, 1996; Redclift, 1992). Others, such as Owens, argue "sustainability, eagerly endorsed by governments and at least partially encoded in legislation, may yet prove to be a Trojan horse admitting radical environmental values" (1994, page 451). The undoubted challenge, however, is to develop local strategies capable of contributing to global goals by gaining support from the public and economic interests (Redclift, 1992). Requiring new approaches to public participation, institutional change, and partnership building, local strategies envisaged as part of the Local Agenda 21 (LA21) process agreed at Rio ( U N C E D , 1992) make particular demands of both national and local governments. In this paper, we examine how political elites in two European cities, Nottingham in the United Kingdom and Eindhoven in The Netherlands, are responding to this task.

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Our research was a comparative analysis of the social and cultural processes through which lay publics understand global environmental problems, and the extent to which understanding is translated into changed practices at individual and household levels. The first stage of the research comprised a questionnaire survey of matched neighbourhoods in the two cities, completed in 1993. The second stage involved four, in-depth, single gender discussion groups held with people recruited from among survey respondents. In the final stage, specialist workshops were convened in November 1994 with participants drawn from the following constituencies: councillors and officers, businesses, environmental groups [nongovernmental organisations (NGOs)], and editorial staff of local media. The specialist workshops provided an opportunity for decisionmakers at the local level to evaluate institutional and communicative responses to sustainable development in the light of findings from the comparative surveys and in-depth group work with local residents (see Burgess et al, 1995; Harrison et al, 1996). Conceived as a research methodology which allowed local people to 'voice' their concerns in a political arena to which they would not easily have access, and for facilitating discussion between different elite interests, the strategy provides a model of public participation which sits between top-down and bottom-up approaches conventionally employed in the planning process. Meshing well with some of the new communicative strategies being developed as part of the LA21 process (Tuxworth, 1996; Voisey et al, 1996), the research highlights the range of social and cultural constraints which will need to be addressed as local communities struggle with the task of negotiating how sustainable development can be achieved. Before turning to the details of the empirical study, we examine why new initiatives in public participation and communication are considered important in forging sustainable strategies. Why are more inclusionary styles of communication and public participation needed? Sustainability is predicated on the belief that individuals and institutions can be persuaded to accept responsibility for the production of environmental problems and change their everyday practices to alleviate future impacts. Given the assumption that the dissemination of appropriate information will assist in the process of attitudinal and behavioural change, mass media campaigns have been widely used to promote sustainable development. This essentially 'top-down' model of communication presumes there is a deficit in public knowledge and understanding of environmental issues which needs to be Tilled' by expert knowledge (Durrant, 1995; Irwin, 1995) before individuals will accept their own responsibilities and acknowledge the need to change aspects of their lifestyles. At the same time, there is a presumption that public apathy and alienation from democratic institutions can also be overcome with the 'right messages'. If information is presented in attractive, accessible ways, it will be effective in ensuring the public will understand both its rights and responsibilities as environmentally conscious citizens (Chetwynd and Thomas, 1994; Darier, 1996). Since the early days of the environmental movement in the 1960s, institutional, commercial, and NGO campaigns have been designed to include a mixture of direct and diffuse information dissemination strategies. Direct or 'above-the-line' campaigns include buying advertising space in press and magazines, radio, and television; using posters and billboards; issuing leaflets and fact sheets through libraries, community centres, and the like; and touring exhibitions. Diffuse or 'below-the-line' activities include all the public relation and media campaigns through which NGOs, commercial and business interests, government, and agencies seek to influence the framing of environmental stories in the mass media (see Anderson, 1997; Burgess, 1990; Hansen, 1993). As a growing number of studies show, the reception of environmental communications and their 'effectiveness' in delivering change in people's attitudes and values,

