Submitted by Sergey Kolesnikov on Mon, 19/12/2022 - 08:50
C-EENRG Fellow and founder of the C-EENRG Working Papers, Dr Aiora Zabala, has published a new book for a broad public entitled “In our hands” (“Natura Gure Esku”, Alberdania publisher, in Basque language), culminating a successful year of engagement with mainstream media on environmental governance topics in this language.
The book is predominantly an essay with narrative elements. It presents key academic topics and debates in social environmental sciences, including themes from ecological economics and environmental psychology, energy transitions, diffusion theory, growth and degrowth, and environmental justice, among several others.
In this book, the academic content is intertwined with relatable examples, experiences and people the author has encountered over the years, and which cover nearly all continents. This way, theories and concepts are brought closer to the reader’s daily decisions and dilemmas regarding the environment, providing substantive knowledge to nurture further societal debate about environmental governance.
The book is single-authored and was written in Dr Zabala's native Basque language. A reason for this, among others, was because this allowed her to give the text the approachable and entertaining tone she wanted to give to this popular science book. Work is ongoing to publish translations into major languages.
Dr Zabala says on the occasion: “This [book] was a result of material prepared for a weekly live radio collaboration with EITB, the main radio station in the Basque country (Spain). This collaboration, together with a monthly column I had been commissioned for another major printed media in this language (Berria newspaper), made me realise that a much broader public is now very receptive to environment and sustainability topics, compared to twenty years ago when I started studying these. I feel the time is ripe to communicate academic content to nurture much richer public debate on environmental governance, to help societies move in more effective sustainability directions”.
This year Dr Zabala has been invited on several occasions to speak on live TV (EITB, the main broadcaster in this region) about the energy transition and COP27. In the first two months since publication, she has done over fifteen interviews and presentations of her book. She has also continued with regular live radio collaborations and podcasts, bringing environmental governance research topics to a broad public.
See the book description in English and links to publisher and media coverage.
