‘Green waves’ and globalization: A Nordic view on environmental justice

Abstract

This article argues that the dominating interpretations of Western environmentalism have broadly reached a uniform shape. Only recently has this unification met profound criticism. In many ways this critical turn is linked to the emergence of new socio-environmental and post-environmental approaches, which share their intellectual background with multicultural and post-colonial views in the academic world and beyond. However, the protagonists of this intellectual renewal have met difficulties in locating themselves in relation to the general contested reconfiguration of environmental challenges. Whereas several of the pioneers of environmentalism, such as George Perkins Marsh and Carl Ortwin Sauer, were famous for their multilingual skills, the young critical generation is largely satisfied with the rapid anglophonization of the ‘environmental order’. Paradoxically, the critical environmentalists inspired by multiculturalism therefore have appeared in their practical scholarship as key promoters of the harmonization of environmental thinking. This article traces some alternative Nordic formulations of environmentalism. Particular attention is paid to the historical emergence of environmental justice concerns – which are regarded here as the most promising critical trends to ‘democratize’ the unified constitution of Western environmentalism.