Namibian Geoscientists Want to Talk to the Public, But Mostly Just to Educate It

Namibia sits on some of the oldest rocks on Earth, and on some of the world’s most consequential deposits of uranium, diamonds, gold, zinc, copper and rare earth elements. Geoscience underpins the country’s economy, its water security and its plans for an energy transition. Yet a new study suggests that the scientists who know this landscape best are struggling to talk about it with the people who live on it. In the first in-depth qualitative investigation of its kind in Namibia, researchers Josephine Naambo Uushona of the Geological Survey of Namibia and Marina Joubert of Stellenbosch University interviewed thirteen geoscientists drawn from government, industry and academia to understand how they view the public, what they think engagement is for, and what stops them from doing more of it. The results, published in the journal Geoscience Communication, reveal a profession that values outreach in principle but remains trapped in an outdated, one-way model of communication.

The study arrives at a moment of mounting pressure. Around the world, scientists are increasingly expected to leave their academic silos and engage with policymakers, journalists and communities, and many funding agencies now make public engagement a condition of support. Geoscientists face these expectations with particular urgency, because their subject matter — mining, groundwater, natural hazards, energy production — lands directly on people’s doorsteps. But geoscience has historically been an inward-looking discipline, with communication flowing mainly between specialists. In Namibia, the disconnect is sharpened by history: the country’s geology was mapped within a colonial extractivist framework in which Indigenous peoples were treated as guides to be managed rather than knowledge holders in their own right. That legacy, the authors argue, still shapes how communities respond to scientific institutions today.

Between August and October 2023, Uushona conducted semi-structured interviews with thirteen geoscientists aged between 30 and 40, working in fields that ranged from hydrogeology and economic geology to palaeontology and geochemistry. Ten interviews took place face to face and three over Zoom, and the transcripts were analysed inductively using ATLAS.ti software, guided by seven research questions covering how the scientists define the public, how they define engagement, their attitudes, motivations, objectives, confidence and the barriers they face. The qualitative approach was deliberate: as the first study of its kind in Namibia, open-ended questions allowed the researchers to capture experiences and attitudes that a survey might have missed.

The most striking finding is how deeply the so-called deficit model is embedded in these scientists’ thinking. When asked to describe the public, most participants reached for broad categories such as “everyone in society” or “people on the street”, and they largely agreed that ordinary people possess only a basic grasp of science that must be improved through education before meaningful participation is possible. One participant put it bluntly, saying that scientists often assume the general public will not understand actual science beyond its products, and so do not bother to engage. This assumption — that public scepticism about projects like fracking, uranium exploration or carbon storage stems mainly from ignorance, and that supplying more facts will dissolve resistance — has been widely discredited in the science communication literature. Decades of research in cognitive and social science show that values, worldviews and trust, not knowledge alone, shape how people respond to science-related issues, and that bombarding audiences with information can sometimes deepen distrust rather than dispel it.

Consistent with that deficit mindset, the geoscientists overwhelmingly defined public engagement as informing and educating rather than listening or collaborating. Five participants described engagement explicitly in terms of information transfer, four framed it as raising awareness of the benefits of research, and only two offered definitions that included genuine dialogue. Their objectives told the same story: the dominant goal was knowledge dissemination, with just two participants describing a bidirectional exchange in which scientists might also learn from the public — and even then, learning was framed as a response to audience questions rather than a recognition that communities hold valuable expertise of their own. As one participant explained, when interacting with the public and responding to their questions, they use those inquiries to enhance their work and develop better ways of explaining what they do. It is a small crack in the one-way wall, but a crack nonetheless.

Yet the picture is not uniformly bleak. All thirteen participants expressed positive attitudes toward engagement, and eleven had taken part in activities such as career fairs, radio interviews and outreach programmes. Their motivations were often deeply felt: a sense of duty to fill knowledge gaps, a desire to combat misinformation, a wish to give back to society and to inspire young people into science careers. One participant argued that it is the responsibility of geoscientists to inform communities about the impact of mining on the environment, to present both sides of the story, asking: if not us, who? Another emphasised that participation is especially impactful for children who may never have encountered a geoscientist who looks like them. In a country where mining and exploration are expanding rapidly, several participants stressed that the public deserves a voice in policy decisions with direct environmental and socioeconomic consequences, citing the example of the Stampriet community, where uranium exploration and drilling near a major groundwater supply have raised serious local concerns.

