Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for theory, research and practice with regard to environment and communication, and it does this from a perspective which is both international and multi-disciplinary in scope. Offering comprehensive critical reviews of the history and state of the art of research into the key dimensions of environmental communication, the chapters of this handbook together demonstrate the strengths of multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to understanding the centrality of communication to how the environment is constructed, and indeed contested, socially, politically and culturally. Organised in five thematic sections, The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication includes contributions from internationally recognised leaders in the field. The first section looks at the history and development of the discipline from a range of theoretical perspectives. Section two considers the sources, communicators and media professionals involved in producing environmental communication. Section three examines research on news, entertainment media and cultural representations of the environment. The fourth section looks at the social and political implications of environmental communication, with the final section discussing likely future trajectories for the field. The first reference Handbook to offer a state of the art comprehensive overview of the emerging field of environmental communication research, this authoritative text is a must for scholars of environmental communication across a range of disciplines, including environmental studies, media and communication studies, cultural studies and related disciplines.