Across Borders and Environments: Communication and Environmental Justice in International Contexts
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ACROSS BORDERS AND ENVIRONMENTS: COMMUNICATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXTS Edited by: Editor: Stacey K. Sowards, Ph.D. Stacey K. Sowards, Ph.D. Kyle Alvarado Diana Arrieta Co-Editors: Jacob Barde Kyle Alvarado Diana Arrieta Jacob Barde Photo by: Richard Pineda by: Richard Photo Across Borders and Environments: Communication and Environmental Justice in International Contexts Proceedings of the Eleventh Biennial Conference on Communication and the Environment University of Texas at El Paso June 25 – 28, 2011 Stacey K. Sowards, Editor Kyle Alvarado, Co-Editor Diana Arrieta, Co-Editor Jacob Barde, Co-Editor The University of Texas at El Paso Designed by: Kyle Alvarado Photography and Section Pages by: J. Ameth Barrera Richard Pineda Araceli Puente LEAGUE GOTHIC FONT PROVIDED BY: Micah Rich Caroline Hadilaksono Copyright held by individual authors © Sage Publications, Takahashi & Meisner essay Publication Date: February 6, 2012 Publisher of Record: International Environmental Communication Association Cincinnati, Ohio Introduction 1-4 Acknowledgements 5 I. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUES IN THE UNITED STATES “Sacred Land or National Sacrifice Zone: Competing Values in the Yucca Mountain Controversy” Danielle Endres, University of Utah 7-22 “The Populist Argumentative Frame in the Environmental Vision of Van Jones” JiangBo HuangFu & Ross Singer, Southern Illinois University Carbondale 23-37 “Please Don’t Waste Me: Majora Carter’s ‘Greening the Ghetto’ TED Talk” Joseph S. Clark, Florida State University 38-53 “Environmental Knowledge, Values, Attitudes, and Behaviors in Paso Del Norte: Implications for Environmental Communication Campaigns” Lorena Mondragón, The University of Texas at El Paso 54-70 II. ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ISSUES IN PERU, KENYA, SURINAME, INDIA, & BRAZIL “Mass-Media Coverage of Climate Change in Peru: Framing and the Role of Foreign Voices” Bruno Takahashi & Mark Meisner, SUNY-ESF 72-88 “‘It’s More Than Planting Trees, It’s Planting Ideas:’ Environmental Justice and Ecofeminism in the Green Belt Movement” Kathleen P. Hunt, University of Utah 89-101 “Transforming a Resource Extraction Conflict in Suriname: The Promise of the World Café” Karina C. Mullen, Colorado State University 102-112 “Message in a Bottle: How Coca-Cola India Presents Itself as Environmentally Sustainable” Tonya Frizzell, Royal Roads University 113-123 “Can Traditional Peoples and Communities in the Brazilian Amazon Conciliate Instrumental and Dialogic Forms of Communication?” Thaís Brianezi, Daniel Fonseca de Andrade, & Marcos Sorrentino, University of Sao Paulo 124-131 III. GENDER & ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE “Looking Both Ways”: The Intersection of Climate Justice and Reproductive Justice and the Implications of Rhetorical Alignment of Social Movement Concerns Kathleen M. de Onís, University of Montana-Missoula 133-146 “Unearthing the Feminine: Yin/Yang Spirals in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines” Jorge Gomez, The University of Texas at El Paso 147-159 “Greening Climate Justice Through More Color: Latinas and the Green Movement” Erin Drake, Colorado State University 160-169 IV. RARE’S INDONESIA PROGRAM: CASE STUDIES ON CONSERVATION CAMPAIGNS “Rare: Organizational Identity and Localized Conservation” Carlos A. Tarin, University of Utah 171-183 “Campaigning for Environmental Conservation: An Ethnographic Investigation of Indonesia’s Contemporary Cultural System” Anthony M. Jimenez, The University of Texas at El Paso 184-195 “A Case Study of a More Effective Approach to Environmental Campaigns in Thousand Islands National Park, Jakarta, Indonesia” Jacob Barde, The University of Texas at El Paso 196-203 V. ENVIRONMENT AND SENSE OF PLACE “Mythic Fragments & Environmental Activists: Rhetorical and Mythic Justifications for the Locavore Movement” Justin Eckstein, University of Denver & Sarah T. Partlow-Lefevre, Idaho State University 205-217 “Constructing Contemporary Senses of Place: The Politics of Memory in Appalachia” Tom Bowers, Northern Kentucky University 218-225 “Stories that ‘Make Sense’: Is Nature Writing an Oxymoron?” Julie Kalil Schutten, Northern Arizona University 226-233 VI. CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES “Do Actions Bespeak Words? Environmental Attitudes and Lifestyle Politics” Justin Rolfe-Redding, George Mason University 235-243 “Engaging Visitors in Climate Change Communication: A Case Study of Southern Florida’s National Parks and Wildlife Refuges” Caroline A. Beard & Jessica Leigh Thompson, Colorado State University 244-254 “Drowning in the Depths of Climate Change: An Exploration of Rhetoric about Polar Bears” Gloria Leticia Bebber, The University of Texas at El Paso 255-269 VII. ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSES TO CRISES “A Case Study of Community and Voice in Emergency Response Efforts” Ann D. Jabro, Robert Morris University 271-281 “The Effects of Leadership Styles on Public Receptiveness to Specific Crisis Situations: A South African Energy Crisis Case Study” Althea Jansen, University of the Witwatersrand 282-294 “Hydraulic Fracturing and Environmental Effects: Understanding Media Communication Strategies through Groupthink Theory” Adriana Salas & María del Mar Salazar, The University of Texas at El Paso 295-304 VIII. 2011 CONFERENCE ON COMMUNICATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM 305-323 Introduction Stacey K. Sowards, Editor The University of Texas at El Paso UTEP’s campus and Franklin Mountains (Photo courtesy of UTEP’s University Communications) El Paso, Texas, which is situated along the U.S.-Mexico border across from Ciudad Juárez and at the nexus of three states, Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua, is a unique place for understanding international and border environmental issues. The University of Texas at El Paso, located near downtown El Paso and with views of Ciudad Juárez from the campus, offered participants of the 11th biennial Conference on Communication and the Environment (COCE) an opportunity to understand complex border and environmental issues through conference panels and activities that focused on the conference theme, “Across Borders and Environments.” As Orihuela and Hageman’s (2011) recent article indicates, there are many environmental injustices facing border communities that are complicated by race, nationality, gender, class, language, and globalization. Some studies seek to understand these complexities, such as Peterson, Peterson, Lopez, and Liu’s (2010) study of how border communities conceptualize land stewardship in response to some of these problems and Jennings and Jennings’s (1993) analysis of the exploitation of migrant laborers who work in the U. S. agricultural industry, particularly in their exposure to pesticides. However, the limited number of studies on environmental border problems demonstrates a clear need for continued research in this area; the 11th biennial COCE provided opportunities to discuss such problems. Recent discussions about internationalizing the environmental communication discipline are also relevant in the border area, as El Paso and Ciudad Juárez work together to address international environmental issues such as water shortages and air pollution for their combined populations of over 2.5 million people in one of the largest bi-national metropolitan areas in the world. The importance of communicating about and for environmental justice issues in international contexts is increasingly important in the 21st century. Roberts notes that “transnational and global environmental inequalities” that stem from extraction companies or problems related to climate change and pollution threaten social justice in environmental contexts (2007, p. 285). Jennings and Jennings (1993) further contend that “contemporary agrarian Sowards Introduction 2 and environmental sciences actively exclude the impact of techniques on people of color and Third World populations as a research focus, even as their innovations objectively worsen those populations’ households” (p. 174). COCE activities illustrated some of these border and international environmental issues, such as the conference’s border tour with stops at the Río Bosque Park, the Chamizal National Monument, and ASARCO, a former smelting plant protested by environmental justice activists until its permanent closure in 2009. Veronica Escobar, the El Paso County Judge and COCE keynote speaker, emphasized the importance of community and political activism. She spoke about the power of community organizing and giving people hope that they can make a difference in their own lives as well as the lives of others. Conference panels and papers also addressed environmental justice issues in international contexts, as the 24 papers in these proceedings illustrate. COCE participants and presenters came from more than 12 countries, such as Mexico, Canada, Sweden, Portugal, Germany, South Africa, Indonesia, and Brazil, and from faraway states such as Alaska, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Maine. Several panels were also held in UTEP’s Chihuahuan Desert Gardens. To broaden participation to those who were not able to travel to El Paso, panelists and participants also virtually attended the conference via Skype and Elluminate sessions. The Conference on Communication and the Environment itself started in 1991, and has been held every other year since then. Although in the past the conference has been hosted by different universities in a variety of locations, there has been no formal organizing structure for the conference. The 2011 COCE changed that, with the inaugural meetings of the newly elected Board of Directors of the International