Municipal environmental communication governance development: Complementary disciplinary and integrative approaches and practice

There are summarized findings from research-and-development (R&D) study of environmental communication (EC) development in Liepaja town municipality, based on case studies research methodics following applications during 2006–2015, and, summarizing, all stakeholders semi-structured interviews conducted in 2016. Liepaja is one of the most active pro-environmentally oriented municipalities in Latvia, where the complete collaboration communication model approach of all four EC complementary instruments has been introduced since 2009 following R&D study. Liepaja municipality produced a number of various successful EC results and, what seems to be definitely interlinked, has achieved considerable progress in environmental governance in general. For successful EC governance development in the municipality, it is necessary to ensure EC as: a) separate governance sector with all its components (environmental information, environmental education, public participation, and pro-environmental behaviour); b) compulsory integrative component, based on EC integration – with stake-holders, into each of environmental governance sectors as well as integration into municipal governance environment/media and all development sectors, e.g. economic, social and culture sectors. There are to be recognized practical theory based triple dimension development preconditions for EC governance system, consisting of EC sectoral policy content and process development into that interrelation with stakeholder groups communicative governance, what all together have to be complementary developed.