ABSTRACT

Environmental communication (EC) focuses on understanding and solving complex and urgent social and environmental problems. EC praxis has helped us create learning opportunities for students and collaborators to develop the conceptual and practical tools to solve complex problems together. The problems addressed in EC can be considered wicked ones. Because problems are inherently multi-dimensional with many different ways of defining what a problem is and who that problem affects, developing skills in problem framing is an important focal area for EC. Students or collaborators divide into groups of three or four to identify, build, and present a case study that analyzes and makes recommendations about some of the rich and difficult facets of wicked environmental problems. Like the other activities, shared systems mapping can occur at any stage in a collaboration. To address contemporary environmental challenges, citizens and scientists alike must be able to handle complexity, ambiguity, and urgent problems that have no obvious optimal solutions.