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is highly contingent on many factors, not least the local social and cultural contexts in which people live (Bell, 1994; Burgess, 1993; Burgess et al, 1991; Macnaghten et al, 1995a). Hopes are fading of achieving dramatic changes in individual lifestyles simply on the basis of 'more' or 'better' information. For these reasons, the 'deficit model' is being challenged by more inclusionary forms of dialogue between lay publics and elites (Irwin and Wynne, 1996). Lay publics are expert in their own lifeworlds, making rational judgments based on an authority acquired through tacit or local knowledge. Environmental communications fail to persuade, for example, because people recognise the social dilemmas that are inherent to environmental problems (Staats et al, 1996; Szerszynski, 1996); rhetorical appeals are inadequately differentiated (Macnaghten et al, 1995a; Myerson and Rydin, 1996); and/or individuals actively resist the discourses of more powerful interests (Burgess and Harrison, 1993; Eden, 1993; Szasz, 1994). Lay publics are highly sensitive to the partiality of expert-political information (Wynne, 1994), and environmental debate, at least in the United Kingdom, is currently marked by high levels of doubt, cynicism and mistrust (Harrison et al, 1996; Macnaghten et al, 1995b). Advocates of a more inclusionary approach in planning theory and practice, such as Forester (1993), Innes (1996), and Healey (1996; 1997), are also seeking new forms of communicative practice, in this case to redress public loss of confidence in political systems as mechanisms for conflict mediation and the strategic management of collective affairs. Resonating with the concerns of political scientists such as Stewart (1996) and Fishkin (1991), and radical economists such as Jacobs (1996), recent debate has concentrated on both how and why it is necessary to widen the repertoire of democratic practices utilised in local government. Healey (1996) argues that contemporary examples of consensus building, environmental mediation, regional alliance building, and Round Table discussions for LA21 hold out the possibility of transforming the "paternalism of traditional representative notions, to more participatory forms based on inclusionary argumentation. By this term is implied public reasoning which accepts the contributions of all members of a political community and recognizes the range of ways they have of knowing, valuing and giving meaning" (Healey, 1996, page 219). Healey outlines the key stages a strategic planning process would have to go through if it were to become more inclusionary of the different cultures within localities: opening up the planning strategy process in terms of setting the arenas and forums for discussion (who is invited and where discussions take place); different styles of discussion (language, talking, and listening); methods of analysis (how to sort through arguments and different perspectives); and how results are taken into policy discussions (how to create a new discourse). But Healey perhaps fails to acknowledge sufficiently the differences in discursive power between those with technical, professional expertise, and lay people. There is a presumption, as with Habermas's original formulation, that with sufficient 'goodwill' and sensitivity to difference, that more equitable representations of different cultures will be achieved in policymaking. This is perhaps idealistic, as recent experience with Round Tables demonstrates. O'Hara (1996), for example, analyses the discursive process of Environmental Round Tables sponsored by the New York State Council of Churches, which included social groups seldom represented in conventional environmental consultations. As soon as discussion moved from an abstract level of ethics and norms to issues with a material base such as waste recycling, scientific and technical expertise reasserted itself. Likewise, Petts's (1995) study of a Community Panel convened to discuss a waste management strategy for southern Hampshire, England, demonstrated how lay participants emphasised the need always to have a strategy based on a firm set of values, even

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though the need for action seemed to direct discussion towards the technocratic 'end-of-pipe' solutions preferred by officials. Despite their commitment to giving voice to the concerns of ordinary people, these case studies reveal how easy it is to assert the communicative styles of instrumental rationality of most experts and professionals even in these innovative fora. As Irwin (1995) notes: "the crucial point here is that questions of 'expertise' and 'democracy' are not separate but interlinked. Any attempt at democratising the policy process which leaves concepts of 'knowledge' unchallenged will inevitably prove highly limited" (page 79). Our paper contributes to these debates in a number of ways. Albeit on a very small scale and making no dramatic claims on the basis of the two case studies, the first way is to offer a comparative analysis of environmental communication strategies in two European countries with different political cultures. Second, in terms of the dimensions and characteristics of inclusionary communication, our methodology is concerned less with the direct empowerment of citizens, more with accessing, acknowledging, and building on citizens' local knowledge to inform the policy process. In particular the in-depth discussion group (Burgess et al, 1988a; 1988b) becomes a discursive public sphere, in Habermas's sense of "a space where private individuals discuss public matters, a space which mediates between society and the state" (Livingstone and Lunt, 1994, page 16). Normal styles of everyday conversation, combined with a shared commitment to extended discussion, are conducive to the 'practical reasoning' (Habermas, 1984) that Eckersley (1992) and Healey (1996; 1997) seek to restore to environmental planning and politics to counterbalance the instrumental rationality of scientific, technological, and political elites. Third, through the inclusion of specialist workshops convened to discuss the findings of the in-depth groups, our methodology exposes the power of instrumental rationality to construct 'the public' in particular ways. The specialist workshops provide a forum in which local people have 'a voice' but in which their 'presence' is construed discursively by participants in the workshop. Without the face-to-face discussion encountered in public meetings or Round Tables, we are able to focus on how elites respond to the challenge of meeting public resistance to environmental communications when they are freed from the pressures of having to maintain an institutional position in a public forum. In other words, what happens in the semipublic/semiprivate setting of the workshop when there is more freedom to engage with the issues as individuals, as well as public, private, and social sector representatives? Resistances as well as support for the LA21 appeal for wider participation and more active citizens might well emerge in this context. Fourth, given the global nature of environmental problems, a cross-cultural comparison provides the opportunity to examine whether decisionmakers believe there are agreed or common messages they wish to communicate about sustainable development and the most appropriate ways of conveying them. How accessible are the national media for local elites and do they feel they have power to shape environmental agendas? Our previous work suggested that national media were largely impenetrable to local actors, or to framing environmental stories in ways which depart from the standard scripts (Burgess and Harrison, 1993; Harrison and Burgess, 1994). Three years later, has the position changed? Given the prominent role allocated to the media in national strategies for raising public awareness of environmental concerns but its limited success in promoting environmental action, what if any alternatives might exist at the local level? The interpretation we provide of the specialist workshops focuses on the social and cultural conditions—the practical rationalities—operating in each city, which serve to constrain the development of a new 'sustainable discourse'. In the following sections,

