The goal of the Sea Stories of Hope project is to shift the stories we tell about our oceans from ones of despair to ones of evidence-based hope, in order to foster greater environmental engagement. With funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers, this project aims to bring together the general public, teachers and students at all educational levels (from kindergarten to higher education), researchers, environmental experts, tourists, and commercial actors to create, collect, and tell different and more hopeful stories about the oceans.
Changing the narratives about oceans to create environmental engagement.
In the public discourse on oceanic environmental and sustainability challenges, stories of disaster and loss often prevail. The constant reports of loss and population decline fuel stories of pain that amalgamate into an overshadowing doom and gloom vision of the future. Instead of scaring people to act, such negative narratives have the opposite effect, leading to passivity, denial and/or hopelessness. In order to inspire more people to engage in environmental issues in these times of environmental challenge, we need a more optimistic vision of the future based on evidence-based hope and proven solutions. In short, we need to change the stories we tell about the oceans to overcome widespread fatalistic doomism. Successful engagement of stakeholders requires prioritizing evidence-based stories of hope.
In this project, we aim to develop a framework for shifting ocean narratives in the Nordic context. In essence, we explore how examples of real-time recovery of marine ecosystems and species can bring stakeholders, in settings where people are encountering ocean life, together to effectively engage with and amplify environmental solutions. We wish to understand how stories of marine recovery can be created, collected and used by different stakeholders, including the general public, teachers and students at all educational levels (from kindergarten to higher education), researchers, environmental experts, tourists, and commercial actors to fuel evidence-based hope for ocean recovery. By developing a framework for how to involve stakeholders in real time stories of recovery, opportunities might exist for shifting mindsets from pessimism to informed engagement, both for the stakeholders involved, and society in general.
Project participants
The framework will be developed by the project team through a series of on-line meetings, three workshops and seminars involving different stakeholders.
The project team is unique in combining expertise from four different countries, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Canada and three different research fields, i.e. education, marine biology and psychology.
The project is lead by associate professor Tuula Sarvas Skarstein, University of Stavanger, Norway, with research expertise in environmental and sustainability education and marine ecology.
The other team members include:
- Associate professor Frode Skarstein, University of Stavanger, Norway, with research expertise in science and sustainability education and behavioral ecology.
- Doctor Vivi Fleming, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland, with expertise in marine research and in developing environmental indicators, assessments and other decision support tools for marine management.
- Associate professor Maria Ojala, Örebro University, Sweden, with expertise in psychology and research on eco-anxiety, hope and other climate emotions with a particular emphasis on the role of various coping strategies on environmental engagement.
- Doctor Elin Kelsey, Victoria, Canada, a thought-leader in the evidence-based hope and solutions movement, who has been instrumental in pioneering initiatives that enable the international ocean science community to source and share conservation policies and practices that are yielding positive results.
Department of Early Childhood Education
Department of Education and Sports Science
