ORGINAL PAPER

Psycho-Social Processes in Dealing with Legal Innovationin the Community: Insights from Biodiversity Conservation

Paula Castro • Carla Mouro

Published online: 15 January 2011

� Society for Community Research and Action 2011

Abstract Mitigation measures for tackling the conse-

quences of a changing climate will involve efforts of

various types including the conservation of affected eco-

systems. For this, communities throughout the world will

be called on to change habits of land and water use. Many

of these changes will emerge from the multilevel gover-

nance tools now commonly used for environmental pro-

tection. In this article, some tenets of a social psychology of

legal innovation are proposed for approaching the psycho-

social processes involved in how individuals, groups and

communities respond to multilevel governance. Next, how

this approach can improve our understanding of commu-

nity-based conservation driven by legal innovation is

highlighted. For this, the macro and micro level processes

involved in the implementation of the European Natura

2000 Network of Protected Sites are examined. Finally,

some insights gained from this example of multilevel

governance through legal innovation will be enumerated as

a contribution for future policy making aimed at dealing

with climate change consequences.

Keywords Psycho-social processes � Legal innovation �Normative change � Social change �Community-based conservation

After decades of controversy, a consensus is mounting

around the globe about the need to take the threats posed by

climate change seriously. The effectiveness of our global

response to these threats depends on our ability to act

through prevention and mitigation. Most of the current

measures aimed at preventing the causes of climate change

are centered on lowering carbon dioxide emissions. In turn,

a major component of the mitigation task, which is a

complex and multilayered one, will necessarily involve

making biodiversity conservation decisions with the effects

of climate change in mind. This is due to realization that

changes in the Earth’s temperatures will severely alter

many of the world ecosystems, and the dramatic reper-

cussions this may have on biodiversity need to be tackled

as soon as possible (CEC 2006). For this, communities

throughout the world will be called on to change such

things as agricultural habits, fishing practices, water uses,

hunting traditions, building processes, and land manage-

ment practices.

A substantial portion of these changes will likely be

addressed by the multilevel governance processes and tools

that are now commonly used for environmental protection,

such as global treaties, originating national laws which, in

turn, guide locally implemented actions. Global treaties,

like the ones signed at the 1992 Rio Summit and the 1997

Kyoto Protocol, contain generic guidelines for action and

change that managed to achieve worldwide consensus.

Next, the national translations of these guidelines are for-

mulated in more specific, though still broad terms. More

concrete and operative content is then added, as both

national and local entities work as mediating systems to

govern the practices of local groups and communities

(Castro and Batel 2008). Many of the future initiatives

aimed at combating the consequences of climate change

that affect land, air or marine biodiversity will assume this

P. Castro (&)

Department of Social and Organizational Psychology,

Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE-IUL) & CIS-IUL,

Lisbon, Portugal

e-mail: Paula.Castro@iscte.pt

C. Mouro

Centro de Investigacao e Intervencao Social (CIS-IUL),

Lisbon University Institute (ISCTE-IUL),

Lisbon, Portugal

123

Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373

DOI 10.1007/s10464-010-9391-0

format; that is, they will be implemented at the local level

as a direct consequence of legal innovations negotiated at

the global and national levels.1

These examples of legislated change suggest the

importance of psychologists in general and community

psychologists in particular sharpening their understanding

of the socio-psychological processes determining how

individuals, groups and communities respond to multilevel

governance based on legal innovation and how the differ-

ent levels coordinate and are intertwined. In this respect, a

social psychology of legal innovation can make a signifi-

cant contribution by focusing on people’s relationships

with the law and illuminating the meaning-making, inter-

pretation, and negotiation processes involved in: (1) the

creation and elaboration of new laws and policy decisions;

(2) the action of mediating systems that connect different

governance levels for the implementation of new laws,

such as the media or environmental NGOs; and (3) the

reception of legal innovations by individuals, groups, and

communities who are required to change everyday ideas

and practices.

In the European Union (EU) there is a breakthrough

example of how multilevel governance for biodiversity

protection through legal innovation was organized, imple-

mented, and then received by the communities affected by

it. The Natura 2000 network of protected sites (European

Commission 2008) is an extensive network of areas cutting

across the territory of EU member states. The network

currently covers about 20% of the EU’s territory—around

800,000 km2 of land area plus 100,000 km2 of marine

environment—and is governed by specific laws resulting

from national adaptations of two EU Directives that were

negotiated at the EU level.2 Over the last decade, biodi-

versity protection in EU member states has largely been

concentrated in this network of sites, regulated by specific

legal tools and institutions created to implement it

nationally and locally. Therefore, various insights can be

gained from examining this pioneering experience. Closer

examination of the Natura 2000 network experience can

help researchers improve their understanding of the socio-

psychological processes at work when community change

is fostered by legal innovation. In turn, this can help make

future biodiversity governance efforts for dealing with

climate change consequences more effective.

In light of the abovementioned, this paper will first

present some of the main analytical tools that a social

psychology of legal innovation can offer for a better

understanding of community-based conservation. Next, we

shall examine the experience of Natura 2000 at different

governance levels. We shall look at Natura 2000 at the

macro level of its creation in order to illustrate how a

process of legal innovation is prepared; and we shall then

discuss the reception, or micro level, providing examples

of how communities dealt with legal innovation for bio-

diversity conservation. The paper will then explore how

these different levels affect each other. Finally, we shall

innumerate some lessons that can be drawn from the

Natura 2000 experience and which can possibly be exten-

ded to future initiatives aimed at mitigating the conse-

quences of climate change on biodiversity.

The Natura 2000 initiative is being carried out in

affluent, Western democracies, and the insights it offers

may be difficult to apply to all countries where climate

change will call for biodiversity governance. Some of its

lessons will therefore be more immediately adoptable by

countries similar to those participating in Natura 2000.

Other suggestions will however be more widely applicable,

since, regardless of the country’s situation, sustainability

governance in general, and climate change governance in

particular, will often take place within a multilevel

framework involving global, national and local efforts.

Governing Social Change

Many problems and solutions in the environmental domain

have their roots in local activities. Therefore, in general,

mitigation and prevention cannot take place unless indi-

viduals, families, communities, and institutions change

some of their values, beliefs, and practices. Many envi-

ronmentally relevant practices being carried out today in

households, on agricultural lands and/or in organizations

are guided by numerous legislative tools and policy deci-

sions derived from international treaties, like the 1997

Kyoto Protocol. For instance, the EU has developed an

Action Plan for Energy Efficiency (2007–2012) (European

Commission 2006) defining goals and measures for

reducing energy, derived from the Kyoto Protocol, to be

transposed to Member States national legislatures. Conse-

quently, transformations involved in effecting social

1 This is not to rule out the possibility of some biodiversity projects

assuming the bottom-up format, that is, resulting from communities

autonomously organising transformations in their practices of land or

water use as a way of responding to some specific problem of

biodiversity conservation. However, one can anticipate that a

substantial part of biodiversity conservation will involve multilevel

governance based on legal innovation. These are the type of

conservation projects we are targeting in this article.2 The Natura 2000 network of protected areas was established under

the 1992 Habitats Directive. Through this Directive EU member

states were compelled to present a list of national sites to be

considered as areas of conservation. Competent national authorities

are now responsible for preserving the characteristics of natural

habitats in Natura 2000 sites. This includes evaluating and authorizing

interventions proposed for each site, like the modification of crops.

