Nives Dolšak writes often on big environmental issues, and frequently publishes in the popular press about how society connects to the natural world. We sat down with Dolšak, who is a professor and the director of the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, and asked her why she chooses to write about the social side of all things environment, and how she approaches writing about such topics for broad consumption.
Can you tell me about your research and how it connects to the public?
I’m a social scientist, so I study the human side of environmental issues. I study how humans understand whether and to what extent they have an environmental problem, how much do they assess it actually affects them personally as opposed to others, and then based on that, what they’re willing to do to change the outcome, whether they are willing to mobilize to demand policy change, and what they’re willing to do individually to adjust their behavior.
With environmental issues, we often talk about the expertise-based approach on one hand, and the people-based approach on the other hand. The predominant focus in environmental problem solving has been on the expertise-based approach. If we could just get better information, if we could just generate more knowledge, we would raise environmental concern, and subsequently, action. This is the theory of change assumed in the expertise-based paradigm.
But that paradigm is not solving problems – we also need the people-based approach, where people decide whether they really have a problem or not. We need to understand how ideology impacts people’s decisions. We have to understand how institutions impact people’s perceptions of the problem and the incentives to act. It’s a very different type of knowledge gap that we have in the people’s focus perspective.
You publish often in the popular press on current issues surrounding society and the environment – why?
We felt that we were not making enough progress in environmental policy in the United States because we are staying too much in that expertise-based part of the paradigm. For policy change, we need to be communicating to the public, the public needs to understand what the issues are.
We also need to acknowledge that there is not one “public”. There are many stakeholders and they may have vastly different views of the problem, and more importantly, ways to solve it. Some will be willing to support policy change, others will not. Some may change their behavior and others not.
Sometimes you write about issues that can be politically charged. How do you weigh in on sensitive topics without being advocates for particular outcomes?
You are correct, some of our commentaries are addressing issues with multiple views of the problem and its solutions. This is actually a common challenge for policy analysts and we are trained to systematically examine various solutions using a set of standard criteria.
We do not advocate for a particular solution. For example, in our commentaries on carbon tax in Washington, we were not advocating either for revenue neutral or for revenue generating policies. We simply presented the results, “Here is the voting outcome. Here is how Washingtonians have supported similar causes, and this is how Washingtonians supported the carbon tax. Why is that the case?”
For any issue, we definitely look historically, draw parallels and we’re very analytical. If a particular policy approach is not working, we ask “why is it not working?”. Once we identify the reasons, what are the policy solutions that could work better? Those of us who are trained in policy analysis are used to this kind of work because that’s what policy analysis is all about and these are the natural questions to engage with.
You usually publish your pieces within a day or two of something that just happened. Why is timeliness such an important component?
Because people’s attention is often limited. People are attuned to certain topics because they’ve seen them in the news, so you have to write about those issues – like when people see photos of protesters wearing masks, or they know that schools are closed because of a health emergency. One has to reach them at that point before their focus moves on to another issue, another headline.
What was one of your favorite pieces that you’ve written?
We enjoy writing all of them, but some do stand out. There was one piece that we really enjoyed writing. It was a commentary on Amazon’s action on climate change. Amazon puts out a pledge that they are going to meet the Paris Agreement targets 10 years ahead of schedule. But Amazon is essentially two businesses – one is retail and the other is logistics. What Amazon has done with its pledge is really at the forefront of the logistics side, but not so on the retail side of it. We wrote about that.
After publishing that commentary, we received a phone call from one of Amazon’s employees interested in climate justice and said, “Could you talk to me? We’d like to better understand where we stand, how can we improve? We agree with you. This could have accomplished a lot more.” We had a conversation with them, and that young person came to my class on climate change governance and talked to my students about advocacy within for profit sector.
What would you say to colleagues that want to participate in the public arena in the similar way as you do? What should they be aware of?
Put simply, it’s important to communicate outside the ivory tower of academia. Keep in mind that it’s extremely time-consuming and that for many issues timely response is essential. Learn how we as employees of a state university can communicate to the public. The faculty code provides clear guidance on these issues. And, keep in mind that that publishing in many non-academic, journalistic media, the editorial board determines what issues are worth publishing on and when. You may have little control over that.