Rhetorics of environmental sustainability: commonplaces and places

Although a rhetoric of sustainability is now widely used by government, nongovernmental organisations, and business in addressing the public, there is no evidence of a broad shift of behaviour in response to it. Yet most sustainability programmes at international, national, and local levels require broad public participation if they are to reach their goals. We argue that organisational communication with the public is central to defining the form of participation that is expected, and that rhetorical analysis can show relationships that are implicit in these attempts to persuade. We analyse leaflets from a range of organisations to identify some of the elements that are common between them, both in their explicit content and their implied models of participation. Then we analyse the responses in focus groups to these common appeals. Our findings show that the generalised appeals and the rhetoric of crisis tend to distance policy organisations from the immediacy and dailiness of the public's own experiences of and talk about the environment. Because of this distance, the rhetoric does little to encourage participation and practical action. Sustainability, participation, and communication Since the Rio summit and other international meetings of the early 1990s, government agencies, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), and businesses have used a rhetoric of sustainable development. This rhetoric acknowledges the need to consider constraints on the pursuit of development, and calls for a major shift in the relations between society and the environment (DoE, 1994a; LGMB, 1993; UNCED, 1992; WCED, 1987). One definition frequently used is that of the Brundtland Report: "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED, 1987, page 43). There have been many varying statements of sustainable development; policy analysts have repeatedly highlighted the complexities and contradictions in its various strands (Jacobs, 1991; Lele, 1991; Owens, 1994; Redclift, 1993; Wagle, 1993). A recurrent theme is that sustainability deals not only with defining the principles of development of a future world, but with the ways these principles are to be put into action. One key element of sustainability and sustainable development is a call for broad participation, by including the widest possible representation in policy forums, developing a consensus around national and local government initiatives, communicating new initiatives to the public, and encouraging a sense of individual responsibility for actions. In earlier conceptions of environmental protection (such as those underlying smoke abatement and effluent control), change could be imposed from the top down, by negotiation between government regulators and industrial managers (see Hajer, 1995 on the UK case). There was little concern then with communicating the policy to the public, listening to what they might say in response, or influencing the actions of each individual. But official reports now present a sustainable world as requiring the participation of everyone, in providing knowledge, making decisions, and changing 334 G Myers, P Macnaghten their daily routines (Holmberg et al, 1993; Jacobs, 1997; Redclift, 1993). Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration states: "Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens" (UNCED, 1992). Similarly, the introduction to a recent report on Indicators of Sustainable Development for the United Kingdom links communication, participation, and individual action: "We hope ... to bring home the main messages, not just to government and policy makers but to businesses and individuals. We need to ensure that we consider how our own actions have an effect on the environment" (DoE, 1996, page iii). Thus the organisations promoting sustainability have committed themselves to major programmes of communication, aimed at involving a broad range of members and representatives of the public. In the United Kingdom these programmes include attitude surveys (see DoE, 1994b; Worcester, 1994), new forums for the development of indicators (DoE, 1996; LGMB, 1993; Macnaghten and Jacobs, 1997), and publicity campaigns such as 'Going for Green'. But there has been little qualitative research into the way these programmes interact with everyday talk and daily life (a notable exception is Hinchliffe, 1996). These campaigns in support of sustainability are based on assumptions about what people think about the environment, their communities, the organisations addressing them, and their own capacities for action. If these assumptions are wrong, considerable efforts are likely to be wasted, or even counterproductive. In this paper we analyse the assumptions involved in communication programmes, and analyse specific attempts by organisations to enrol members of the public in action towards sustainability, paying particular attention to the persuasive use of language. To understand the model of participation offered, we have to look, not only at what these organisations say, but at how they say it, not only at what information people receive, but at how they respond. Rhetorical analysis We have noted that there has been a lively debate about just what form public participation in sustainability might take. But much of it has focused on the political institutions of international or local participation, the mechanisms for consultation and empowerment, with little attention to the processes of communication and persuasion that are necessary for any