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we first provide a brief overview of the responses of the two national governments to sustainable development and the local practices being adopted in each of the two cities, before moving to a comparative analysis of the elite workshops. UK and Dutch responses to LA21 Since 1992, national governments have been deciding their responses to the Earth Summit in Rio, and one of the most surprising outcomes has been the extent to which local governments have accepted the challenge of producing policies for LA21 (Ageyman and Evans, 1994; Tuxworth, 1996; Voisey et al, 1996). In the United Kingdom, the national government published its Sustainable Development Strategy in 1994 (HM Government, 1994) which included a UK Round Table on sustainable development, and a new citizens' campaign called 'Going for Green'. The latter, targeted at individual households and supplemented by practical initiatives by local authorities, is a modest attempt to achieve changes in lifestyle. Criticised for being strong on rhetoric and weak on action, the response by the UK central government contrasts with the enthusiasm for LA21 signalled by the Local Government Management Board (Hams et al, 1994; LGMB, 1993). Eager to seize an opportunity to reassert the importance of local authorities in environmental matters after nearly two decades of having their powers stripped away by successive Conservative governments, several local authorities have experimented with a variety of methods for creating new partnerships and involving the public. Amongst the latter, authorities have employed traditional instruments such as surveys, questionnaires, and public meetings, as well as innovative discursive methods such as focus groups, round tables, village appraisals, and 'planning for real' (Bishop et al, 1994; Church, 1996; Young, 1996). Uncertain as yet about whether these inclusionary approaches are designed to achieve public acceptance of particular policy goals or as a means of engaging in a shifting concept of politics, the Nottingham case provides an example of an authority which entered this process quite early on. For example, the city announced its Green Charter in 1989 and the Nottingham Green Partnership was formed in 1991 bringing together the local authority, businesses, and NGOs to address a common approach to sustainability issues. The latter in particular is an indication of the commitment of the local authorities to exploring new institutional forms. By comparison, the Dutch have long been at the forefront of environmental planning (Faludi, 1991; Mastop and Postuma, 1991). National government began working on an environmental sustainability strategy in the mid-1980s, which was based on targeting industries and specific sectors of the population such as farmers or householders in order to achieve environmental goals. The outcome was the First National Environment Plan (NEP) (Ministry of Housing Physical Planning and Environment, 1989) agreed in a year when elections for government were dominated by environmental issues. The NEP laid down an extremely ambitious set of goals for improvements in environmental standards within one generation. To help support these programmes, national government funding to municipal governments rose from 11 million guilders in 1989 to 200 million guilders per year in 1993 (van der Tak, 1994). The bulk of these extra resources has been devoted to sewage and waste recycling schemes. However, the Dutch have chosen not to go down the path of LA21, perhaps for reasons suggested by Glasbergen and Driessen (1994). The prevalent management culture is predicated on an instrumental rationality which sees society as "a technical system that can be operated on the basis of centrally-defined goals", seeking to create an "ideal-type rational order: a logical, consistent, effective and efficient social reality" (Glasbergen and Driessen, 1994, pages 27-28). These centrally driven policies have not met with universal acceptance. Hajer (1995, page 258), for example, discusses "the enigma of Dutch politics" with its structural

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tendency to engage in "apocalyptic discourse" about environmental limits but its signal failure to achieve effective action. Staats et al (1996) highlight the failure of the 1990 national advertising campaign about global warming to achieve any significant changes, either in public understanding and increased acceptance of unpopular policies such as carbon taxes, or willingness to make any substantial changes in lifestyle. Moreover, the goals of the first NEP have been substantially weakened in the second plan (Ministry of Housing Physical Planning and Environment, 1993), at least in part by effective lobbying from other social and economic interests (Carter et al, 1996; de Graaf et al, 1996; Wintle and Reeve, 1994), coupled with the onset of economic recession. These examples of wider scepticism have prompted Glasbergen and Driessen (1994) to argue that the Dutch need to shift from a management approach where environmental policy which serves "as a draft for a different kind of society" to a model which sees "environmental policy as a package deal of societal interests" (page 38). This more inclusive approach which they term 'network management' involves wider consultation among both public and private sector interests to achieve a more lasting consensus on environmental policies. So, a more inclusionary and participatory approach to formulating environmental policies at the local level might be seen as reasserting a commitment to the consensus-building approach which had preceded the forging of the first NEP some ten years earlier. In Eindhoven, new environmental initiatives such as household collection of waste materials for recycling received funding from central government in 1993/94. At the time of our research the local authority was in the process of assessing the new demands being made on it by a national government strongly committed to environmental planning and consensus-building approach but apparently backing away from additional expenditure in the second NEP. To summarise, at the time of the workshops in late 1994, the local context in Nottingham was of an innovatory authority working within a poorly articulated and funded national framework for sustainable development. The Eindhoven authority was a relative latecomer nationally in adopting a local strategy for sustainable development at a time when central government was placing more responsibility on local authorities to take the lead and resource sustainable initiatives. Under these circumstances, an attempt at comparative analysis is likely to underestimate the complexities of each case, but by focusing on the discourses political elites use to address the concerns voiced by their respective residents, some of these complexities and their contingencies can be revealed. The specialist workshops We have reported on the findings of the household questionnaire and in-depth discussion groups with residents in an earlier paper (Harrison et al, 1996). For the purposes of the workshop, the comparative findings were sent to all participants in advance. The main points raised in the report were as follows. First, in both cities there was high environmental awareness but considerable public resistance to adopting proenvironmental behaviours. Nottingham residents expressed more resistance than residents in Eindhoven. Second, some of the most prominent reasons advanced by residents for failing to act in a responsible manner related to uncertainty and confusion about environmental problems. Much of this confusion stemmed from media framing of the arguments of environmental scientists, conflicting advice being promoted by environmental 'experts', business, and politicians; and the lack of trustworthy sources. Again, these feelings were more strongly articulated in Nottingham than Eindhoven. Third, in both cities, residents expressed considerable doubts about the ability of partnerships between businesses and the government to secure long-term commitment to improve environmental conditions. Despite mistrust of central government—again stronger in

