Setting up the three sides of the sustainability triangle: The American blue-green-brown alliances revisited

Abstract

The onset of economic globalization by the end of the 20th century foisted progressively new modes of collaboration on most of the American social movements. New Social Movements (NSMs) such as the environmental movement, the environmental justice movement, and the labour unions, were propelled into rapprochement that soon gave rise to new forms of coalition dubbed the blue-green/the blue-green-brown alliances. Revisiting this cross-movement reconciliation from a sustainability studies’ perspective, this paper contends that these alliances, oscillating between failure and success, helped theoretically set up the three sides of the ‘Sustainability Triangle,’ – an integrative framework premised on the ‘three Es,’ i.e., Environment/Ecology, Economy/Employment, and Equality/Equity. Utilizing a critical comparative analysis of these three movements, this paper also vets the extent to which this framework fosterages a shared ‘sustainability identity’ amongst these groups and bridges the ‘job-versus-the-environment’ divide that beleaguered their alliances and almost brought them to a grinding halt.