Introduction: Environment and communication – the multiple transformations of environmental issues

Abstract

All contributions to this special issue deal with the multiple transformations of environmental issues. They all illustrate how these latter issues pervade and spread into our civil society, our economy, our scientific practices and our politics. Throughout these processes, the environmental issues at stake continue to be discursively translated and transformed. In some cases, these translations help to bridging different spheres and communities and to pave the way onto a shared discourse and action. In contrast, however, other cases illustrate how environmental issues might be reframed and demarcated in a way that blocks any further communication and action. It is up to the reader to draw conclusions on the conditions that facilitate the former and the latter outcome respectively. With an environmental issue that is increasingly associated with and even embedded in yet another discourse, that of sustainable development, the question arises as to what extent this latter framing has opened or closed new communicative opportunities.