Projects 路 Learning series
The Language of Sustainability
A learning series on how to communicate sustainability so that it is understood, trusted, and acted on by diverse audiences, drawing on communication research and practice.
Why it matters
Good policy fails when the message doesn鈥檛 land
Sustainability is not only about environmental action; it is about how those actions are communicated to different communities. Messaging that ignores cultural context, language, or lived experience can leave people confused, sceptical, or disengaged, and the communities most affected by environmental harm are often the least well served by it.
The series brings together research on framing, cognitive accessibility, and psychological distance, alongside practical guidance on engaging minority communities, to help educators, municipalities, program designers, and advocates communicate in ways that build trust and lasting participation.
The series
Chapters and reports
Chapter 1 路 PDF 路 13 pages
Framing in Sustainability Communication
How the way an environmental issue is framed (gain versus loss, for example) shapes how it is perceived and acted on, drawing on framing theory from Goffman and Entman.
Chapter 2 路 PDF 路 20 pages
Cognitive Accessibility
Making complex environmental information understandable without losing accuracy: simplification, relatable language, visual communication, and layered information.
Chapter 3 路 PDF 路 31 pages
Overcoming Psychological Distance
Why environmental problems can feel distant in time, place, social relevance, and certainty, and six approaches to making them immediate, from localizing global issues to temporal framing and personal narratives.
Report 路 PDF 路 47 pages
Best Practices in Sustainable Communication for Minority Communities
How historical distrust, representation, language barriers, and economic constraints shape participation, with recommendations for building inclusive, community-led sustainability programs and measuring their success.
Related work
Where this research goes next
The series informs the Hub鈥檚 wider work on environmental communication, including research on recycling participation in newcomer and immigrant communities, the Material Literacy for Youth resources, and the policy primer .
Part of a wider research portfolio
This is one of the Hub鈥檚 active projects. See everything we are working on, or browse our publications.