Search Results

Greece

Maria Kousis

in Environmental Protest in Western Europe

Analysis of 579 environmental protest events in Greece, reported in Eleftherotypia during 1988–97, showed an uneven decline of protest during the decade, an overrepresentation of urban environmental ... More

Analysis of 579 environmental protest events in Greece, reported in Eleftherotypia during 1988–97, showed an uneven decline of protest during the decade, an overrepresentation of urban environmental claims, and the prominence of nature conservation, pollution, urban, and industrial claims made by both formal and informal environmental groups. Claims involving the health effects of environmental degradation declined, due to a steeper reduction in the reported incidence of grassroots environmental activism. In general, there was limited variation in the tactics used, with conventional protest predominating, followed by confrontation and demonstrations, and rarely by violence. Community activists tended to opt more often for confrontational or violent actions than did formal NGOs. The observed patterns are influenced by the changing political and economic opportunity structure associated with economic liberalization, the pattern of newspaper coverage, and the organization of social space.Less

Going with the Wind: The Environmentalist Transformation of the Electricity Sector

Ion Bogdan Vasi

in Winds of Change: The Environmental Movement and the Global Development of the Wind Energy Industry

This chapter shows that the electricity sector has undergone two transformations since the 1990s. First, small, traditional wind turbine manufacturers have become industrial heavyweights, and ... More

This chapter shows that the electricity sector has undergone two transformations since the 1990s. First, small, traditional wind turbine manufacturers have become industrial heavyweights, and traditional power plant manufacturers have recognized that wind turbine manufacturing is big business. Second, new companies specializing in wind‐farm development and operation have emerged, while growing numbers of electric utilities have invested in wind farms. This chapter demonstrates that the environmental movement contributed to these transformations when environmental activists gained control of energy companies and professional societies, criticized the traditional logic of energy production, and offered practical solutions. By becoming entrepreneurs, innovators, advocates, and champions, environmental movement activists and sympathizers made an essential contribution to wind turbine manufacturing. By forming wind turbine cooperatives, founding wind‐farm development companies, and constantly pressuring utility companies to invest in renewable energy, environmental organizations and activists also had a major impact on wind‐farm development.Less

Environmental Protection: Positive Constitutional Rights in the Late Twentieth Century

Emily Zackin

in Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places: Why State Constitutions Contain America's Positive Rights

This chapter examines the campaigns for constitutional rights to environmental protection. In the 1960s and 1970s, when Congress was passing landmark environmental regulations and an entire executive ... More

This chapter examines the campaigns for constitutional rights to environmental protection. In the 1960s and 1970s, when Congress was passing landmark environmental regulations and an entire executive agency had been developed to address the subject, environmental activists continued to lobby for the insertion of positive rights to environmental protection into their state constitutions. As a result, state constitutions came to include broad rights to environmental health and protection. The chapter first provides an overview of environmental activism during the 1960s and 1970s before explaining why environmental activists targeted state constitutions despite so much environmental action at the national level. It argues that environmentalists did not choose to pursue constitutional rights to environmental protection only at the federal level. Instead, states' constitutional conventions, environmental organizations, and even legislatures continued to alter state constitutions by adding mandates for protective and interventionist government.Less

Democracy and the Environment: A Radical Theory of Participation

Avner de‐Shalit

in The Environment Between Theory and Practice

What sort of democracy is more likely to sustain environment‐friendly policies? Unlike a number of recent works that have praised representative democracy as the optimal form of democracy for the ... More

What sort of democracy is more likely to sustain environment‐friendly policies? Unlike a number of recent works that have praised representative democracy as the optimal form of democracy for the environment, it is argued that the more deliberative and participatory the democracy the more environment friendly it will be. It is shown that many environmental activists support such conclusions.Less

Images of Place in Green Politics: The Cultural Mirror of Indigenous Traditions

Douglas Torgerson

in Living with Nature: Environmental Politics as Cultural Discourse

Green movements on the Western European model need to be more aware that their predilection for open public debate and transparency of government decision‐making can be insensitive to the interests ... More