The state of Natura 2000 sites is periodically reported to the European

Commission and transgressions of the Natura 2000 statutory princi-

ples can be judged by the European Courts, in Brussels, Belgium.

Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373 363

123

change for tackling environmental problems occur at

several levels. They take place at a macro level where

regulatory tools and procedures for standardizing individ-

ual decisions, such as media campaigns for recycling

domestic waste or compensatory payments to farmers for

less intensive use of land, are devised through legal and

policy innovations. Transformations also take place at the

micro level of practices of individuals, communities, and

institutions, the level targeted by regulatory tools and

procedures originating at the macro level.

These regulatory tools and procedures are indispensable

until the new practices become sustained from within, that

is, until they are internalized and integrated as cultural

imperatives (Foucault 1982). The process of internalization

determines that the laws will in time increasingly tend

to function as norms rather than as rigid prohibitions

(Rutherford 1999) and hinges on the fact that in current

democratic societies citizens have a ‘‘delegative status’’

which makes them ‘‘agents’’ of the laws (Foucault 1982;

Rutherford 1999). Consequently, one needs to consider

how macro level procedures attempting to foster the

internalization of legal innovations also trigger intra and

inter-subjective processes which transform individuals and

their interactions, as new values and practices are devel-

oped to operate in accordance with the new laws (Rose

1996). Expert and professional systems also intervene in

the internalization process as they are called on to mediate

the diffusion of legal innovations by offering concrete

meaning to the laws, defining what it means to accept them

and how exactly this must be done (Castro and Batel 2008;

Morant 2006).

When social change is thus supported by legal innova-

tion it can be defined as normative change, as it: (1)

attempts to normalize certain ideas and practices through-

out the whole of society; (2) is fostered by formal norms,

that is, laws; and (3) is framed or defined as an ‘‘ought’’,

or a movement in the ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘right’’ direction, thus

becoming framed by informal norms as well. The socio-

psychological aspects that intervene in the processes

leading to normative change, accelerating or slowing it, are

issues for a social psychology of legal innovation. A major

assumption of this approach is that what happens in com-

munities is affected by the interplay of processes situated at

different levels of analysis: (1) the societal level, where

formal norms are issued, originating legal innovation and

where the tools exist to try to determine the direction of the

normative change and maintain it; (2) the contextual/

community level where societal laws constrain concrete

inter-group encounters and attempt to channel them in the

normative direction (Tuffin and Frewin 2008). But, on the

other hand, there are also contextually relevant practices

and interests at this level, linked to specific inter-group

relations, which can challenge the new laws and resist

normative change3; and (3) and finally, the individual level,

where norms are voiced, negotiated, accepted, resisted, re-

elaborated in ways always bounded by both normative

societal forces and by contextual/community features.

Historically there have been several proposals for nor-

mative change framed by legislative innovation. A classic

example is the Human Rights Declaration outlawing dis-

crimination that has been incorporated into the constitu-

tions of most countries. More recent examples are the

policy documents signed in the 1994 Aalborg and 1998

Aarhus treaties to assure community involvement in deci-

sion-making. Further examples are provided by the Euro-

pean legislative tools that originated the Natura 2000

network of areas, in which biodiversity conservation

practices have been made compulsory, namely the 1979

Birds Directive (79/409/EEC) and the 1992 Habitats

Directive (92/43/EEC).

Social Change: A Temporal Perspective

The cases illustrating normative change referred to above

follow three main stages, with each stage fostering differ-

ent socio-psychological processes (Castro et al. 2009). A

temporal perspective is, therefore, useful for examining

social change involving legal innovation. Each stage will

be here illustrated with examples of how environmental

preoccupations can become environmental regulations.

Innovative concerns often enter society through the

influence of minority movements. This ignites the first

stage of social change—the Emergence Stage. The emer-

gence of environmental concern began after World War II,

when a number of minority movements that subscribed to

‘‘counter-culture’’ values and criticized high consumerism

and an over-reliance on technology were born (Douglas

and Wildavsky 1982; Laessoe 2007). At the outset, these

movements became involved in local issues such as

community opposition to the construction of nuclear

power plants or pollution. Such movements clearly illus-

trate how social change is often initiated in a bottom up

form.

When the innovative, and initially minority, concerns

reach a certain level of social consensus, it sometimes

happens that another stage of change begins: the Institu-

tionalization Stage. It is during this second stage that leg-

islative tools and formal organizations are born. In the

case of environmental protection, this took place during

the 1970s, when regulatory bodies were formed and

3 Sometimes this level can also foster innovation, as when minority

movements manage to be heard and their voice ends up entering the

societal level, originating legislative innovations. This is what

happened, for instance, with suffragette demands for equal rights,

which eventually entered the societal level as laws.

364 Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373

123

environmental treaties (e.g., the 1972 Stockholm Confer-

ence) were signed. At this time, the institutionalized gov-

ernance of nature gained currency in Europe and in many

countries around the world (Rutherford 1999). From then

on, global summits on the environment became regular

(e.g., the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, where the Framework

Convention on Climate Change was signed, which later

gave birth to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol). This nascent body

of legislation and policy papers could not, however,

incorporate all of the diverging environmental ethics that

had developed in the meantime (see Elliot 1997); as a

result, the ‘70s and ‘80s were marked by controversy as

diverging views were voiced regarding the best ways to

safeguard the environment (Baker 2007).

During the ‘80s, while polls around the globe showed

high levels of environmental concern among the public

(Dunlap et al. 1993; van Liere and Dunlap 1981), the

concept of ‘‘sustainable development’’ was introduced in

the 1987 Brundtland Report. Essentially, the concept posits

that environmental, economic, and social considerations

must converge. Asserting the possibility of conciliating

ecological with economic concerns, and the need to bal-

ance them, the notion of sustainable development offered

closure to many of the debates taking place around the

regulatory efforts to govern nature. In the European Union

the notion inspired numerous legislative and policy tools

(Baker 2007).

After new laws and organizations such as ministries and

agencies, are established, societies enter a phase during

which the spread of change throughout society as a whole

becomes a priority—this is the third phase, the General-

ization Stage. It is at this stage that individuals and com-

munities come face to face with the legal innovations

fostering normative change. The EU member states can be

said to be in this stage with regards to their efforts directed

at biodiversity conservation. It is at this point that people’s

relationship with the law becomes a central issue as broad-

scale policy and legal change require daily, contextualized,

local, public acceptance and support.