Trust emerged as a particularly loaded concept. Private-sector geoscientists in the study tended to frame engagement as a means of building community trust, especially in areas affected by exploration or mining, where field-based work often requires access to private or communal land. One participant noted that public trust is essential for securing community cooperation and avoiding resistance during field data collection. The authors flag a tension here: engagement motivated primarily by operational necessity risks being perceived as transactional by communities, and may undermine the very trust it seeks to build if residents feel they are being informed rather than genuinely consulted. The study’s participants, the researchers observe, simultaneously described trust-building as a goal while framing their engagement objectives almost entirely in terms of information transmission.

The barriers to doing better are formidable and largely structural. Public communication is not embedded in most Namibian geoscientists’ job descriptions, performance evaluations or funding models, and there is no formal science communication training in most geoscience education or professional development pathways. Outreach depends on individual passion and ad hoc initiatives rather than institutionalised strategies, and it is rarely monitored or evaluated, making it hard to learn from past efforts. Participants cited time constraints, financial and logistical obstacles — particularly for those based far from Windhoek — confidentiality restrictions, and administrative burdens. Namibia’s vast geography makes it difficult to reach rural, under-resourced communities where geoscience information is often most urgently needed, and English-language materials can exclude local audiences. Unlike South Africa, whose National Research Foundation has integrated public participation into its funding criteria, Namibian research funders neither mandate nor incentivise engagement, leaving scientists to rely on informal recognition such as mentions in departmental newsletters or applause at office meetings.

The authors also identify telling contradictions in their data. Participants expressed high confidence in their own and their peers’ communication abilities, attributing this to scientific qualifications rather than any formal training — yet the same participants unanimously called for targeted skills development in public speaking, writing for non-specialist audiences and media engagement. They described engagement as important and morally meaningful, yet reported discouragement or indifference from colleagues who regard teaching the public as nobody’s responsibility. And while many endorsed the idea that engagement can be mutually beneficial, their stated objectives remained almost entirely educational. These contradictions, the researchers suggest, reveal a professional culture in which confidence is equated with technical expertise, and in which engagement is still seen as peripheral to the core scientific role.

The study’s recommendations are concrete. The Geological Survey of Namibia, the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology and the Geoscience Council of Namibia are well positioned, the authors argue, to establish formal engagement awards, link research funding to communication support, and co-develop a context-sensitive science communication course with local geoscientists, communicators and community leaders — one that works in local languages and uses community radio. They also sketch three distinct goals that engagement strategies could pursue, sometimes simultaneously: operational trust that enables fieldwork, policy influence with decision-makers, and the co-production of knowledge through citizen science, in which community members become active contributors rather than passive recipients. Community-based groundwater monitoring, for example, could build local scientific capacity while generating data that formal surveys might miss. As Namibia advances its oil, gas, mineral and green energy ambitions, the authors conclude, the gap between geoscientists and the public is becoming impossible to ignore. Bridging it will require more than goodwill; it will require institutions to treat engagement not as an optional extra, but as a core professional responsibility — and to give scientists the time, training and recognition to do it properly.

Subject of Research: Public engagement with science among Namibian geoscientists

Article Title: Between expertise and engagement: a qualitative study of Namibian geoscientists' views, attitudes, motivations, and objectives regarding public engagement with science

Article References: Between expertise and engagement: a qualitative study of Namibian geoscientists' views, attitudes, motivations, and objectives regarding public engagement with science. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-9-385-2026

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/gc-9-385-2026

Keywords: geoscience communication, public engagement, Namibia, deficit model, science communication, mining, groundwater, trust-building, qualitative interviews, Global South, institutional barriers, community participation