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Table 1. Membership of the two workshops. Areas of expertise represented Local authority councillors Local authority officers (planning and environment) Commerce and private sector Nongovernmental organisations and voluntary sector Education Local media and communications

Nottingham 3 7 3 4 3 1

Eindhovena 2 2 1 1 1 1

a Although sixteen people had agreed to attend the workshop, for a variety of reasons, several could not attend.

Nottingham than Eindhoven—residents in both cities looked to national governments to take the lead. Participants in the workshops were invited to respond to these findings and to focus their discussion on ways of communicating more effectively with the public about sustainable development. Table 1 illustrates the constituencies represented in each workshop. Anglo-Dutch dialogues: key themes in the specialist workshops

In both cities, the workshop was regarded as an opportunity to explore policy options in a relatively 'safe' setting, and participants made frequent reference to the comparative nature of the study. In this respect, the workshop provided a new forum for debate but not necessarily one which generated consensus. In what follows, we emphasise agreement and differences between the two workshops rather than the details within each city, but obvious disagreements and dilemmas raised in each workshop have been noted. Different discursive constructions of the public There were striking differences in the way the two workshops discursively constructed the 'public'. The Eindhoven representatives worked with a conception of a homogeneous public, essentially pliant, rational, and willing to change itself if the right information could be communicated in the right way. The commitment of Eindhoven citizens towards waste recycling was acknowledged as a major success, for example. There was a feeling that people's sense of themselves had been changed through the acceptance of new recycling practices. Although there were still some problems with noncompliance, members agreed: "if separating glass is important for the environment, we do it. The government provides the facilities. Like organic waste, people do it without any comment, they just do it. It has become part of their behaviour". Unfortunately, recycling seems to be as far as the majority are willing to go, and workshop participants spoke of "hitting the wall" of increased public resistance to greater demands for change. Some workshop members thought that many citizens "feel they are already doing enough", a sense of complacency was setting in, whereas others argued "it is not that people don't care, they underestimate the situation". The public finds it more difficult to grasp the significance of abstract global problems and even if they do take action, there is little feedback. People can see tangible results if they help to clean up the local environment but "12 years later, confronted by other problems on a global scale like the hole in the ozone layer, people CAN do something but they can't see the effects of their actions and that makes it difficult". The social elements of Dutch environmental policy rely on a social psychological model of education or information, attitude, and behaviour change (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975; Staats and Harland, 1995). In the light of failure to achieve substantial

