Learning About Environmental Decision Making in the Bhutan Himalayas Through Podcasting

• In Event: Using Storytelling as an Approach to Researching, Teaching, and Learning About Complex Community-Based Socioscientific Problems

Abstract

Objectives
Climate change is a complex phenomena and an effective climate change education program likely requires a form of collaboration among experts and community members that brings to the table scientific knowledge, cultural understanding, pedagogical expertise, and community engagement (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016, Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, Feinberg, & Howe, 2012). This project brings together narratives/stories of environmental change that the communities have observed in the rural parts of Bhutan and tries to understand environmental change/ climate change from a community perspective.

Theoretical framework
Attitudes and behaviors with regards to climate change are complex and dynamic, and likely influenced by personal experience and knowledge, as well as cultural and political knowledge and values systems (Leiserowitz et al., 2012). Learning about this complex problem requires different pedagogical approaches. We used podcasting as an approach to merge community-based knowledge and science together.

Modes of inquiry
The project described in this presentation eengaged rural communities in Bhutan to understand how community members resolve issues related to environmental change in their everyday lives. We collected stories/narratives from local people about how they observe and react to environmental sustainability situations in their communities. Finally, we used museums as community gathering spaces, to listen and share stories about environmental change as observed by the local communities.

Data sources and Results
The project involved a partnership between two Universities (Bhutan and United States), two museums (Bhutan and United States) and a non-governmental organization in Bhutan. 10 undergraduate students from the United States (n=5) and Bhutan (n=5) travelled to parts of rural Bhutan in order to record stories from local community members about the environmental change that they have observed within the community over the last several years. The students collected the stories and then worked with the museum personnel to curate the stories in the form of podcasts.
Our qualitative analysis suggested that in several instances’ students connected the narratives that they heard to their own lives in different ways. For example, a student from the United States who grew up on a farm that was in their family for eight generations made the following connection while analyzing stories told by farmers in Bhutan,
I learned some things about myself...I remember getting home and feeling different. It helped me find my roots, and reconnect with the environment. This has helped me recognize the importance of my family’s land. It has made me want to protect it and take care of it so I can continue to pass it to future generations.”

Scholarly significance of the study or work
Often, the issues related to climate change and environmental change are discussed from a perspective of science, which is impersonal and unattached to the emotional and personal disturbances that are faced by individual community members. The stories were a powerful medium of communication as they gave a voice to the emotional and personal impacts that climate change is having on the lives of the community members in rural Bhutan.

Author

• Sameer Honwad, University at Buffalo - SUNY