Enacting and Resisting Social Change

The stage of Generalization of change is crucial in socio-

psychological terms because the everyday acceptance and

support of legal innovation is not a problem free process

but one which is often complex and contested. This is so

because, although laws precede practices in a formal sense,

they need to be appropriated in context by individuals,

communities, and institutions in order to exist in a practical

sense (Giddens 1978). For understanding how the process

of appropriation of the laws occurs, a central tenet of a

social psychology of legal innovation is that priority must

be given to the intervening socio-psychological processes.

In this regard, the appropriation of innovation in general

never takes place without debate, negotiation, contestation

and transformation (Moscovici 1988). This is true both for

the creation and for the reception of legal innovation. It is

particularly important to bear these assumptions in mind

when we are dealing with legal innovations because laws

are usually formulated in rather generic and abstract terms

and need to be translated into concrete guidelines that will

be applied to specific contexts (Castro and Batel 2008).

This translation is inevitably carried out through everyday

efforts to achieve contextualization, that is, the translation

of generic laws into concrete practices, happening in con-

crete contexts.

The processes mentioned above—appropriation and

contextualization—involved in the reception of laws, open

opportunities for people to both accept and resist legal

innovation. In fact, while laws are being subjected to the

daily process of adaptation to concrete contexts, they are

reinterpreted and different versions of them arise in prac-

tice (Castro and Batel 2008; Tuffin and Frewin 2008).

These re-interpretations afford everyday opportunities for

resistance, although the resistance is usually subtle since

the normative power of laws cannot be blatantly rejected.

The contextualization of these laws is, moreover, carried

out by different actors with different social positions and

identities. As the multiplicity of people’s inscriptions in

social life favors the production of different discourses and

views (Moscovici 1988), social life becomes infused by the

flow of debates presenting arguments and counter-

arguments on the concrete nature and exact interpretation

of the legal innovations. The debates, in turn, re-adjust the

meaning of laws and norms and transform the different

discourses, often making them more heterogeneous

through a process of hybridization (Jovchelovitch 2007).

For the reasons mentioned above, and to fully under-

stand the socio-psychological aspects of the creation and

reception of legal innovation, we must assume that rela-

tionships and identities have a constitutive impact on the

genesis of social knowledge. Thus, instead of asking

questions about people’s perception of the laws, assuming

‘‘perceptions’’ to be individual responses, we should turn

our attention to how laws are represented, because ‘‘rep-

resentations’’ are views of social objects assumed to be

jointly constructed in communication by people in rela-

tionships (Moscovici 1988). This also implies that for

understanding how communities deal with normative

change, one needs to examine communication—both

interpersonal and mediated—and consequently discourse

and argumentation.

In synthesis, a social psychology of legal innovation

focuses on the interactions between the macro-level of

regulatory rules and the micro-level of everyday practices

by exploring communication patterns and analyzing how

Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373 365

123

these both reproduce and transform meaning (Castro and

Batel 2008; Moscovici 1988). This will help further our

understanding of: (1) how laws are put into practice by

‘‘delegative’’ citizens and how, during this process, these

same citizens can resist these laws by reframing and

reformulating them in ways that do not directly oppose

them; (2) how these processes are constrained by contex-

tual/community characteristics and relationships of power;

and (3) the role played in the uptake of new laws by the

different identity positions people occupy.

A Social Psychology of Legal Innovation at the Macro

Level: The Case of Biodiversity Protection in the EU

As was mentioned, the social psychology of legal innova-

tion is concerned with socio-psychological processes

intervening at both the macro and micro levels. At the

macro level these processes take place when laws are being

prepared while at the micro level they occur when laws are

received and appropriated. It is important to note that these

two levels are interdependent. We will begin with ana-

lyzing how the Natura 2000 network of protected sites was

created, as an illustration of how the processes of meaning

construction for legal innovation can occur at the macro

level. Then, in the next section we examine how they

impact subsequent levels by looking at the micro level of

the reception of Natura 2000.

In the 1960s and early ‘70s, during the Emergence

Stage, the proposals for safeguarding biodiversity reflected

a division between the radical ‘‘green’’ stance that assumed

the intrinsic value of nature and natural species (Rosa and

Silva 2005) and the views of older conservationist societies

which aimed to preserve habitats and species for human

recreation and as a legacy for future generations (Yearley

1993). However, the Convention on the Conservation of

European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, signed in 1979

during the Institutionalization Stage, clearly stated that

conservation should be carried out ‘‘at a level which cor-

responds in particular to ecological, scientific and cultural

requirements, while taking account of economic and rec-

reational requirements’’ (Council of Europe 1979, p. 3,

Article 2, emphasis added by the authors). In other words,

ecological and scientific goals were given priority. This

same priority also shaped the Birds Directive (79/409/

EEC) which laid the ground for defining the sites to be part

of the Natura 2000 network and where a particular

emphasis was placed on research for the protection of birds

(see Article 10).

The broader context of the legal innovations supporting

the Natura 2000 network was the ‘‘orthodox consensus’’ on

the environment (Groove-White 1993, p. 19), which trivi-

alized the public’s role and inflated the role of science

(Beck 1992; Groove-White 1993; Rutherford 1999). This

trend, which grew until the ‘90s, had begun in the post-war

years when scientific ecology developed large scale,

transnational, research programs which paved the way for

ecology to become the conceptual framework for defining

environmental problems (Rutherford 1999). Ecologists

began stepping ‘‘outside their role as scientists to become

major contributors to environmental debate’’ (Hannigan

1995, p. 118). With the institutionalization of the protec-

tion of nature, ecological groups made their discourse and

structures more and more reliant on science (Yearley

1993). It was therefore already as science-based and pro-

fessional structures (Laessoe 2007) that these groups joined

the EU supra-national and national debates on the gover-

nance of nature and helped shape the legislative solutions

(Hiedanpaa 2005; Rosa and Silva 2005).

From a socio-psychological point of view, the positions

assumed by the ecological groups that helped frame the

policy and legal documents produced for the definition of

the Natura 2000 network are very interesting. Although it

was to be expected that they would uphold the intrinsic

value of nature and natural species, such was not the case

(Rosa and Silva 2005). A detailed content analysis of the

written documents produced by different stakeholders—

official institutions, environmentalists, economic develop-

ers, etc.—for the EU debates preparing the Natura 2000

legislation reveals a great deal of convergence, with con-

cerns for future generations and sustainability as consen-

sual arguments (Rosa and Silva 2005). In fact, appeals to

the intrinsic value of nature are not even present in the

documents produced by the ‘‘greens’’, which only use

‘‘weak anthropocentrism’’ arguments (Rosa and Silva

2005, p. 111) as do most of the other stakeholders. A

stronger anthropocentric stance is only patent in the papers

submitted by the industrial sector. This demonstrates how

stakeholders were pragmatically adapting to each others’

positions in order to achieve consensual solutions while

leaving the more ‘‘radical’’ arguments outside the negoti-

ation process. This convergence shows how the translation

of ethical positions to legislative tools is not a simple

process but rather one already shaped by socio-psycho-

logical aspects.

