While calls for critical, engaged and change-oriented scholarship in environmental communication (EC) abound, few articles discuss what this may practically entail. With this article, we aim to contribute to a discussion in EC about the methodological implications of such scholarship. Based on our combined experience in EC research and drawing from a variety of academic fields, we describe six methodological dilemmas that we encounter in our research practice and that we believe are inherent to such scholarship. These dilemmas are (1) grasping communication; (2) representing others; (3) involving people in research; (4) co-producing knowledge; (5) engaging critically; and (6) relating to conflict. This article does not offer solutions to these complex dilemmas. Rather, our dilemma descriptions are meant to help researchers think through methodological issues in critical, engaged and change-oriented EC research. The article also helps to translate the dilemmas to the reality of research projects through a set of questions, aimed to support a sensitivity to, and understanding of, the dilemmas in context.

This paper considers how learning for transformation of water governance in the context of climate change adaptation can be designed for and supported, drawing examples from the international climate change adaptation and water governance project (CADWAGO). The project explicitly set out to design for governance learning in the sense of developing elements of social infrastructure such as workshops, performances and online media to bring stakeholders together and to facilitate co-learning of relevance to governance. CADWAGO drew on a variety of international cases from past and ongoing work of the project partners. It created a forum for dialogue among actors from different contexts working at different levels and scales. The range of opportunities and constraints encountered are discussed, including the principles and practicalities of working with distributed processes of design and leadership of events. A range of concepts, tools and techniques were used to consider and facilitate individual and collective learning processes and outcomes associated with water governance in the context of climate adaptation. Questions were addressed about how elements of past, present and future water governance thinking and practice are connected and how multi-level systemic change in governance can take place. Some reflections on the effectiveness of the design for learning process are included. The nature of the contribution that projects such as CADWAGO can make in learning for transformation of water governance practices is also critically considered.

Collaborative approaches have become increasingly evident in policies governing environmental management. However, realizing these approaches has proven to be challenging. In this article we discuss why this is the case by using a gender-theoretical lens. By attending to prevailing norms of masculinity and femininity within Swedish environmental agencies, we gain understanding about what implications these norms have for working collaboratively. Our findings suggest that these organizations are gendered, leaving women administrators with lower status tasks, not in line with the traditional scientific expert roles valued in these organizations. The gender of administrators are thus both a cause and effect: The status of collaborative projects is low in the natural resource management organization, which leads to administrators having low status getting appointed these projects, which in turn reproduces the view of these projects as less important. Our findings contribute to the discussion on problems of realizing collaborative environmental policies.

In this article, we analyze how participants perform disagreement in meetings organized with the explicit purpose of managing through dialogue conflicts concerning natural resources in Sweden. How is a conversation initiated about something that participants disagree about? How do they clarify to each other that, about what, and why they disagree? How do they show that they understand it is like that and what do they do when this is clear to them? Answers to these questions are important because, if dialogue is to contribute to the constructive development of conflict situations, dialogue should be regarded as a forum where disagreement is expressed and developed, rather than as a forum and tool for consensus. We conducted a sequential analysis of how disagreement is performed and accomplished in normative dialogues in which participants talk about how to reduce the negative impact of wildlife populations—such as predators and grazing birds—on human activities such as domestic reindeer husbandry and crop farming. The analysis shows that disagreement is articulated in ways that do not seem to make ontological, epistemological and axiological differences among positions clear for participants. We identified six procedures through which disagreements are (not) accomplished in these conversations. This shows that routines and procedures in normative dialogue are characterized by consensus-preferences not helpful for agonistic dialogue. In order to avoid situations where dialogue leads to discursive closures, standards and procedures that facilitate articulation of disagreement need to be developed.

This article addresses the gap between demands for participatory approaches in natural resource management (NRM) policies and lack of such approaches in the work of environmental authorities. The analysis draws on practice theory, using the case of NRM practice created by Swedish County Administrative Board (CAB) officials. The data originate from officials’ reflections during courses designed to strengthen their participatory and collaborative competences. Based on practice theory, officials are seen as participants of a routinised practice in which their interpretations of their work and roles are socially constructed. The analysis shows that the objective of this practice is to protect nature and mitigate resistance from stakeholders through information. These interpretations have acquired a reified nature, making them taken for granted. This stabilises the practice, maintaining the gap between demands in national policies and their implementation. To enable change in the CAB practice, the objective constructed by officials needs to be reinterpreted to produce a rule of law that can be justified and which concurrently permits stakeholder participation. To achieve changes in NRM officials’ practice, these need to be seen in their institutional context and comprise the whole system, from international/EU auditing levels to Swedish CABs and the officials’ everyday activities.

Calls for transformational adaptation are increasing. Government authorities, expected to lead adaptation, are in the difficult situation of changing a governance system from within. This demands a capacity for critical reflection among civil servants involved. Adopting a Social Practice Theory approach, we argue this capacity must be understood as emerging in practice, not simply held by individuals. Empirically, we focus on a central network of government authorities in Sweden’s adaptation governance, and identify assumptions and routines guiding their meaning making process. We focus on how situations of contestation are dealt with to explore the practice’s capacity to facilitate critical reflection. We show how a focus on efficient information transmission and an assumption of incremental adaptation as sufficient leads their practice to play down the consequences of the climate crisis. A practice approach suggests interventions to the group level in order to create joint critical reflection, necessary for enabling transformational adaptation.