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behavioural changes, some participants questioned the form of rationality underpinning the model. For example, many families face more urgent and pressing social and economic problems which reduce their capacity to care about environmental matters. One of the independent politicians argued that technological developments and organisational structures also need to incorporate environmentally responsible approaches. At the same time national government needed to acknowledge that the way society is organised impinges directly on people's willingness and ability to change their own environmental behaviour. Consensus was not achieved on this point but participants found it difficult to envisage a practical alternative to the dominant model of essentially rational behaviour change. In the Nottingham workshop, discursive constructions of the 'public' were different. There was a consensus that people had lost their sense of community and belief in the effectiveness of collective action. There was no longer a homogenous public but many publics, differentiated especially by class, income, and ethnicity; ill-informed about the causes and consequences of environmental problems, and knowing little about what they could do. "People have to be informed. (...) You can't expect people who don't know anything about environmental problems to do anything to alleviate them." At the same time, people needed to be told more about what the consequences of their practices might be. "It's the impact of individual activities. People don't know what their impact is. Then they don't know that changing their way of working and their living is going to have any impact." It was recognised that the shift towards sustainable practices would be itself a fragmentary and erratic process, with individuals "taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions, and reducing their impact on the environment" according to their needs, capabilities, and existing lifestyles. Whether motivations were primarily altruistic or economic was irrelevant but it would be wrong to try to impose new sets of practices on people: "They have got to come to the party out of their own free will and they've got to get involved to their own degree of interest and ability". But, as in Eindhoven, there was the presumption of pliant, willing publics if only communications could be targeted more effectively. Thus, most of the discussion in Nottingham, too, focused on problems with existing communication practices and institutional constraints, but against a background of multiple target groups needing to be addressed. Suggestive of a more managerialist approach to communication rather than the more open, value-driven approach many NGOs and the local authority might favour, this approach presents more dilemmas for some workshop participants than others. A striking difference between the two workshops was the way in which active environmental citizens were envisaged, especially through support given to bottom-up initiatives. The discussion in Nottingham tended to focus on small-scale and pragmatic successes achieved through a voluntary sector which is very active at grass-roots level. Direct involvement through personal contact with local people was regarded as one means of overcoming mistrust. Several members of the workshop had experienced the benefits of working with community-led initiatives, especially with children and young people. At the same time, there is a well-established, environmental movement which favours direct involvement with local people through practical projects on the ground. These members argued strongly for an approach that was not too prescriptive. "It gets back to the point of ownership; if people don't have ownership of an idea they are not going to do anything about it." Community projects such as litter clearance, habitat creation, and recycling initiatives generate feelings of ownership. By acknowledging and publicising small-scale achievements in the local press, through awards and other ceremonies, NGO members argued that public trust and confidence could be rebuilt. Moreover, local participants

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could act as ambassadors by disseminating news of their achievements amongst a wider constituency. The voluntary sector members argued strongly that "nuts and bolts projects that get going within a local community are far more relevant in building confidence and therefore destroying this mistrust, and then start a sort of spiralling-up process". In this way small-scale projects could make a difference both environmentally and socially. There was more scepticism from public and private sector representatives, however. Restructuring of the national economy, rising unemployment associated with the recession and the sudden, dramatic closure of the collieries in 1993/94 meant small-scale, community-led projects could not address the wider issues of achieving sustainable development on a city-wide scale. In contrast to Nottingham, direct empowerment or citizen-led initiatives were not supported to the same extent in the Eindhoven workshop. One politician commented early in the discussions about the tendency for a top-down approach to policy to undervalue what citizens might contribute to environmental policy. "There are several movements in the Netherlands who know what's best for you. It irritates me and, I think, the public sometimes. You have to let people bring in things themselves and respect them. Otherwise you make them feel guilty. Then people will withdraw and they may be right to do so." But this was very much a minority view. The preferred way forward for the officers was for people to mobilise and form an organisation which could then deal with the administrative and political structures of the city. One of the local politicians commended the development of direct political action, arguing "you can form action groups. I think that if there were more pressure groups in this society, politics would be very different. The Eindhoven culture is not very political. There is a lack of activity. People could get together and go for it". This view was immediately countered by an officer who commented: "I find that a bit dangerous. Because the people who have another opinion can do the same. The consequence is that you do not make any progress. You need a clear objective to work to, so you can follow a consistent line". These differences were openly exposed in responses to the Ecoteam initiative from Global Action Plan as a specific example of a community-based programme (Gershon and Gillman, 1992). As a coordinated, nationwide scheme designed to change household behaviour, voluntary trainers in neighbourhoods and in the workplace support households who join ecoteams. Recent evaluation of the programme suggests that substantial changes in household practices can be achieved through the programme (Staats and Harland, 1995). In an intense discussion about whether grass-roots movements or organised political parties should drive environmental policy development, several participants in the Eindhoven workshop were sceptical of the work and enthusiasm generated by the ecoteams, describing it as "a kind of religion" which operated outside the political process. Some wondered if the work of the ecoteams did fundamentally change environmental attitudes and behaviour. Was there not more than whiff of hypocrisy when people who are members of an ecoteam "are allowed to have two cars and drive them as much as they want to" even knowing that their actions pollute the atmosphere? This charge was countered by the trainer who stressed that choices undertaken consciously and not through ignorance generated respect. Some workshop participants remained unconvinced, whereas others were concerned about the time it would take to persuade people to change. Finding a sustainable message Despite evidence from the field studies that uncertainty and confusion about environmental issues, and scepticism about the effectiveness of proposed solutions could be attributed to styles of media coverage, the mass media were seen as important technologies for improving public awareness in both workshops. But, at the same time,