participation to take place. Thus the discussion remains at a level of abstraction at which the tensions within the public understanding of sustainability can be glossed over, and the complex contexts of responses can be simplified and generalised. Underlying most attempts at promoting participation in sustainability is an implicit model of communication as information transfer between an organisation and the public (for instance, see DoE, 1994b; Worcester, 1994). In this model, the transfer can fail if: People are unaware of the nature of the threat. People are aware, but the messages are insufficiently clear and simple. The messages are clear and simple, but people do not recognise that the threats concern them. People are aware the threats concern them, but have lost faith in the institutions through which the information comes and through which any action must be channelled. People see the action that must take place, but lack a sense of personal responsibility. In this information-transfer model, communication is seen as flowing in one direction, and the process of communication is taken as unproblematic, given the proper medium Rhetorics of environmental sustaimibility 335 and sufficient resources. The model assumes scientific realism, in which environmental problems are 'out there* objectively for all to see [contrast this view with that of I lealey and Shaw, (1994)]. It assumes instrumentalism, in which people will act when they see the problems, and the role of communication is to draw attention to them. We contrast this one-way model with one based in rhetoric, "the faculty of observing in a given case the available means of persuasion* (Aristotle* 1954, page 24). Such an approach starts with the rhetorical situation (Bitzcr, 1968): that is, Ihe context of things, people, and relationships in which persuasive discourse can have an effect on people's decisions and actions. We should stress that this use of the term 'rhetoric' is different from that usually used in political debate. Discussions of the 'rhetoric' of sustainability usually take it as empty talk, to be contrasted with the 'reality' of institutions, interests, and action. But rhetoric, in this broader view, is an understanding of audiences and forms, of the constraints that form the basis of any persuasion. Effective rhetoric is a precondition, not an alternative, to environmental action. A rhetorical approach recognises that communication is multidimensional, not just carrying information from source to receiver, but setting off a complex web of interactions. It need not assume realism; it studies how the persuader establishes that there is a problem. Thus it can build on cpistemological critiques showing the construetedness of 'natures' (for references, sec Macnaghtcn and Urry, 1997). It need not assume instrumentalism; it focuses attention on how people relate perceived threats to their daily lives, interpret messages as ambiguous, evaluate messages in terms of their source, and trace out competing notions of responsibility. These responses define the arena in which an organisation must intervene if it is to promote participation in its policies. Some might consider the texts we analyse to be 'just rhetoric', a matter of conventional form, not conceptual content. In interviews, the publicity managers from the organisations involved sometimes explained their choices of similar language and pictures in terms of a shared knowledge of what worked rhetorically, conventional devices such as hopeful messages, pictures of children, trees. But we will argue that the consensus was not just about the textual surface, 'just rhetoric'; these very diverse organisations were also drawing on a shared language for the environmental agenda as endorsed by states, corporations, and organisations at the Rio summit, and a shared sense of how this agenda positions people. We return to this relation between the slogans, policies, and reception of sustainability in the conclusion. Methods In our study we analysed specific texts, selected key passages for focus-group discussion, and considered responses to these passages and to the assumptions about participation and persuasion implied in them. We collected a set of twenty leaflets that were in circulation in 1993 and 1994, all aimed at encouraging some form of participation in actions related to sustainability, whether turning down a thermostat, joining a demonstration, or sending money (table 1, see over). To explore the broad range of sustainability rhetoric, we included leaflets from government agencies such as the UK government's Energy Efficiency Office, businesses such as the Co-operative Bank, and campaigning organisations such as Friends of the Earth (FoE). We included organisations such as Greenpeace that do not endorse the agenda of sustainable development, because we assumed (as we indeed found) that they might draw on some parts of the rhetoric of sustainability. We interviewed people at the publicity offices of these organisations, to ask them about how these texts were related to their organisational strategies. We analysed the texts by identifying arguments for action that were made in general form, whether stated in the written text or implied in illustrations. Usually these 336 G Myers, P Macnaghten Table 1. Texts analysed. Organisation Title Date Business leaflets British Nuclear Forum British Nuclear Fuels Ltd B&Q pic The Body Shop Co-operative Bank pic Confederation of British Industries ICI pic J Sainsbury pic Campaign group leaflets Council for the Protection of Rural England Friends of the Earth