BEYOND THE CAMPAIGN: TAPPING CULTURAL ENCULTURATION AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION

This paper is titled, ‘’Beyond the Campaign: Tapping Cultural Enculturation and Indigenous Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Environmental Communication’’. It seek to explore the theoretical shift from source-centric, time-bound environmental communication campaigns toward a culturally embedded, transdisciplinary paradigm. Grounded in General Systems Theory (GST) and D. Lawrence Kincaid’s Convergence Model of Communication, this study analyzes how human communication serves as a critical survival mechanism through the exchange of information within the ecosphere. By evaluating indigenous knowledge systems, such as the communal bio-resource management of the Naga tribe in Indonesia and the seasonal agricultural rituals of the Higaonon-Talaandig and kaingineros in the Philippines, the study demonstrates that traditional cosmologies inherently reject the Western mechanistic "nature-culture" dichotomy. The paper argues that conventional project-based communication campaigns fail to achieve long-term sustainability because they ignore the cultural continuum within which ecosystems and social systems co-evolve. The study concludes that sustainable environmental advocacy can only be realized through intentional cultural interventions that leverage the process of enculturation, adopt a deep ecology framework, and engage community stakeholders as active info-generation nodes rather than passive media receivers.