Green movements on the Western European model need to be more aware that their predilection for open public debate and transparency of government decision‐making can be insensitive to the interests of aboriginal peoples who do not share that predilection. While both environmentalists and aboriginals have a common cause in defending against encroachments by the forces of industrialism, there is an inherent paradox in the Green political concept of ‘defence of place’ arising from the fact that their cultural conceptions, of what is to be preserved and why, may conflict with those of the aboriginal peoples actually living there. An instructive case study of the protests over logging practices in Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia is presented. The initial alignment between environmental activists and the Nuu‐chah‐nulth aboriginals gave way to estrangement when, after hundreds of the former had been arrested, fined, or jailed, the representatives of the latter arrived at a political understanding with the authorities in respect of land claims and forest management practices. The shock experienced by some environmentalists over the independent direction taken by the Nuu‐chah‐nulth may suggest that environmentalists and aboriginals were, in fact, operating with quite different images of the forest as property. A greater degree of cultural sensitivity is required to prevent such misunderstandings in future. It is also important to recognize how politicization can change culture—a deliberate political campaign to defend a traditional culture can itself change the culture being defended. It is entirely conceivable for a defence of place—through its own political and cultural dynamics—to undermine the very culture that has given the place its unique meaning and value.Less

Environmental Activism in the Middle East and North Africa

Jeannie Sowers

in Environmental Politics in the Middle East

Environmental activism has intensified across the Middle East and North Africa over the past few decades, focusing primarily on environmental issues that affect public health and livelihoods. While ... More

Environmental activism has intensified across the Middle East and North Africa over the past few decades, focusing primarily on environmental issues that affect public health and livelihoods. While intrusive security states limit information and stifle civil society, expanding educational opportunities, growing cities, and new means of communication have enabled environmental activism. This includes small-scale, informal, and localized activism to demand access to natural resources and environmental services; the spread of environmental nongovernmental organizations; and the coordinated popular resistance campaign that includes direct action, media outreach, and lobbying. State elites and official media often portray environmental mobilization as a threat to national security and state integrity, but sometimes tolerate it as an informal enforcement mechanism to pressure polluting firms and nonresponsive officials. As elsewhere, state and corporate actors also increasingly deploy their own discourses and interventions, generally focused on technocratic solutions rather than questions of political economy and environmental justice.Less

Science For Advocacy

Alissa Cordner

in Toxic Safety: "Flame Retardants, Chemical Controversies, and Environmental Health"

Chapter 6 describes how controversies over flame retardants have played out for the public and through the media, examining the actions of a broad coalition of environmental, public interest, and ... More

Chapter 6 describes how controversies over flame retardants have played out for the public and through the media, examining the actions of a broad coalition of environmental, public interest, and fire safety groups pushing for flame retardant restrictions and the work of well-funded industry front groups defending these chemicals.Less

Conclusion

Anna Lora-Wainwright

in Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China

The conclusion draws comparisons across the three sites and it highlights common dynamics and processes, such as the normalisation of pollution, moulding of new parameters of health and new ... More

The conclusion draws comparisons across the three sites and it highlights common dynamics and processes, such as the normalisation of pollution, moulding of new parameters of health and new expectations for a “good life.” It closes by returning to the main themes of the book and to their implications for the social science study of environmentalism and of contemporary China. It reflects on the wider global responsibility for the forms of pollution and suffering described, and on the importance of looking beyond conventional forms of activism and of taking local contexts seriously. It puts forth some suggestions for how academics might contribute to empowering communities affected by pollution.Less

Necessary but Not Sufficient: Storms, Environmentalism, and New Visions for Flood Control, 1969–2001

Jared Orsi

in Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Drainage Area (LACDA) lived up to its promise in 1969, preventing damages estimated at more than a billion dollars. As they had done with previous storms, flood controllers ... More

The Los Angeles County Drainage Area (LACDA) lived up to its promise in 1969, preventing damages estimated at more than a billion dollars. As they had done with previous storms, flood controllers assessed the 1969 gale as proof of the structures' success. However, their euphoria had faded by the mid-1980s. In a “LACDA Update” which the Army Corps mass mailed to Los Angeles County residents in September 1987, the corps warned, “Disastrous Flooding Could Return to Los Angeles County.” In a departure from a half century of treating flood control solely as an engineering problem to be dealt with solely by engineers, experts now called for public involvement. This change reflected two decades of political and environmental turmoil. First, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, environmentalists began mounting the first serious political challenge to flood-control engineering since the 1920s. Then in 1978 and 1980, comparatively minor storms produced catastrophic damage, leading engineers to rethink the technical soundness of LACDA. Together, the environmental activism and the renewed flood problems reopened the entire question of flood control for the first time in seven decades and injected nontechnical strategies and public involvement into flood-control planning. Although the old flood-control regime of reengineered rivers and expert bureaucrats by no means collapsed, the political and environmental turmoil after 1969 shook the foundations of the flood-control program that southern Californians had instituted in 1915.Less