Despite the ethical convergence mentioned above, the

definition of areas and priorities relied almost exclusively

on biological and ecological expertise. What immediately

followed was a controversy among land users and hunters

over the lack of participation in the decision-making and

implementation phases (see Hiedanpaa 2005; Krott et al.

2000). As a response, the European Commission prepared

new guidelines in which ‘‘sustainable development’’ was

the guiding notion. Framed by this notion, biodiversity

discourses in EU documents shifted more and more

towards conciliation and balance between ecological and

366 Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373

123

economic goals, and further away from the intrinsic value

of species. This arguably opened the way for a new notion

to enter these documents: ‘‘ecological modernization,’’

which some authors believe is characteristic of present

times (Baker 2007; Petersen 2007). Ecological moderni-

zation favors technology and economic entrepreneurs as

the key actors for social change (Baker 2007; Petersen

2007) and defines nature as ‘‘a ‘standing reserve’ of

exploitable resources’’ (Baker 2007, p. 303). As compared

to the first ones, today’s EU documents can also be said to

accentuate the economic benefits of biodiversity protection

by stressing now how ecosystems provide ‘services’ (see

CEC 2006) in a vision compatible with a view of nature as

a reserve of resources.

This brief overview highlights how the creation of laws

is not a simple process of translating ethical proposals into

policy and legislative documents but is indeed a contested,

interactive one (Rosa and Silva 2005). It also shows how

official EU discourses supporting biodiversity protection

changed over the years under the combined pressures of

many interests and stakeholders. We will now examine

how, during the stage of Generalization of change, EU

communities dealt with regulated biodiversity protection,

how they contributed to the general debate and how they

used the meaning categories and arguments unfolding at

the macro level as meaning resources for their everyday

discourses.

Social Psychology of Legal Innovation at the Micro

Level: Legislatively Regulated Biodiversity

Conservation in the Community

The legislation framing Natura 2000 sites and the corre-

sponding EU incentives for biodiversity conservation

projects to be developed in these sites had two main con-

sequences. The first was that communities in these areas

began to be governed by laws that placed them under the

obligation to avoid disturbing resident species. Such

changes included: prohibition of intensive farming and

forestry practices, limitations to hunting, and restrictions

on building for both small (e.g., residential buildings) and

large-scale projects (e.g., highways or dams). The second

consequence was that a number of biodiversity-conserva-

tion projects were launched in these sites, led by expert

mediating systems such as government offices and national

and local environmental organizations. Both types of

interventions imposed restrictions and led to changes in

community life (Stoll-Kleemann 2001; Visser et al. 2007).

As stated, at least during the first years, these laws and

projects bore a strong top-down, science-based imprint.

This expert-based approach ultimately meant that biodi-

versity conservation in Natura 2000 sites—and also in

national parks and other related structures—was defined as

something requiring above all, science-based, professional,

decision-making. In turn, this had the following conse-

quences. First, conservationists involved in projects in

these sites often worked separately from communities, not

with them. They voiced fears that encouraging participa-

tion would make it even more difficult to ensure adequate

ecological and landscape protection (see Stoll-Kleemann

2001). Second, communities were kept from having a more

relevant role and their knowledge and understanding of

local issues was undervalued (Hiedanpaa 2005). In addi-

tion, the lack of public participation was bolstered by

representations of the public as lacking in valid knowledge

and as misunderstanding scientific evidence (Wynne 1996).

Moreover, in cases when stakeholders were in fact

informed or consulted, the motivation was often to atten-

uate or eradicate conflict and resistance at the local level

(Visser et al. 2007).

Third, governmental experts in charge of implementing

the laws and specialists from projects led by NGOs mar-

ginalized the contributions the social sciences could offer,

both for the comprehension of the socio-psychological

processes affecting the dynamics of social relations in

communities and regarding the ways to gather more

detailed information about the communities, including not

only socio-demographic information, but also attitudes,

beliefs, and practices. As a result, populations and com-

munities were mostly perceived by conservation experts

as homogeneous realities (Chan et al. 2007). Fourth, the

above motives implied that when they selected interlocu-

tors in the field, biodiversity project leaders mostly chose

only institutional actors such as local authorities. Logically,

this did not lead to a better understanding of communities

(Visser et al. 2007). Since much of the land designated was

to be managed by farmers and other land users, many

projects and decisions generated protest and controversy

(Barbanente and Monno 2005; Hiedanpaa 2005; Krott et al.

2000). The same approach was taken in the designation of

natural parks and often led to protest (Bonaiuto et al. 2002;

Hovardas and Stamous 2006).

Finally, mediating systems such as the press have also

had a relevant role in the dynamics occurring between the

law and the communities. As a local mediating system, the

regional press can make local protest very visible. It has

been found, for instance, that, when covering Natura 2000

laws, local papers focused more on the problems these

raise, depicting them more as obstacles to economic

development than the national press (Castro et al. in press;

see also Hovardas and Korfiatis 2008). Since the media are

key elements in the mediation between science, the public,

and the political spheres, they are instrumental in bringing

new laws to the public’s attention and play a pivotal role in

both the acceptance and resistance processes.

Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373 367

123

What Has Changed and Insights Gained

Several macro-level changes have taken place over the past

15 years, during the course of the Natura 2000 experience,

with major consequences. First, in the early ‘90s, the notion

of ‘‘public participation’’ started to gain more currency as

one of the pillars of sustainable development. This came

about primarily as a result of treaties approved at the 1992

Rio Summit, such as Local Agenda 21 which compels

governments to depend on local participation as a core path

for sustainability. At the EU level, Directives were also

issued in this regard. At first, these presented an ‘‘infor-

mative’’ model for participation, which viewed communi-

cation between experts and the public as unilateral and

intended to offer information to the latter. Today, however,

they are guided by a more ‘‘dialogical’’ model that favors

bilateral communication and partnership in decision-

making (Lima 2004).

The fact that over the last few years, public participation

has, within the EU, slowly become a regulated right has

had two important implications for communities. First, new

procedures for consulting communities that involve greater

public participation were tested (Laessoe 2007). Examples

of this are the citizen advisory committees, consensus

conferences (Einsiedel and Eastlick 2000), or Local

Agenda 21 participatory workshops (Vasconcelos et al.

2002). However, these experiences have also shown that

implementing participatory processes can present chal-

lenges to both experts and lay participants, because these

processes call for new types of interaction from each side

(Darier et al. 1999).

