Environmental Activism And World Civic Politics

Based on case studies of three transnational groups, it argues that in addition to lobbying governments, activists operate within and across societies to effect widespread change. They work through transnational social, economic, and cultural networks to alter corporate practices, educate vast numbers of people, pressure multilateral development banks, and shift standards of good conduct. Wapner argues that because this activity takes place outside the formal arena of inter-state politics, environmental activists practice "world civic politics"; they politicize global civil society.

Shades of Green examines the impact of political, economic, religious, and scientific institutions on environmental activism around the world. Discussing issues unique to different parts of the world, Shades of Green shows that environmentalism around the globe has been strengthened, weakened, or suppressed by a variety of local, national, and international concerns, politics, and social realities.

What will it take to protect the global environment? In this book, Ronnie D. Lipschutz argues that neither world government nor green economics can do the job. Governmental regulations often are resisted by those whose behavior they are intended to change, and markets—even green ones—look to profits more than to protection. What will be needed, Lipschutz believes, is not global management but political action through community- and place-based organizations and projects. People acting together locally can have a cumulative impact on environmental quality that is significant, long lasting, and widespread. The comparative case studies of environmental activism in Northern California, Hungary, and Indonesia (the latter written by Judith Mayer) illustrate one of the central premises of this book: that local action is linked increasingly to globe-spanning networks of knowledge and practice, in what Lipschutz calls global civil society. The result is a system of governance that is both local and global, to which states and international organizations are turning increasingly for help and advice.

In Beyond Mothering Earth, Sherilyn MacGregor argues that celebrations of "earthcare" as women's unique contribution to the search for sustainability often neglect to consider the importance of politics and citizenship in women's lives. Drawing on interviews with women who juggle private caring with civic engagement in quality-of-life concerns, she proposes an alternative: a project of feminist ecological citizenship that affirms the practice of citizenship as an intrinsically valuable activity while allowing foundational aspects of caring labour and natural processes to flourish. Beyond Mothering Earth provides an original and empirically grounded understanding of women's involvement in quality-of-life activism and an analysis of citizenship that makes an important contribution to contemporary discussions of green politics, globalization, neoliberalism, and democratic justice.

Globalisation is about transnational politics. While nation-state governments increasingly struggle with this new politics, which moves beneath, between and beyond national borders, others entities like transnational corporations have flourished. But it is not just business which increasingly bypasses these traditional boundaries. Environmental groups are also moving though this transnational space, and their politics are defined by such qualities as fluidity, ambiguity and rapid changes in identity, mission and structure. In this book, the politics of environmental movements are presented as particularly salient examples of these new phenomena. Drawing on fieldwork from Europe, Asia, America, Africa and the Middle East, the contributors address a range of trans-national processes: efforts to construct common agendas transnationally; the diffusion of new repertoires of environmental protest; the role of environmental groups in the construction of new modes of environmental governance; how neo-liberalism affects local environmental activism; evidence of transnational influences and pressures on environmental politics in repressive regimes; and the dilemmas of defining questions of environmental justice and post-colonial environmental politics without suppressing the differences between environmentalism in different countries.

Revised to include new discussions on climate justice, green political parties, climate legislation and recent environmental struggles.

How environmentalism can reinvent itself in a postnature age: a proposal for navigating between naive naturalism and technological arrogance. Environmentalists have always worked to protect the wildness of nature but now must find a new direction. We have so tamed, colonized, and contaminated the natural world that safeguarding it from humans is no longer an option. Humanity's imprint is now everywhere and all efforts to “preserve” nature require extensive human intervention. At the same time, we are repeatedly told that there is no such thing as nature itself—only our own conceptions of it. One person's endangered species is another's dinner or source of income. In Living Through the End of Nature, Paul Wapner probes the meaning of environmentalism in a postnature age. Wapner argues that we can neither go back to a preindustrial Elysium nor forward to a technological utopia. He proposes a third way that takes seriously the breached boundary between humans and nature and charts a co-evolutionary path in which environmentalists exploit the tension between naturalism and mastery to build a more sustainable, ecologically vibrant, and socially just world. Beautifully written and thoughtfully argued, Living Through the End of Nature provides a powerful vision for environmentalism's future

Despite growing evidence of the universality of environmental problems and of economic and cultural globalization, the development of a truly global environmental movement is at best tentative. The dilemmas which confront environmental organizations are no less apparent at the global than at national levels. This volume is a collection of 1990s research on environmental movements in western and southern Europe, the US and the global arena.

A balanced presentation chronicling both the major events that sparked environmental activism and the nature of that activism in the past century. Beginning with an overview of activism in the past century from 1900 to 2001, Environmental Activism: A Reference Handbook puts organizations and their activities into historical context. This volume offers both an American perspective and a global perspective. It chronicles the major events that sparked environmental actions; aligns individuals with organizations, such as John Muir and the Sierra Club; and presents a balanced treatment of activities in both conservative and liberal political spheres. Separate chapters identify six eras of activism from 1900 to 2001 and include their characteristics, issues, strategies, and advocates. This is followed by summaries of the various types of organizations and their strategies, including direct action (ecoterrorism, monkey wrenching) as well as mainstream activity (lobbying, letter writing).