Bottom-up networks in Pacific Island countries: an emerging model for participatory environmental communication

As interrelated human actions converge to produce devastating results on both human and natural environment, new frameworks are needed to enable a diversity of voices in bottom-up environmental communication. Communication is necessary in engaging people and entities in the process of identifying the problems and collectively finding solutions to a broad range of environmental and social change issues. In Pacific Island countries, where people are already facing existential threat from the many impacts of climate change, participatory media is increasingly being employed to share stories and influence power brokers. Based on the author’s research in the Pacific, this chapter offers a model for participatory environmental communication (PEC) that brings together diverse human (and nonhuman) networks in a process of dialogue and collaboration to find solutions to the many environmental challenges.