In the biodiversity conservation area, it took some time

for the various mediating expert systems—national and

local offices, environmental NGOs—to adapt to the new

participation laws. During this process, these laws have

often been objects of minimalist interpretations where a

pedagogical approach favoring one-way information from

the experts to the public was mostly adopted (Lima 2004;

Castro and Batel 2008). This can be interpreted as a form

of resistance on the part of expert systems, this time to the

laws of public involvement. This resistance can, for

instance, be expressed in demanding expert-like explana-

tions and predictions from the publics in consultation

exercises, instead of asking for the ‘‘thick descriptions’’

that community members are more willing and able to offer

(Wynne 1996).

In addition, the new biodiversity laws and the concrete

forms of their implementation began to be evaluated by the

communities also in the light of the new participation laws.

This brought new arguments to the discourses of commu-

nity members and offered legitimacy to some forms of

protest (Krott et al. 2000; Visser et al. 2007). In all, these

innovations have shaped biodiversity conservation projects

in recent years and new lessons about community respon-

ses to ecological goals have been learned. Given this, a

tentative summary of some developments will now be

sketched.

The Dialogical Approach as a Tool for Biodiversity

Conservation

Over the last few years, a more dialogical approach, that is,

an approach that takes into account the perspective of

others and considers their knowledge without erasing or

devaluing it (Markova 2003) has gained increasing status

for guiding encounters between experts and the public

(Jovchelovitch 2007). Indeed, the field of ecological con-

servation now offers some examples of how to integrate

knowledge from several sources (Barbanente and Monno

2005; Dean and Bush 2007). These examples attest to the

fact that it is possible to create hybrid discourses which

draw simultaneously from local knowledge and policy

making, in a process creating different types of resources

for coping with adversities and risks (Barbanente and

Monno 2005).

This is in line with what is known from other areas of

community studies, where it was shown how joint action

achieves better results than transfer of knowledge (Dewulf

et al. 2004; Bowen and Taillieu 2004). This holds even

when the transfer of knowledge takes place early in the

project (Dean and Bush 2007), as this top-down approach

is a way of pre-setting the issues for discussion (Culley and

Hughey 2008).

Socio-Psychological Mediators and Moderators

of People’s Responses to Laws

In an attempt to better understand the nature of the reac-

tions of local communities to the designation of natural

parks and Natura 2000 sites, some studies concluded that a

strong local identity or a strong attachment to the place of

residence has a positive effect on people’s attitudes when it

comes to the designation of natural parks. However, these

studies suggest that this effect is particularly clear when

two conditions are met: involvement in the decision-

making process and not having vested interests in the land

(see Bonaiuto et al. 2002; Carrus et al. 2005).

The impact of similar mediators and moderators was

also assessed for the case of rural communities in Natura

2000 sites in the south of Portugal (Mouro and Castro

2010). In this case, the prediction of attitudes towards the

protected sites and of support for sustainable practices (like

reducing hunting periods) is distinct for different levels of

vested interest in the land and of trust in national institu-

tions. Positive attitudes are better predicted for respondents

with high vested interest, and pro-environmental practices

368 Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373

123

are better predicted for respondents with high vested

interest and low trust (Mouro and Castro 2010). The atti-

tudes and support for practices of those who do not have

such interests—but are, nevertheless, elements of the local

public sphere-, are not as easily predicted, and need further

research (Mouro et al. 2008). These results demonstrate

how the comprehension of the relationships of local com-

munities with legal innovations depends on accurately

identifying the socio-psychological moderators involved.

They also underline the importance of taking into

account how the same community harbors distinct groups

with distinct positions and representations (Campbell and

Jovchelovitch 2000).

The Imperfect Correspondence Between Agreement

and Action

There is a recurrent phenomenon that emerges in societies

undergoing the Generalization Stage of legal innovation.

In such contexts, there is a generalized agreement with

recently-introduced normative ideas, but far less consensus

at the level of practices. This imperfect correspondence

between action and agreement has been noted in several

areas such, as human rights (Spini and Doise 1998) and

organ donation (Moloney and Walker 2002). For sustain-

ability, it has also been noted that there are clear indica-

tions of a gap between the high approval ecological ideas

receive and the actual pro-ecological actions performed

(Stern 2000). The discrepancy between approval ratings

and action is a phenomenon particularly noted in private

sphere behaviors (Stern 2000). This makes it apparent that

people are drawing distinctions between the general case

for which there is acceptance and the particular one for

which objections may exist. Less research on this gap has

been carried out on environmentally relevant, non-activist

behaviors in the public sphere (Stern 2000), such as those

involved in biodiversity conservation in the community.

However, focus groups conducted with people living in

areas covered by Natura 2000 exemplify how participants

draw on distinctions between the general and the particular

in order to reinterpret biodiversity laws while avoiding

blatant opposition to them (see Mouro et al. 2008).

In the focus groups mentioned above, conducted in

Natura 2000 areas in the South of Portugal, the participants

never actually contested the importance of biodiversity

conservation and the laws created to achieve it. However,

the exact meaning of various, specific conservation norms

and the stringency with which these should be imple-

mented in concrete cases were highly debated and con-

tested issues. Participants made use of two main types of

arguments to support the distinction between the general

case (the laws are good) and particular ones. One prevalent

type of argument asserted that the laws, although good,

lacked functionality in specific situations. These arguments

were grounded in concrete examples in which the appli-

cability of generic laws to particular cases could be

questioned. Another type of argument dealt with the ‘‘closed-

door’’ nature of the decision-making process. In this case, the

participants said that ‘‘yes,’’ the laws were good, ‘‘but’’ they

should have been implemented by means of a different type

of relationship with the local people. The excerpt below

presents an example of the first type of argument:

Local inhabitant (Focus group 1)—For instance, I

really agree… and I think that, for example,

regarding the bats or the… or the lynx, or whatever

animal it may be …, very well, if they exist or

existed, I believe they must be preserved. Now, I

cannot accept that two bats, a bat-couple, will, for

2 years, prevent the construction of what could be an

asset for me.4

The excerpt begins by stating a generic agreement with

biodiversity protection. It shows also how agreement with

the protection of species and with the protection of bats (I

believe they must be preserved) does not prevent the person

from trying to discursively push the borders of the

restrictions the laws impose. By indicating that the protec-

tion of bats may be a correct option when there are colonies

of bats but an incorrect option when there are one or two or

just a few bats, this person is simultaneously reproducing

the law and attempting to transform it. This formulation can

be seen as a way of gaining space for negotiation because it

enables the initiation of a legitimate debate on ‘‘exactly how

many bats are sufficient to justify protection measures’’;

and, indeed, at the end of the debate, the criteria governing

protection measures may be modified.

This bat example shows how the appropriation and

contextualization processes operating upon legal innova-

tions may sometimes work as forms of resistance to the

laws. These forms do not, however, disrespect the laws.

Instead, they use meaning resources that are developed in

societal forums and used again in these reinterpretations.

