Fighting to save the planet

Environmental activism is the combined political force of people who take action to protect the environment. Unfulfilled by mere complaining about environmental problems, activists work to bring their vision of a better world into reality, even if their actions sometimes involve personal risks and bring no material rewards.

The institutional profile of environmental activism embraces actors ranging from small grassroots and community organizations to large international pressure groups. Some of these focus on specific issues while others such as WWF and Friends of the Earth (FoE) target the full range of environmental problems. Environmental NGOs obtain funding from different sources: for example, Greenpeace, FoE and many grassroots organizations rely mainly on individual donations; other NGOs accept corporate, government or aid agency funding.

Spurred by environmental problems linked to nuclear technologies, pesticide pollution, and overexploitation of natural resources, environmental activism first emerged as a widespread movement in the 1960s. The publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 is generally considered to be a key milestone. The achievement of the movement in raising global awareness over the last 30 years has enabled most notably the rescue of the ozone layer and reduction of acid rain, whilst introducing the language of sustainable development into mainstream politics. Environmentalists now aspire to be a leading force in shaping international agreements.

Camisea pipeline scars rainforest © Amazon Watch

It is largely accepted that these advances have not translated into high standards in policy making, nor to any fundamental change in individual consumer lifestyles in wealthy countries. As the latest UNEP Global Environmental Outlook 2007 clearly indicates, environmental degradation continues at an alarming rate. Although one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is labelled "Ensure Environmental Sustainability", the official MDG progress indicators offer little substance for environmental campaigners – symbolising how the vision of sustainable development has been devalued by casual usage. Activists crave a more potent rallying cry, a desire reflected in FoE’s core strategic aim “to develop a credible alternative sustainable economic model…. to the prevailing corporate globalisation”.
Effective Strategies

Logging campaign, US © Rainforest Action Network

A wide range of traditional strategies and tools remains at the disposal of environmental activists in the search for democratic change. The more technical NGOs, such as the World Resources Institute, provide scientific advice, public education, advocacy, lobbying and litigation for political and legal recognition of environmental values and rights. Broad-based membership groups will engage in peaceful protests to stimulate media and consumer campaigns, on occasion turning globalisation to advantage in synchronised actions. Earth Hour 2008 claimed the participation of 30 million people in switching off lights and appliances – led by the example of the Sydney Opera House.

Campaigners have learned that negative messages about the fate of the planet can be counter-productive, concentrating instead on potential solutions, whether dealing with businesses and governments, inter-governmental organizations, financial institutions, investors or consumers. Lobbying and engaging in alliances with these new stakeholders is often seen as the most promising of the reformist strategies. For example, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) trademark is a widely recognised label for sustainable timber products and involves working relationships between forest campaigners, logging companies, local community groups and retailers. Similar partnerships focus on the use of market mechanisms such as ethical investment to promote sustainable consumption and production. Whether in the supermarket or stock market, the threat of a consumer boycott is feared by the corporate sector and as such is a motivation for working with campaign groups.
Cyberactivism

_ © Peter Armstrong

Overcoming political, geographical, censorship and communication barriers, new media technologies have already achieved substantial victories for the environmental movement. The success of the campaign to save the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada was attributed by Greenpeace to cyberactivism. Now familiar online applications such as blogs, videos, and podcasts bring an immediacy of the work of campaign groups to their supporters and greatly gear up the potential of traditional campaigns such as petitions. More recent tools which combine maps and data into "mash-ups” also lend themselves to environmental issues, for example by locating active regional groups or real risks such as air pollution.

Organisations which depend on youthful activist memberships have not been slow to explore the potential of popular social networking websites to communicate their work. The most popular Facebook “Cause” is Stop Global Warming with over 2 million members. Obtaining mobile phone numbers has become as vital to campaign groups as email addresses. Greenpeace Argentina reports that group text messages encouraging 350,000 supporters to contact their representative successfully influenced a vote in parliament. Consumer text messages from point of sale to a central database are a great way of establishing the environmental credentials of a product.
Radical Activism

Medha Patkar © Gabrielle Hamm

These fresh opportunities for smart activism may render obsolete the tradition of radical direct actions which have so often raised public environmental awareness. Nevertheless, the days of hard-hitting disruptive protests by groups such as Earth First! which despise “overpaid corporate environmentalists” are far from over. A 2008 landmark verdict by a jury in the UK acquitted Greenpeace activists of criminal damage to the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station on grounds that their actions were justified by preventing harm to other property around the world caused by climate change. Often, such actions remain the only effective means of resisting oppressive governments or corrupt corporations, particularly in developing countries. For example, in India the founder of the Save Narmada Movement, Medha Patkar, was able to exploit global media coverage of her hunger strikes, allied to the cause of poor people threatened with displacement by the Narmada dam.
Eco-Justice

Social justice issues come to the fore in local campaigning. Over recent years local communities have become increasingly active in finding their own solutions to their immediate environmental and social problems. Typically lacking financial muscle and awareness of their rights, local activists all too often face prosecution by corrupt governments and businesses. The fight for the environment, especially at grassroots level, is inseparable from the fight for the human rights.

Dealing with waste in India © Centre for Science and Environment

The eco-justice movement links the goal of environmental protection to the goals of poverty reduction, social justice, peace, and the recognition of the rights of all marginalised and underprivileged people. Environmental action has to be driven by a strong understanding of what is just and fair, and be delivered through democratic institutions, such as representative grassroots organizations which have an immediate stake in the local environment. There are too many examples of solutions which merely drive the problem away from rich to poor communities.

