Risk communication and sustainability science: lessons from the field

Sustainability science aims to help societies across the globe address the increased environmental and health crises and risks that range from poverty to climate change to health pandemics. With the increased magnitude and frequency of these large-scale risks to different societies, scientists and institutions have increasingly recognized the need for improved communication and collaboration among researchers, governments, businesses, and communities. This article argues that risk communication has fundamentally important contributions to make to sustainability science’s mission to create use-inspired, “actionable science” that can lead to solutions. Risk communication research can advance the mission of sustainability science to engage a wide range of stakeholders. This kind of engagement is especially important in the context of addressing sustainability problems that are characterized by high levels of uncertainty and complexity. We introduce three core tenets of risk communication research that are fundamental to advancing sustainability science. Risk communication specifically offers an increased understanding of how system feedbacks, human perceptions, and levels of uncertainty influence the study and design of solutions within social ecological systems.