Another example of this are the arguments for conciliation

and balance in the protection of nature. The notion of

sustainable development which supports balance and con-

ciliation between ecological and economic interests gained

ground in policy and legislative EU documents, as men-

tioned. Concomitantly, arguments based on this notion

have been adopted by communities as everyday meaning

resources. This is exemplified by the next excerpt:

Local inhabitant (Focus group 1)—Now, we always

need a balance, which means that the ecological

4 This excerpt and the following are translations from the Portuguese

original. Expressions in italics signal particularly relevant features we

comment on later in the text.

Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373 369

123

aspects have to be in constant connection with the

Humanity, the mountain needs to have people.

The way the notion of ‘‘balance’’ is used above repeats the

trajectory of the debate on biodiversity as it evolved in

international debates from an ‘‘intrinsic value’’ frame to a

‘‘sustainable development’’ one. It also again shows the

interdependence of the various governance levels implied

in biodiversity conservation.

The Importance of Hyperopic Processes

Research has highlighted that people consistently over-

estimate problems and risks at the global level and mini-

mize them at the local level (Uzzell 2000), even if some

members are more attuned to local environmental problems

than others (Lima and Castro 2005). This has been called

environmental hyperopia (Uzzell 2000). This process also

seems to work where climate change risks are concerned

(see Leiserowitz 2005). Although it seems to be a rather

stable socio-psychological process, it is difficult to ascer-

tain its underlying motives. It is clear, however, that its

consequences are to downplay the need for change at the

local level: for if fewer problems exist at the local level,

why do anything about them? In the focus groups (Mouro

et al. 2008), ‘‘hyperopic’’ arguments, that is, arguments

placing more value on global than on local problems, took

the following format:

Local inhabitant (Focus group 3)—If there is a

problem that is not in my mind here, it is the pro-

tection of nature. Because nature is very protected

here. (…) the problems are not here. The problems

are (…) in the big urban centers. (…)What are the

threats here?

By maintaining that there are no problems where she lives,

the speaker asserts that there is no need for solutions.

Arguments such as these lead to the possibility of

supporting claims that ‘‘nothing needs to be changed’’ or

that change should happen in other places. They can

therefore also be considered forms of resistance to change.

Partnerships Involving Natural Scientists, Social Scientists

and Communities

Biodiversity protection project leaders started recognizing

the importance of partnerships with social scientists and

communities. Currently, there are a number of projects

designed to include more significant input from the com-

munity (Dean and Bush 2007) and based on partnerships

with social researchers (Bowen and Taillieu 2004; Mouro

and Castro 2010). These researchers are, in turn, now

more attuned to the need to understand the social and

psychological aspects involved in the reception of legal

innovation accompanying multilevel governance. As a

result, there is a growing awareness that communities are

not homogeneous realities but harbor different groups with

diverging reactions to legal innovation.

A Synthesis of Some Insights for Climate Change

Climate change will most assuredly stimulate many bio-

diversity conservation projects aimed at protecting both

land and marine species. Many of these initiatives will

assume the top-down format and will be stimulated by

multilevel governance involving legal innovation. Drawing

on previous sections, the following pages summarize a

number of insights that may be useful in dealing with new

interventions needed to mitigate climate change risks to

biodiversity.

Macro Level Decisions and Discourses Affect

the Micro Level, and Vice versa

People constantly inter-communicate, negotiate, adapt to

each other, and draw from each other’s meaning categories

and argumentation resources. Moreover, discourses unfold

at different levels and the translations from one level to

another are not simple and unproblematic. This implies that

the context in which environmental and ecological laws

and goals are formulated does matter. Thus, in future cli-

mate change related conservation projects attention needs

to be given to:

(1) how climate change and conservation issues are

framed in the larger society by all types of actors and

how the translation from ethical proposals to official

documents such as policy and legislative tools, may

change the former, pragmatically adapting them to a

generic consensus (Rosa and Silva 2005). In this

regard, attention must be offered to how the new

ecological modernization proposals may frame cli-

mate change and conservation issues alike.

(2) what the values eventually incorporated in official

documents are and how they impact upon more micro

levels. This is especially important since negative

consequences for biodiversity conservation have

come about from a macro level definition of issues

and a local implementation almost exclusively reliant

on science and expertise. A science-only orientation

seems to promote in government experts a resistance

to other types of knowledge and to perspective-taking

(Castro and Batel 2008). When non-governmental

ecological groups also rely solely on scientific

definitions of problems, this tendency may be further

370 Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373

123

exacerbated. This can also be a problem for climate

change stimulated projects as the expert role of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

has been so prominent for decades. Therefore, the

role of both scientific experts and ecological NGOs

and their framing of issues must also be taken into

account.

(3) the role of the media as a mediating system that

transfers information and shapes meaning. As far as

climate change is concerned, the media’s relevant

role in examining macro-level trends has been long

recognized (Carvalho and Burgess 2005). Studies

have shown that in climate change debates, as in the

biodiversity debates, after a certain point ethical and

political choices are similarly de-emphasized. For

instance, the issue of the intrinsic value of nature is

excluded from all the articles on climate change

published in reference papers in the UK and technical

solutions are instead promoted (see Carvalho 2007,

p. 239). This parallel is worth careful consideration.

Communities are Heterogeneous Realities

Different groups receive legal innovation in different ways.

More than a matter of perception, this is a matter of rep-

resentation, that is, of views jointly constructed with others.

Moreover, human beings can articulate different ideas in

the context of different identities. In their identities as

citizens, they can agree with biodiversity protection laws

while as owners of private properties in Natura 2000 sites

they can express preferences for legislative tools that will

not interfere with their uses of the land. All of this high-

lights how important it is for biodiversity projects to begin

by getting to know the community, identifying the various

identities and groups that form it, understanding how they

relate to one another, and exploring how they interpret the

legal innovations affecting them (Barbanente and Monno

2005; Hiedanpaa 2005). For this, methodological triangu-

lation is important.

Surveys are useful in offering an initial overview of the

diversity of perspectives and interests in place, in particular

if they target both divergence and consensus (Castro 2006).

A better knowledge of communities can, however, be

gained if surveys are accompanied by other methods, such

as interviews or focus groups, which will offer access to the

details of communication and discourse, the meaning

resources in circulation and how these are used and

dynamically interplay. These methods will be particularly

useful if they approach the different sub-groups within the

community identified by surveys as linked to moderation

and mediation variables. These methods will, moreover,

not just produce knowledge for the social researchers, for,

as they promote encounters between members of the

community and accelerate the circulation of knowledge,

they may eventually change the community (Barbanente

and Monno 2005). Finally, it is also relevant to examine

how the local press and other local media receive the legal

innovation (Castro et al. in press; Hovardas and Korfiatis

2008).