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a number of participants expressed very similar feelings of ambiguity about, and mistrust of, national media as had local people. In both countries, participants discussed the general downturn in environmental coverage in their national and local media which had began in the early 1990s. This decline, which was difficult to account for because environmental problems had certainly not declined over the same period, was described as having a major impact on the policymaking process. In Nottingham, participants agreed that media reports could no longer be enrolled as an indicator of public concern about environmental issues to justify the development of specific environmental initiatives. This made it harder to maintain political momentum for resources and policy development. In Eindhoven, too "the perceived relevance and importance of environmental issues was much more intense three or four years ago" and less strident or intense media coverage of environmental issues meant that less pressure was being placed on educationalists, politicians, and officers to respond with new policies. These observations of the institutional mobilisation of media coverage resonate with studies of the importance of media in shaping science policy rather than raising public understanding of science issues (see Nelkin, 1995). Generating maximum environmental coverage therefore serves the political agendas of NGOs and those with environmental responsibilities within institutions, as much as it does in 'educating the public' (Jamison, 1996). Though deploring the fall in the quantity of media reports, workshop participants in both cities were unable to agree about the quality of environmental coverage. In Nottingham, some felt it was too complex and people were overloaded with information, whereas others were disturbed by the media's propensity to simplify issues because, as one of the environmental campaigners stressed: "there aren't any simple messages!". The environmental activists in the Nottingham workshop also acknowledged that their major communication strategy which had been to generate a sense of immediate environmental crisis was no longer as effective as it had been in the past. "The guilt trip has for many years been the way campaigning groups have approached the general public with their views (...) But you don't want people to feel guilty because they haven't crushed their cans up. You want them to feel great the minute they've switched the light off when they leave the room. I think we've got some messages intrinsically wrong—but I don't think it's too late to change". There was general agreement that environmental 'bad news' was more likely to drive people into apathy and despair than it was to stimulate new awareness and a determination to implement change. Was it possible to persuade journalists and editors to run 'good news' environmental stories rather than 'negative' or 'sensationalist' pieces? Participants agreed this might be possible perhaps at the local level, but not at the national level. The communications expert in the Eindhoven group also criticised institutional strategies which emphasise the negative rather than the positive. But here, too, there were disagreements about the framing and reporting of environmental stories. Some criticised the Dutch media for presenting very simple messages to the public: such messages were patronising to a well-informed audience and no longer effective. Others argued that ordinary citizens feel alienated by extensive media campaigns of complex environmental problems, especially those concerning global warming, or N o r t h South relations because they would not know how to deal with the information, or what they could do to help resolve these problems. "The television campaign with the image of the globe as a burning candle is very distant for people. It is a beautiful, dramatic image, our world is burning up. It had a lot of impact but did not lead to any change in behaviour because no one can blow out that flame at a global level."

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An important issue for both workshops was the role of the media in communicating the scientific arguments underpinning the need for sustainable policies. In Nottingham, the workshop participants were themselves deeply troubled about the 'truthfulness' of what was being communicated and acknowledged the sense of frustration they—as 'supposed experts'—felt because environmental 'certainties' kept changing. It was simply impossible to be prescriptive, to communicate simple environmental messages, or even to respond with clear advice when the public phoned up about alternative recycling strategies when "things are changing all the time. The advice on issues changes. There aren't any right answers". As another environmental advisor said: "How can you tell the truth when you're not really quite sure how long the truth is going to be for?" In the workshop, the depth of public mistrust of local and national government was interpreted as a consequence of insufficient knowledge, tainted by unacceptable levels of uncertainty and disagreement between different groups of experts. As the representatives who were expected to make judgments about environmentally sound policies and actions, participants came to accept that all they could hope to do was to be a bit more open about the limits of environmental knowledge and to be prepared to revise their advice in the light of new knowledge. Again this more reflexive view of environmental problems and appropriate actions was recognised as being contrary to the dominant style of media reporting which demands certainties— but it could be promoted in face-to-face contacts with the public. In contrast, there was no debate about the veracity of scientific findings in the Eindhoven workshop where evidence was accepted as factual, authoritative, and correct. Rather, the argument was made that the media do not deal fairly with scientific expertise and evidence of the severity of global environmental problems. The real difficulties arose when science entered the political domain: then different political, economic, and social agendas muddy the water. Talking about climate change and scientific progress, for example, one of the Dutch participants said: "You've got this group of researchers and then you get a political translation. That has to be spread around the world to countries that signed the climate treaty. Then you get to the press and confusion, because of contradictory information. But I say again, you can develop policy on the basis of scientific research". Uncertainties and contingencies were thus constructed as social communication problems rather than being inherent to scientific progress. Espousing a new communications strategy at local level

One of the most striking observations to emerge from both workshops was the way in which public resistances to environmental communications were impacting on the policymakers. It was recognised that persuading citizens to internalise an environmental credo, to assume a new environmental identity requires a more open and trusting relationship between citizens and institutions. As discussion progressed, in both workshops participants argued the need for local government and businesses to begin to discipline themselves into more proenvironmental practices. Only through such demonstrations would people begin to trust at least some of the environmental rhetoric and perhaps accept that there was actually a genuine need for action now. The Dutch model is still based on a 'top-down' approach to planning and the delivery of services, although there are indications that this is beginning to change (Carter et al, 1996). The workshop participants agreed that Dutch citizens had made real progress towards more sustainable practices and now responsibility for the next step resided within political institutions. As one of the politicians said: "If we as a Council communicate with citizens, then the message has to have a content and the Council has to give the right example. If the Council is not progressing the development of its