Environmental Arts

Hilary Inwood, Joe E. Heimlich, Kumara S. Ward, and Jennifer D. Adams

Alex Russ and Marianne E. Krasny (eds)

in Urban Environmental Education Review

This chapter examines the ways that the arts are transforming environmental education in urban centers and helping bring about cultural shifts toward sustainability. Around the world, cities are ... More

This chapter examines the ways that the arts are transforming environmental education in urban centers and helping bring about cultural shifts toward sustainability. Around the world, cities are using the arts to enhance urban aesthetic experiences and foster innovative environmental activism. Manifesting as flash mobs, immersive street theater, bike parades, pop-up installations, zero-carbon concerts, and participatory storytelling, artists are harnessing their creativity and ingenuity to draw attention to and propose solutions for the environmental challenges faced by cities in the twenty-first century. Also known as creative or artistic activism, environmental arts are becoming part of the curriculum in schools, universities, colleges, museums, and community centers, and they are being integrated into the fabric of the city in unexpected spaces such as parks, city streets, alleyways, and rooftops. This chapter cites examples showing how visual arts, music, dance, drama, and other art forms help to bring about positive environmental change.Less

Collective Action toward a Sustainable City: Citizens’ Movements and Environmental Politics in Taipei

Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Liu Hwa-Jen

in Livable Cities?: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability

This chapter presents two stories of community mobilization in Taipei: defending living space and birth of a five-hectare city park, Nos. 14–15 Park. These two vignettes show both the successes and ... More

This chapter presents two stories of community mobilization in Taipei: defending living space and birth of a five-hectare city park, Nos. 14–15 Park. These two vignettes show both the successes and failures of urban environmental activism in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei. It also attempts to discuss the pattern of development to which the protesters were reacting. It then reviews the varieties of community-based environmental activism during the eighties and nineties and its impact on environmental policies. The issue raised by the two vignettes is addressed: the relationship between sustainability and social justice. In the process of struggle, local communities have served as agents of environmental action. The responsiveness of both the national and municipal governments has proven the political efficacy of community action. The idea that the improvement of the urban environment cannot be divorced from the realization of social justice must become a more integral part of movement ideology.Less

Japanese Environmental Policy: Lessons from Experience and Remaining Problems

Ken’ichi Miyamoto

in Japan at Nature's Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power

This chapter examines the historical lessons that can be drawn from Japan's environmental policy making to date as well as the key environmental policy challenges that confront Japan today. It begins ... More

This chapter examines the historical lessons that can be drawn from Japan's environmental policy making to date as well as the key environmental policy challenges that confront Japan today. It begins with a discussion of Japan's pollution problems before World War II, focusing on the major pollution incidents that marked the modern era such as those involving Hitachi Mining (now Hitachi Ltd.), Osaka Alkali (now Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha, Ltd.), Sumitomo Metal Mining, and the city of Osaka. It then considers the four major pollution cases that occurred after Japan abandoned the pollution control measures it had taken in the prewar period in favor of a focused economic development policy of high-speed growth following World War II: Minamata disease, Niigata Minamata disease, Itai-Itai disease (cadmium poisoning), and the air pollution emitted by the Yokkaichi industrial complex. The chapter also describes the deficiencies of Japan's pollution control measures, along with the distinguishing features of Japanese environmental policy making and postwar citizens' environmental activism. Finally, it addresses the importance of creating a sustainable society that recycles its resources.Less

What Might the Environment Become?

Etienne S. Benson

in Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms

This concluding chapter surveys recent critiques of the concept of environment by scholars, scientists, and activists and responds to them by arguing that the concept remains useful precisely because ... More

This concluding chapter surveys recent critiques of the concept of environment by scholars, scientists, and activists and responds to them by arguing that the concept remains useful precisely because it can be and has been defined and materialized in a variety of forms. As evidence for the concept’s continuing vitality, the chapter describes a number of emerging forms of environmentalism that build on the varieties of environmental thought described in the previous chapters while refashioning the concept to suit their own aims and circumstances. These include the scientific environmentalism of critical zone science, the artistic environmentalism of the Aerocene project, the indigenous environmentalism of the #NoDAPL movement, and the scholarly environmentalism of the environmental humanities. The chapter concludes by arguing that the histories recounted in this book help us see what is novel and distinctive about these emerging environmentalisms, as well as what kinds of conditions may be required for them to thrive in the future.Less