Socio-Psychological Processes Can Support Subtle

Forms of Resistance to Legal Innovation

A number of recent studies suggest the importance of

further research on how certain socio-psychological pro-

cesses can constitute subtle forms of resistance to legal

innovation. The translation of generic laws to specific

contexts gives local communities opportunities to affirm

the generic importance of the laws while simultaneously

attempting to transform them in some regard. This high-

lights how in their relationships with the law, people try to

push and redefine the borders of what regulations allow.

Although resistance is often construed as active contesta-

tion and protest, other subtler forms which are often dis-

regarded should also be expected and need to be better

researched in the future. Some of the more subtle forms of

resistance, displayed by local communities living in Natura

2000 sites, included the use of distinctions between the

general and the particular, re-interpretations of the law that

attempt to push the borders of the forbidden, and hyperopic

arguments regarding local problems (Mouro et al. 2008).

All of these socio-psychological processes, as forms of

reactive resistance to highly normative issues, seem to

operate to maintain uncoordinated ideas and actions and

can also emerge for climate change projects.

Concluding Remarks

The climate change debate is now being re-launched in the

context of a broader consensus. This can be taken as an

opportunity to avoid repeating previous mistakes. One

important lesson learned from the field of biodiversity

conservation is that the debate should not be prematurely

closed. Consensus seeking, if prioritized too early, may

prevent a thorough discussion of alternatives to the values

we privilege, the lifestyles we prioritize, and the forms of

social organization we favor. For instance, previous debates

may not have considered at sufficient length how change

and innovation in sustainability can come about from

re-organizing social relations in the community. Yet it is

within the community that it is possible to redefine some of

the borders of the private and the public so that sustainable

practices can be introduced. For instance, communal ini-

tiatives are often discouraged by today’s modern living

Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373 371

123

arrangements which often stand in the way of car-pooling,

shared home heating or shared use of solar energy.

Communities have the potential to trigger and support the

re-organization of the structural scaffolding that currently

supports individualized human relations in big cities and

small villages alike. Climate change mitigation and pre-

vention projects may therefore serve as an opportunity for

reorganization if sustainable development is not framed as

pertaining solely to the individual and private spheres, as is

currently the tendency (Laessoe 2007).

In other words, at this juncture we should start seriously

discussing whether climate change should be viewed as a

symptom of an environmental crisis or of a human crisis.

While most nature-related crises may appear on the surface

to be based on objective and physical risks and on prob-

lems existing in nature, what may lie beneath are value

positions regarding what we want for our societies, as

Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) have noted. If this is indeed

a human crisis, it is approachable with the means we have

used in the past for human crises: renegotiation of priority

values and reorganization of the networks that bind us to

each other and to animals and things in order to make these

networks more inclusive (Latour 2004). During the nego-

tiation processes, this reorganization can neither look for

conflict resolution at the cost of a too quick and superficial

debate nor fail to acknowledge the dilemmatic and bi-polar

nature of human tendencies and values (Billig et al. 1988),

so as to enable the creation of institutions that will give

priority to the values and tendencies that respect diversity.

The debate on how to do this and which tendencies to

target needs to leave aside assumptions of a non-human

nature or of a non-natural humanity.

Acknowledgments The research presented in this article was par-

tially supported by the grants PDCT/PSI/60975/2004 and SFRH/BD/

27316/2006 from the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia,

Portugal, and by the grant LIFE06 NAT/P/000191 from the European

Commission, Brussels. We are thankful to the Associate Editor of the

journal, Manuel Riemer, for his helpful comments on early versions

of this article.

References

Baker, S. (2007). Sustainable development as symbolic commitment:

Declaratory politics and the seductive appeal of ecological

modernisation in the European Union. Environmental Politics,16, 297–317.

Barbanente, A., & Monno, V. (2005). Changing discourses, practices

and spaces of coexistence: Perspectives for the environmental

regeneration of the Ofanto River Basin. Planning, Theory &Practice, 6, 171–190.

Beck, U. (1992). Risk society. Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.

Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D., Gane, M., Middleton, D., &

Radley, A. (1988). Ideological dilemmas. A social psychology ofeveryday thinking. London: Sage.

Bonaiuto, M., Carrus, G., Martorella, H., & Bonnes, M. (2002). Local

identity processes and environmental attitudes in land use

changes: The case of natural protected areas. Journal ofEconomic Psychology, 23, 631–653.

Bowen, R., & Taillieu, T. (2004). Multy-party collaboration as social

learning for interdependence: Developing relational knowing for

sustainable natural resource management. Journal of Communityand Applied Social Psychology, 14, 137–153.

Campbell, C., & Jovchelovitch, S. (2000). Health, community and

development: Towards a social psychology of participation.

Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 10,

255–270.

Carrus, G., Bonaiuto, M., & Bonnes, M. (2005). Environmental

concern, regional identity, and support for protected areas in

Italy. Environment & Behavior, 37, 237–257.

Carvalho, A. (2007). Ideological cultures and media discourses on

scientific knowledge: Re-reading news on climate change.

Public Understanding of Science, 16, 223–243.

Carvalho, A., & Burgess, J. (2005). Cultural circuits of climate

change in UK broadsheet newspapers, 1985–2003. Risk Analysis,25, 1457–1469.

Castro, P. (2006). Applying social psychology to the study of

environmental concern and environmental worldviews: Some

contributions from social representations approach. Journal ofCommunity and Applied Social Psychology, 16, 247–266.

Castro, P., & Batel, S. (2008). Social representation, change and

resistance: On the difficulties of generalizing new norms.

Culture & Psychology, 14, 475–497.

Castro, P., Garrido, M., Reis, E., & Menezes, J. (2009). Ambivalence

and conservation behaviour: An exploratory study on the

recycling of metal waste. Journal of Environmental Psychology,29, 24–33.

Castro, P., Mouro, C., & Gouveia, R. (in press). The conservation of

biodiversity in protected areas: Comparing the presentation of

legal innovation in the national and regional press. Society &Natural Resources.

CEC, Commission of the European Communities (2006, May 22).

Communication from the Commission—Halting the Loss ofBiodiversity by 2010—and beyond. Sustaining ecosystem ser-vices for human well–being. COM(2006) 216 final. Retrieved

January 5, 2009, from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/

LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2006:0216: FIN:EN:PDF.

Chan, K., Pringle, R., Ranganathan, J., Boggs, C., Chan, Y., et al.

(2007). When agendas collide: Human welfare and biological

conservation. Conservation Biology, 21, 59–68.

Council of Europe (1979, September 19). Convention on theconservation of European wildlife and natural habitats. Euro-pean Treaty Series, 104. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from

http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Word/104.doc.

Culley, M., & Hughey, J. (2008). Power and public participation in a

hazardous waste dispute: A community case study. AmericanJournal of Community Psychology, 41, 99–114.

Darier, E., Gough, C., de Marchi, B., Funtowicz, S., Grove-White, R.,

Kitchener, D., et al. (1999). Between democracy and expertise?