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environmental policy, then I don't think we can expect citizens to take any extra steps. Communication is only useful if the Council takes the next step". Discussion focused on ways of 'greening' the Council and, despite some scepticism, plans were well advanced to establish an ecoteam within the Environment department of the city council. Acknowledging the problem of achieving consensus prior to taking action, one officer commented: " y ° u need an environmental dictator in this building who forces you, or everyone will find arguments to go on as usual!". The rhetoric of inclusionary communication was certainly much stronger in Nottingham than it was in Eindhoven. No talk here of an environmental dictator. Instead there was a stronger theme of opening up the City and County Councils to new voices by, for example, identifying target communities and bringing in their values and interests. Learning to listen to people was a strong theme, as was investing in people and action plans rather than endless leaflet campaigns. There was substantial commitment to developing new forms of governance in which environmental citizenship was seen to be practised by private, public, and social sector institutions working in partnerships. The establishment of the Nottingham Green Partnership was instanced by participants as a start. As one of its members put it, underlying the partnership was an assumption "that any message that could be endorsed by the Wildlife Trust, the City Council, British Gas and the County Council had to be more convincing than any message from any single organisation!". In the light of residents' expressed scepticism of partnerships, workshop members admitted that such an assumption might not always be correct but, as a means of promoting new cross-sectoral discussions amongst its members about environmental issues, the Partnership itself was regarded as breaking new ground—especially in respect of the contribution the business sector might make to environmental policies and practices. As part of a learning experience in which conventional roles and expectations are reformulated in pursuit of a common goal, partnerships can be seen as making a useful contribution to raising understanding of environmental issues amongst professionals, and an excellent mechanism for exchanging ideas of good practice, especially given the recency of environmental initiatives within institutions. These new relationships are not without their problems, however. One major point of friction exposed in the workshop is the tendency of the public and voluntary sector to look to private companies primarily for financial resources, and not appreciating that there were other services that could be of assistance. In contrast, the key strategic issues for Eindhoven were to strengthen and reinforce the power of the local state. The lead must come from the Council and it must demonstrate its environmental commitment through example; develop a vision of what a sustainable city would be like, and use it to drive strategies and individual policies; provide leadership from the top. The government must be the motor of environmental change because the problems are too big for individuals to achieve much, and they are too urgent to wait for everyone else to 'catch up' with the analysis that demands action now. "Government and politicians have to be one step ahead all the time—with feedback of course". The workshop felt that they should explore political strategies whereby green issues can be introduced into the agendas of the main political parties on the Council, and through which the Council can be encouraged to meet environmental targets. Here too, there was a much greater confidence in the essential correctness of the environmental critique. Participants argued it was necessary, publicly to acknowledge the force of ecological laws and use these to challenge the often unquestioned assumptions about the correctness of economic models as the only basis for Council policy. Throughout, the central argument remained the same: national and

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local government must provide the moral and intellectual authority, backed by resources and facilities so that people can exercise their commitment to sustainability. In both workshops, these renewed commitments to institutional change were bolstered by hopes that changes in media practices in reporting environmental stories could also be achieved. One strategy would be to concentrate much more effort in working with local media to produce positive environmental stories, offering solutions rather than problems, demonstrating and celebrating what people can achieve locally. Where the two workshops diverged was in terms of the style and content of the next generation of environmental communications. The Eindhoven participants wanted to avoid patronising people by presuming they have no knowledge or understanding of the issues. They preferred balanced, rational communications rather than oversimplified, overhyped media reports, and felt the best way to achieve these would be to educate journalists so they can better understand the environmental issues. Through this process, it would be possible to fight for a general upgrading of environmental news in the media. The Nottingham participants also felt a new approach was needed on the 'new' context of scientific uncertainty about environmental problems and solutions. Somehow the media needed to be encouraged to develop a style of reporting which accepted contingency, whereas policy needed to be progressed despite the fickleness and fluctuations of media attention to environmental issues. Conclusions