“Democracy Has Left the Building”: Activist Overload and the Tyranny of Civic Engagement

Melissa Checker

in The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice

Just as sustainability has come to serve as a euphemism for profit-minded redevelopment, public participation and community engagement have become a ritualized but ultimately empty performance of ... More

Just as sustainability has come to serve as a euphemism for profit-minded redevelopment, public participation and community engagement have become a ritualized but ultimately empty performance of democracy and shared decision making. This chapter examines how environmental justice activists have navigated the nonprofit funding system and the constant pressure to participate in various forms of citizen engagement. These have included requests from academics wishing to further institutional missions that emphasize public engagement. They also included invitations to sit on steering committees, to attend countless public hearings, to submit public testimonies about new development projects, to participate in urban planning initiatives, and more. Activists have found that such activities drain their time and energy, siphoning it away from their long-term goals. Ultimately, rather than supporting democratic action, institutionalized forms of civic engagement have undermined democracy itself.Less

Not In My Backyard Activism and Information

Dominic Hauck

in Political Economy and Instruments of Environmental Politics

The paper develops a theory that shows how informed Not In My Backyard activism can benefit investors, who want to invest in risky projects. The argument is based on the idea that evaluation of the ... More

The paper develops a theory that shows how informed Not In My Backyard activism can benefit investors, who want to invest in risky projects. The argument is based on the idea that evaluation of the physical risk of such a project is costly for investors. The threat of being affected by an externality after the project has been realized, e.g. due to an accident at the project site, motivates activists to collect information. When the payoffs of investors and activists are correlated, i.e. informed activists prevent dangerous projects with low returns but accept safe projects, investors can save on the risk evaluation up front. The paper discusses how the cost of becoming informed, the cost of fighting the project, and expected net payoff of the project affect the savings of the investor due to activism.Less

The Making of a Dominant Global Discourse

Charlotte Epstein

in The Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse

This chapter examines the development of a new, dominant global discourse about whales that featured them as endangered, intelligent, and extraordinary mammals which needed to be saved from the ... More

This chapter examines the development of a new, dominant global discourse about whales that featured them as endangered, intelligent, and extraordinary mammals which needed to be saved from the whalers. The analysis of the discourse unfolds in two parts. The first part shows how the anti-whaling discourse rose to prevalence because it combined two, preexisting metanarratives: that of the Cold War discourse on capitalism and democracy, and that of a nascent environmental discourse. Specifically, it analyzes the double synecdochic move which fixed the whale signifier in this new discourse in such a way that saving the whales became shorthand for saving endangered species, and the endangered planet as a whole. The second part of the chapter examines what the new discourse actually achieved. First, at a specific juncture in the early 1970s in American politics, it created a vast discourse coalition of anti-whaling state and non-state actors that extended to the international level. Second, the new discourse provided a specific script for “doing something” about the environment, thereby yielding a new grammar for environmental activism at large.Less

“You Are Not Somebody Pretending to be a Man”: Success, Politics, and Gender

Peggy Frankland

in Women Pioneers of the Louisiana Environmental Movement

This chapter presents the stories of seven women—Mildred Fossier, Mary McCastle, Florence Gossen, Clara Baudoin, Liz Avants, Les Ann Kirkland, and Mary Tutwiler—demonstrating how their work as women ... More

This chapter presents the stories of seven women—Mildred Fossier, Mary McCastle, Florence Gossen, Clara Baudoin, Liz Avants, Les Ann Kirkland, and Mary Tutwiler—demonstrating how their work as women often informed, motivated, and connected them. These women reiterate that the biggest beneficiaries of the Louisiana grassroots environmental movement are children and subsequent generations.Less

“When Something is Not Right, You Have to Do Something About It”: Career Activists Build Bridges

Peggy Frankland

in Women Pioneers of the Louisiana Environmental Movement

This chapter presents the stories of five women—Sister Helen Vinton, Lorna Bourg, Marylee Orr, Linda King, and Wilma Subra—who established careers in environmental activism, and who made unique ... More

This chapter presents the stories of five women—Sister Helen Vinton, Lorna Bourg, Marylee Orr, Linda King, and Wilma Subra—who established careers in environmental activism, and who made unique contributions to Louisiana’s environmental movement by providing technical information, guidance on strategy, and moral support.Less