‘Nae fur the likes of us’: Poverty, Agenda 21 and Scotland's Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations

Abstract

Two women sat holding a group transfixed in Edinburgh University's Centre for Human Ecology. Somehow they had found their way into the ivory tower, recounting tales of what to many of the assembled was a far-flung and alien culture. Tricia McConnalogue was given poverty as a birth-rite. Her Gorbals childhood passed briefly. Her life story was one of survival. It blurred for those of us present the distinction between people's search for social justice and our own work to understand more fully the environmental crisis facing humanity.