This comparative study of how local people and political elites are beginning to address the task of putting in place local strategies for sustainable development suggests that social and cultural contexts within which debates are taking place have a profound influence on opportunities for progress. Not only do the public and political elites recognise uncertainties about the veracity of the 'science' underpinning the nature of environmental problems but also about the propositions decisionmakers and the public make about each other's behaviour and motives. The Nottingham discourse was one of sharing power and knowledge more widely than hitherto. The Eindhoven discourse was one of greater rigour and authority, which would be achieved by more demonstrable commitment to proenvironmental practices. In Eindhoven, the administrative and political voice was dominant throughout the workshop, perhaps reflecting the practices of coalition politics, whereas there was a more complex set of voices in the Nottingham workshop. This is not only because a greater range of interests were represented in Nottingham but also because in Nottingham the concept of partnership is taking hold at local level. These differences in political culture remain fundamental and will ensure that the trajectories each nation will take for moving in the direction of sustainable development will be negotiated in quite different ways too. Given these differing discourses, it was surprising to find in both cities that the response of political elites to public resistance to environmental communications is to refocus internally on what institutions themselves can and should do to progress environmental goals. The institutional news values of the mass media were regarded as serving to confuse rather than inform people about the nature of environmental problems. At the same time, the impetus for continuing environmental policy development within local institutions was seen to be linked to the amount and style of media coverage. In this context, the battle for media space through the continued production of 'new' environmental problems has to continue. But both workshops rejected reliance on the 'exhortation model' of top-down, mass communication as the main way forward towards creating more sustainable societies, acknowledging instead the need for public, private, and voluntary sector organisations to match their own practices to their environmental rhetoric. Such a shift would require a redirection of resources away from

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mass advertising or publicity campaigns into much more focused and intensive work, perhaps such as that advocated by Business in the Community or Global Action Plan. In this respect, the challenge of putting in place local strategies for sustainable development is seen to be as much about institutional change as about new forms of public participation in the planning process. Acknowledgements. This research was funded by the Global Environmental Change Programme, ESRC (grant no: L320253053). The Research Officer, Petra Filius, led the Dutch field research and translated the workshop discussions, supported financially by the Institute of Forestry and Nature Research in Wageningen and the City authorities in Eindhoven. We would like to thank Steve Waller (Nottingham City Council), Sjef Langerveld (IBN, Wageningen), and Wolter Kornet (Eindhoven DBO). References Ageyman J, Evans B (Eds), 1994 Local Environmental Policies and Strategies (Longman, Harlow, Essex) Anderson A, 1997 Media, Culture and the Environment (UCL Press, London) Bell A, 1994, "Climate of opinion: public and media on the global environment" Discourse and Society 5 3 3 - 64 Bishop J, Kean J, Hickling D, Silson R, 1994 Community Involvement in Planning and Development Processes (Stationery Office, London) Burgess J, 1990, "The production and consumption of environmental meanings in the mass media: a research agenda for the 1990s" Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 15 139 -161 Burgess J, 1993, "Representing nature: conservation and the mass media", in Conservation in Progress Eds B Goldsmith, A Warren (John Wiley, Chichester, Sussex) pp 51 - 64 Burgess J, Harrison C M, 1993, "The circulation of claims in the cultural politics of environmental change", in The Mass Media and Environmental Issues Ed. A Hansen (Leicester University Press, Leicester) pp 198 - 221 Burgess J, Harrison C M, Limb M, 1988a, "Exploring environmental values through the medium of small groups. Part 1: theory and practice" Environment and Planning A 20 309 - 326 Burgess J, Harrison C M, Limb M, 1988b, "Exploring environmental values through the medium of small groups. Part 2: illustrations of a group at work" Environment and Planning A 20 457-476 Burgess J, Harrison C M, Maiteny P, 1991, "Contested meanings: the consumption of news about nature conservation" Media, Culture and Society 13 499 - 519 Burgess J, Harrison C M, Filius P, 1995 Making the Abstract Real: A Cross-cultural Study of Public Understanding of Global Environmental Change Department of Geography, University College London, London Carter N, Oxley M, Golland A, 1996, "Towards the market: Dutch physical planning in a UK perspective" Planning Practice and Research 1149 - 60 Chetwynd M, Thomas A, 1994 Communicating Environmental Information to the Public: Sustainable Development and Associated Issues Social and Community Planning Research, 35 Northampton Square, London EC1V 0AX Church C, 1996 Towards Local Sustainability: A Review of Current Activity on Local Agenda 21 in the UK United Nations Sustainable Development Unit, 3 Whitehall Court, London SW1A 2EL Collins K, 1996 The Politics of Sustainability: A Case Study of the Island of Jersey published PhD thesis, Department of Geography, University College London Darier E, 1996, "The politics and power effects of garbage recycling in Halifax, Canada" Local Environment 1 63 - 86 de Graaf H J, Musters C J M, ter Keurs W J, 1996, "Sustainable development: looking for new strategies" Ecological Economics 16 205 -216 Durrant J, 1995, "A new agenda for the public understanding of science" Lecture delivered at Imperial College London; copies available from the author at Science Museum Library, South Kensington, London SW7 5NH Eckersley R, 1992 Environmentalism and Political Theory (UCL Press, London) Eden S, 1993, "Individual environmental responsibility and its role in public environmentalism" Environment and Planning A 25 1743 -1758 Faludi A, 1991, "Fifty years of Dutch physical planning" Built Environment 17 5 -13 Fishbein M, Ajzen 1,1975 Belief Attitude, Intention and Behaviour (Addison Wesley, Reading, MA) Fishkin J S, 1991 Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions in Democratic Reform (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT)

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