Communicating support for pollution abatement in the Ganga River Basin: Environmental knowledge and the critical politics of state-sponsored awareness-raising campaigns

Keywords: environmental knowledge, awareness, environmental education, political ecology, India
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Political ecologists have long been concerned with the broader politics surrounding environmental conflict and change, often casting them as struggles over meaning and the power to influence public environmental knowledge. The field is populated with studies of such conflicts, where various actors seek to exert their influence over the ways in which environmental problems are understood and engaged with. Within this literature, relatively little attention has been paid to the most explicit efforts to shape environmental knowledge – awareness-raising campaigns sponsored by state and non-governmental organizations. Such education-focused programs have grown in popularity over recent decades and today represent one of the most common and high-priority programming initiatives across organizations. This paper examines the approach and rationale behind one such high-profile awareness-raising program held at the 2013 Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. Organized by the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests in consultation with the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, the program sought “to mobilize the community to improve Ganges’ water quality” through the use of educational billboards (JHCCP 2015). Drawing on interviews and analysis of educational materials and other program information, I examine how efforts to raise awareness and change knowledge were structured, how goals were prioritized, and success measured. Discussion emphasizes the shifting power-relations behind state-sponsored efforts to change environmental knowledge and critically examines the role of awareness-raising programs as a political tool leveraged a component of environmental governance.