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Counter-Narratives
A Toolkit for Storytelling and Narrative Sovereignty
Contents
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Section 4

Glossary

  • a

  • The obligation of institutions, decision-makers, and external collaborators to answer to frontline communities for the impacts of their actions.
  • A short, personal account of a specific incident, used in environmental storytelling to illustrate broader systemic harms or community resilience.
  • The practice of withholding someone's personal identity to protect them from safety risks, retaliation, or emergent threats.
  • The specific group of people—such as policymakers, community members, or the general public—that a narrative is designed to reach and influence.
  • The right and capacity of frontline communities and community-based organizations (CBOs) to make independent decisions about their stories, resources, and governance without external control.

  • b

  • Supplemental or background footage inserted alongside primary storytelling media to visually illustrate a community's environment, lived reality, or activism.
  • Entities—such as predatory corporations, bad-faith actors, or hostile internet users—that actively harm communities, exploit resources, or undermine environmental justice efforts.
  • The complex administrative systems and procedural rules within government agencies.

  • c

  • Capacity refers to the time/materials/tools/resources an entity (CBOs and external collaborators) can invest and direct toward a particular project, in this case storytelling.
  • A movement acknowledging that climate change disproportionately impacts marginalized communities who contributed least to the crisis, demanding equitable, systemic solutions and community leadership.
  • A frontline community-based organization is a local, state, or Indigenous nonprofit organization, unincorporated group, or small for-profit business that represents and/or supports a specific frontline community and its residents and stakeholders. Frontline CBOs also represent or serve a(...)
  • The ongoing, fully informed, and voluntary agreement given by community members regarding how their personal stories, data, and images are gathered, used, and shared.
  • A narrative that explicitly challenges a more dominant narrative, offering a different account or depiction of events.
  • Measures taken to safeguard digital media, communications, and personal data of activists and organizations against unauthorized access, surveillance, or digital attacks.

  • d

  • A lack of information about a particular subject available on the internet.
  • Includes any storytelling medium that takes place or is viewed digitally: social media, websites, blogs, livestreams, photos, videos.

  • e

  • A threat that is new or would evolve as a result of telling your story. An emergent threat for an EJ group might be a threat to the safety of the storyteller if the story reveals any sensitive information about them.
  • The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people—regardless of race, income, or origin—in environmental policies, ensuring equal protection from hazards and equal access to a healthy environment.
  • The intentional redistribution of power, resources, and opportunities to address historic systemic inequities and ensure fair outcomes for marginalized communities.
  • Journalists, videographers, photographers, policymakers, NGOs, tech companies, etc. with potentially greater capacity to story tell, but are external entities to CBOs collaborating in the venture to tell those stories.
  • Practices—whether industrial, research-based, or journalistic—that take resources, labor, or stories from a community for outside gain without providing equitable compensation or value in return.

  • f

  • The process of selecting certain aspects of a story or issue and highlighting them to present an event, issue, or experience in a particular way.
  • Frontline communities are those experiencing the impacts of climate change “first and worst”; active resistance against the systems that cause environmental harm is a key component of frontline identity.

  • h

  • A holistic benefit is a benefit that, in an over-arching way, supports the whole mission of a group or their whole community, as opposed to an effort against one specific problem. For instance, storytelling about your community on Earth Day might not serve a specific purpose but might be aimed(...)

  • i

  • An internet troll is an individual who deliberately provokes or upsets others in online communities, particularly on social media platforms.

  • l

  • The recognized authority and credibility that community members inherently possess over their own lived experiences, as opposed to external institutional validation.

  • m

  • An overarching narrative about a chain of smaller historical narratives. A metanarrative can oversimplify nuanced issues. Narrative sovereignty work often challenges the dominant metanarratives.
  • The core purpose and overarching objective driving the work of a community-based organization or movement.

  • n

  • A set of stories told in a specific way for a specific purpose. The same stories can be woven into many different narratives!
  • Narrative sovereignty is the principle that communities should have and maintain authority over how their stories (and stories about their community) are told and shared.
  • Any comments can be quoted directly, but they must be anonymous or attributed very generally.

  • o

  • Nothing in an off-the-record conversation can be printed or attributed to the source.
  • Information provided on background by a source can be used and paraphrased, but the source cannot be named.
  • Everything in an on-the-record conversation can be printed and attributed to the source’s name and job title.

  • p

  • A challenge that has faced your group or community throughout its history. For instance, if your group focuses on advocating for clean water in a region with polluted water, the parties polluting your water are a perennial threat. Will telling your story invoke a response from them?
  • A visual or analytical tool used by organizers to identify key decision-makers, allies, and opponents to understand how power flows and how to influence change.
  • A pragmatic benefit is an outcome of storytelling that is practical and somewhat measurable, aimed at a particular goal or issue. For instance, storytelling about an acute source of pollution in your community is aimed at the pragmatic benefit of reducing that pollution by making(...)
  • Formal statements submitted by community members or organizations to government agencies during designated feedback periods on proposed policies or projects.
  • Verbal or written evidence provided by individuals before official decision-making bodies, such as legislative committees or regulatory boards, to share lived experiences and influence policy.

  • r

  • The process of evaluating potential safety, political, or social harms of an action or story against the expected positive impacts for the community.

  • s

  • A recounting of past events. In this context, a story can refer to a holistic experience, or to a particular matter or situation.
  • Sometimes, social media algorithms facilitate bursts or sudden attention on an individual person, social media account, or post. This is sometimes called “going viral.”

  • t

  • Scientific, legal, administrative, and other capacity-building support to serve community-based organizations’ needs, often provided by larger, more resourced institutions.
  • An environmental story that frames a community’s experience and identity through pollution, contamination, and harm—this kind of narrative is sometimes criticized for flattening/simplifying the complex identities of frontline communities.

  • v

  • The core ethical principles and beliefs that guide how a CBO operates, collaborates, and advocates for its community.
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