Citizens’ participation and environmental integrated assessment

in Venice (Italy) and St Helens (UK). Journal of EnvironmentalPolicy & Planning, 1, 103–120.

Dean, J., & Bush, R. (2007). A community psychology view of

environmental organization processes. American Journal ofCommunity Psychology, 40, 146–166.

Dewulf, A., Craps, M., & Dercon, G. (2004). How issues get framed

and reframed when different communities meet: A multi-level

analysis of a collaborative soil conservation initiative in the

Ecuadorian Andes. Journal of Community and Applied SocialPsychology, 14, 177–192.

372 Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373

123

Douglas, M., & Wildavsky, A. (1982). Risk and culture: An essay onthe selection of technological and environmental dangers.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dunlap, R. E., Gallup, G. H., Jr., & Gallup, A. M. (1993). Of global

concern. Results of the health of the planet survey. Environment,35, 33–39.

Einsiedel, E., & Eastlick, D. (2000). Consensus conferences as

deliberative democracy: A communication perspective. ScienceCommunication, 21, 323–343.

Elliot, R. (1997). Faking nature: The ethics of environmentalrestoration. New York: Routledge.

European Commission (2006). Action plan for energy efficiency(2007–12). Retrieved January 5, 2009, from http://europa.eu/

scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l27064.htm.

European Commission (2008). Environment fact sheet—Natura 2000.

Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://ec.europa.eu/environ

ment/nature/info/pubs/docs/nat2000/ factsheet_en.pdf.

Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. Dreyfus &

P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism andhermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Brighton: Harvester.

Giddens, A. (1978). Central problems in social theory: Action,structure and contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press.

Groove-White, R. (1993). Environmentalism: A new moral discourse

for technological society? In K. Milton (Ed.), Environmental-ism—the view from anthropology (pp. 18–30). London:

Routledge.

Hannigan, J. A. (1995). Environmental sociology: A social construc-tionist perspective. London: Routledge.

Hiedanpaa, J. (2005). The edges of conflict and consensus: A case for

creativity in regional forest policy in Southwest Finland.

Ecological Economics, 55, 485–498.

Hovardas, T., & Korfiatis, K. J. (2008). Framing environmental policy

by the local press: Case study from the Dadia Forest Reserve,

Greece. Forest Policy and Economics, 10, 316–325.

Hovardas, T., & Stamous, G. (2006). Structural and narrative

reconstruction of rural residents’ representations of ‘nature’,

‘wildlife’, and ‘landscape’. Biodiversity and Conservation, 15,

1745–1770.

Jovchelovitch, S. (2007). Knowledge in context: Representations,community and culture. London: Routledge.

Krott, M., Julien, B., Lammertz, M., Barbier, J. M., Jen, S.,

Ballesteros, M., et al. (2000). Voicing interests and ConcErns:

NATURA 2000: An ecological network in conflict with people.

Forest Policy and Economics, 1, 357–366.

Laessoe, J. (2007). Participation and sustainable development:

The post-ecologist transformation of citizen involvement in

Denmark. Environmental Politics, 16, 231–250.

Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences intodemocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Leiserowitz, A. A. (2005). American risk perceptions: Is climate

change dangerous? Risk Analysis, 25, 1433–1442.

Lima, M. L. (2004). Images of the public in the debates about risk:

Consequences for participation. Portuguese Journal of SocialSciences, 2, 149–163.

Lima, M. L., & Castro, P. (2005). Cultural theory meets the

community: Worldviews and local issues. Journal of Environ-mental Psychology, 25, 23–35.

Markova, I. (2003). Constitution of the self: Intersubjectivity and

dialogicality. Culture & Psychology, 9, 249–259.

Moloney, G., & Walker, I. (2002). Talking about transplants: Social

representations and the dialectical, dilemmatic nature of organ

donation and transplantation. British Journal of Social Psychol-ogy, 41, 299–320.

Morant, N. (2006). Social representations and professional knowl-

edge: The representation of mental illness among mental health

practitioners. British Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 817–838.

Moscovici, S. (1988). Notes towards a description of social

representations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18,

211–250.

Mouro, C., & Castro, P. (2010). Local communities responding to

ecological challenges—A psychosocial approach to the Natura

2000 network. Journal of Community & Applied SocialPsychology, 20, 139–155.

Mouro, C., Castro, P., & Gouveia, R. (2008, February). Communityinvolvement and public participation on environmental dilem-mas—A psychosocial contribution for sustainability in protectedareas. Paper presented at the Berlin conference on the human

dimensions of global environmental change, Berlin, Germany.

Petersen, L. (2007). Changing public discourse on the environment:

Danish media coverage of the Rio and Johannesburg UN

summits. Environmental Politics, 16, 206–230.

Rosa, H. D., & Silva, J. M. (2005). From environmental ethics to

nature conservation. Journal of Agricultural and EnvironmentalEthics, 18, 107–130.

Rose, N. (1996). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power andpersonhood. Cambridge: UK Cambridge University Press.

Rutherford, P. (1999). The entry of life into history. In E. Darier (Ed.),

Discourses of the environment (pp. 95–118). Oxford, England:

Blackwell.

Spini, D., & Doise, W. (1998). Organizing principles of involvement

in human rights and their social anchoring in values priorities.

European Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 603–622.

Stern, P. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally

significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 407–424.

Stoll-Kleemann, S. (2001). Barriers to nature conservation in

Germany: A model explaining opposition to protected areas.

Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21, 369–385.

Tuffin, K., & Frewin, K. (2008). Constructing the law: Discourses and

social practices. Journal of Community & Applied SocialPsychology, 18, 68–82.

Uzzell, D. (2000). The psycho-spatial dimension of global environ-

mental problems. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 20,

307–318.

van Liere, K., & Dunlap, R. (1981). Environmental concern: Does it

make a difference how it’s measured? Environment & Behavior,3, 651–676.

Vasconcelos, L. T., Baptista, I., & Henriques, T. R. (2002, July).

Sustainability at the local level: Intellectual, social and politicalcapital building. Paper presented at the AESOP conference:

Planning and regional issues in the border regions, Volos,

Greece.

Visser, M., Moran, J., Regan, E., Gormally, M., & Skeffington, M.

(2007). The Irish agri-environment: How turlough users and non-

users view converging EU agendas of Natura 2000 and CAP.

Land Use Policy, 24, 362–373.

Wynne, B. (1996). May the sheep safely graze? A reflexive view of

the expert-lay knowledge divide. In S. Lash, B. Szerszynski, &

B. Wynne (Eds.), Risk, environment and modernity: Towards anew ecology (pp. 44–83). London, UK: Sage.

Yearley, S. (1993). Standing in for nature: The practicalities of

environmental organizations’ use of science. In K. Milton (Ed.),

Environmentalism: The view from anthropology (pp. 59–72).

London, UK: Routledge.

Am J Community Psychol (2011) 47:362–373 373

123