This Special Issue utilizes a transdisciplinary lens to analyse how environment-related problems are being framed and communicated in different settings

Current models for the work of science communicators are not always well suited to handling a complex array of different types of expertise and varied stakeholders engaged in wicked problems, such as grand challenges where technology and science are entangled with political, economic, cultural, environmental, and historical issues. When science communicators are called on to increase trust in science and scientific institutions in the eyes of diverse actors, useful insight comes from considering what Irwin (in Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. Routledge, 2021) refers to as third-order thinking about science communication. This framing directs attention to messiness, epistemic asymmetries, and reflexivity in a way that resonates with the authors’ experiences as professional science communicators. These conceptual elements are laid out here as a work-in-progress to describe how they help us to comprehend and navigate complex communication challenges.

The accelerating impacts of climate change call for urgent action to decarbonize our socio-technical systems based on coal and oil. Frequently, these shifts involve decisions made in distal capital cities, or distant countries, that have significant impacts on resource-based communities. Among those impacts, we focus on temporal justice: the disjuncture between the timeframes of urgent decisions about transition options to meet policy objectives and the timeframes experienced by residents of regions affected by those decisions. This article reveals how these impacts fit within trajectories of change in energy-related resource-extracting regions through six case examples in Australasia (Hunter Valley, Latrobe Valley, West Coast region of New Zealand), Canada (Alberta), and Africa (Ghana, Zimbabwe). Each setting is at a different point in the mine lifecycle (from exploration and planning of new mines, through to closure, rehabilitation and relinquishment). Included are places where residents mourn the past glory days of coal to regions where closure is imminent, to regions wary of the rush to start new mines for energy transition minerals to support increases in electrification. Collectively, the case studies illustrate the varied complexity of energy transitions and how multiple forms of justice (environmental, procedural, recognition, restorative, distributive and intergenerational) shape the key issues and required responses to transition challenges. The cases highlight the notion that a capacity for local communities to respond to these changes is impacted by embedded senses of identity, agency in the transition process, and a legacy of past activity and injustices. Because each of these factors takes time to work through, there is a disconnect between the urgency of transition due to growing global impacts and the time required for host communities to become effective participants in their own local transitions.

This chapter examines how Psycho-Social Impact Assessment (PSIA) and its integration with Health Impact Assessment (HIA) aid understanding of the psychological and social consequences of environmental changes produced by hazards, policies or projects. The chapter describes two complementary literatures and methodological approaches. The Theory of Environmental Turbulence (TET) offers qualitative depth through in-depth interviews and community observation. The statistical modelling approach provides quantitative research with broader samples, quasi-experimental designs and estimations of complex effects. Case studies of environmental contamination, the COVID-19 pandemic and project-induced relocation, demonstrate the importance of Psycho-Social Impacts (PSIs) across different settings and mesh with Health Impacts (HIs). As illustrated, beyond immediate physical health effects, psycho-social impacts encompass complex community dynamics, trust relationships and coping mechanisms. The chapter emphasises integrating PSIA with HIA practice through the use of specialised expertise and institutionalisation of collaboration between social scientists and health professionals.