Of sustainability and storytelling - An introduction to this book

The introduction of the book starts with three inquiries about communicating sustainability issues in an interesting and effective way, to reflect the interest in the storytelling approach in different contexts of sustainability. This chapter then highlights the lack of systemic scientific studies that address the effects of sustainability-related storytelling, followed by a section that elucidates the main challenges of sustainability communication. This section mentions the challenge of communicating the complexity and value of sustainability issues without it being too cognitively demanding. It also poses that storytelling has great potential to meet those demands. This chapter continues by elaborating on “The Storytelling in Sustainability Communication Project”, which is the basis of the book. All project questions are mentioned, which include (1) the current understanding, (2) the effects of sustainability-related storytelling, and (3) how it can be thought about, learned, and practiced. This chapter then explains how the layout of the chapters in the book relates to these project questions, and lastly, acknowledgments are described.