What is it about?
Sustainability problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss are complex, uncertain, and deeply connected to societal values. Many scholars argue that these challenges require new ways of doing and communicating science - moving beyond simply delivering facts towards dialogue, reflection, and openness to different forms of knowledge. In this study, we explore how sustainability scientists themselves understand and practise science communication. We interviewed twelve leading sustainability researchers in Denmark and analysed how they describe their interactions with policymakers, stakeholders, and the public. We found that scientists do not rely on a single approach. Instead, they pragmatically combine traditional expert-driven communication with more dialogical and reflexive practices that acknowledge uncertainty, values, and power relations. These more reflective approaches are not an optional extra, but are closely tied to the nature of sustainability research itself. At the same time, scientists continue to use conventional communication strategies when they are necessary or expected. Our findings suggest that effective sustainability communication involves navigating between different modes of communication rather than following rigid models. The study highlights the importance of institutional and cultural contexts in shaping how scientists communicate about sustainability.
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Why is it important?
Sustainability challenges cannot be solved by scientific expertise alone. They involve uncertainty, competing values, and difficult political and ethical choices. How scientists communicate about these issues therefore matters greatly for public trust, decision-making, and societal action. This study shows that many sustainability scientists already recognise this complexity and are adapting how they communicate - often in ways that go beyond traditional ideas of objective, one-way knowledge transfer. Even so, these more reflective and dialogical practices are not always fully supported by existing institutional norms, evaluation systems, or expectations of what “good science” looks like. By documenting how scientists navigate between different communication approaches in practice, this research helps bridge the gap between theoretical calls for new forms of science communication and the realities of scientific work. It highlights the need for research institutions, funders, and training programmes to better support communication practices that are reflexive, inclusive, and responsive to societal concerns - without forcing scientists into unrealistic or rigid models. Ultimately, improving how sustainability science is communicated is essential for addressing the urgent social and environmental challenges of our time.
Perspectives
A central motivation for this study was methodological as well as substantive. I have long been interested in how sustainability scientists understand their relationship with society, but I am also aware that asking directly about “science communication” often produces familiar, well-rehearsed answers. In our interviews, this was clearly the case: when asked explicitly about communication, scientists tended to describe conventional, expert-led approaches focused on transmitting knowledge. What changed the conversation was using my wonderful co-author Alan Irwin’s concept of socio-technical orders of thinking as an indirect framing. By asking questions about how scientists navigate uncertainty, values, responsibility, and societal expectations in their research, rather than about communication as such, a much richer picture emerged. These oblique questions made visible a diversity of imagined science–society relations, including reflexive, dialogical, and pluralistic forms of engagement that would otherwise have remained implicit. This matters to me because it suggests that sustainability scientists’ communicative orientations cannot be fully understood - or supported - through narrow or technical definitions of science communication. Socio-technical thinking offers a way to surface how communication is embedded in research practices, institutional contexts, and normative commitments. By making these dimensions visible, I hope this work contributes to more realistic and generative conversations about how sustainability science and society are co-produced.
Dr. Marianne Achiam
University of Copenhagen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Post-normal science communication? Evidence of third-order thinking among sustainability scientists, Public Understanding of Science, November 2025, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/09636625251390482.
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