Failures of eco-justice are also to be found at international level, in the abuse of the developing world by rich countries. From toxic waste dumped on the beaches of Somalia, a country with no government, to the attempted decommissioning of an asbestos-ridden French warship in an Indian dockyard, developing countries find themselves treated as second class environmental citizens. Climate change, the footprint of the rich on the poor, is the ultimate expression of environmental injustice.

Wangari Maathai © Martin Rowe / Women Thrive Worldwide

In the last three decades, environmental activism has emerged and strengthened in developing countries, symbolised by the award of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathai for her work with the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. However, many of these NGOs are financially dependent on governments and multilateral organizations, inevitably restraining their influence over agendas. They also experience more acutely the conflicts of interests that always exist between environmental ideals and the expedient needs of extreme poverty. Pressure to withdraw opposition to genetically modified crops in face of the food crisis is a current example.
Global Politics

G8 Edinburgh 2005 © Peter Armstrong

There is however a growing sense of frustration amongst NGOs in developing countries, and indeed marginalised communities in general, who feel that their interests are not adequately represented. They point to the transnational environmental NGO domination of international processes, inter-sectoral partnerships and media coverage.

Although a proven mechanism for monitoring the international system, the increasing presence of environmental NGOs in national and international arenas has created difficult conflicts of interests. It is undeniable that the complexity of negotiations on multilateral environmental agreements demands the resources of highly qualified scientists and campaigners; yet the typical northern-based centralised organization necessary to sustain such resources can be accused of lacking legitimacy to represent grassroots interests. Such uncertainties are seized upon by those politicians who feel threatened by the new pluralism and who are quick to draw attention to any shortcomings in transparency and accountability within the non-profit sector.

Similar dilemmas have emerged in recent years through the growing number of partnerships between environmental NGOs and industry, donor agencies and governments. Advocates of these partnerships are driven by concerns over the ability of the environmental movement to deal effectively with the challenge of globalisation and the growing financial and political power of major corporations. Opponents of such close involvement with the private sector feel that it fundamentally undermines the traditional role of environmental activists as watchdogs and guardians of environmental justice.

NGOs are therefore under pressure to strengthen their legitimacy by pushing through much-needed reforms in their own community and to practice what they preach in empowering the poor to speak for themselves.
China and India

The Three Gorges Dam © WWF

Most environmental indicators in China and India are moving dramatically in the wrong direction, on a scale which threatens to destabilise progress achieved elsewhere. Yet the lives of hundreds of millions of poor people remain desperately in need of the benefits of industrialisation. In India, Greenpeace has targeted the new middle class with the message the rural poverty will be made worse by the impact of climate change. High profile campaigns seek to ban incandescent lightbulbs, encourage purchase of greener electronic goods, and to raise awareness in coastal cities of the threat of rising sea levels.

Demo in China © Out There News

In a country such as China with one of the most repressive governments in the world, where the concept of civil society is relatively embryonic and where freedom of information is at a premium, the prospects for environmental voices appear dismal. However, against these odds, there are promising signs of tolerance of environmental activists, far more so than human rights or social campaigners. There are believed to be over 2,000 environmental NGOs capable of mounting protest and legal challenge, with a track record of some success in prompting environmental regulations, even within the prevailing limits of political criticism. There is speculation that the Chinese government welcomes a degree of local activism to compensate for its own failure to overcome municipal authority collusion with polluting industries.
Climate Change

Al Gore © climatecrisis.net

Climate change will be the issue on which the current generation of environmental activists will be judged. The years 2006 and 2007 saw a transformation in the attitude of governments and corporations towards the desperate need for action, most remarkable of all in the US. The jury is still out in assessing whether this tipping point was reached through years of intrepid climate change campaigning or simply the impact of Al Gore's powerpoint presentation timed neatly in the aftermath of one or two particularly nasty hurricanes.

Until the international banking crisis exploded towards the end of 2008, the political winds blew fair as never before for climate change campaigners. However, with public opinion now sympathetic to decisive action, environmental groups are more exposed to the potential banana skins of their attitudes to cheap aviation, nuclear power, carbon offsets, carbon capture and storage, and biofuels. They have been forced to grapple with problems familiar to governments, such as the difficulty of defining regulations which create a level global playing field.

Two very different activist strategies emerged during 2007. The Live Earth concerts reached back into the 1980s in an attempt to rekindle the flames of Live Aid. Al Gore was amongst the organisers who claimed that 2 billion people were”inspired to engage with the issues”. Worries about the carbon footprint of the event were overwhelmed by the December Bali Climate Change Conference for which 10,000 people purchased flights. This contradiction was seized by OneWorld UK as an opportunity to pioneer virtual grassroots participation through the OneClimate Island in Second Life. US Congressman Edward Markey made history by delivering his speech to the Conference through his avatar on the Island.

Many people are abandoning faith in established campaign groups and turning instead to individual actions in the home, often finding a sense of community through online networking and blogging in preference to traditional formal memberships. Active citizenship may be the only hope for overcoming the impotence of world governments and corporations to act in the face of imperatives.



The OneWorld Environmental Activism Guide was first published in 2003 with material provided by Volunteer Editor Tamilla Held.

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