Australian Environment Movement Research Articles

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Iconic 21st Century Activist "T-Shirt and Tote-Bag" Combination Is Hard to Miss These Days!

Understanding the Outcomes of Climate Change Campaigns in the Australian Environmental Movement

Climate change is a global problem requiring a collective response. Grassroots advocacy has been an important element in propelling this collective response, often through the mechanism of campaigns. However, it is not clear whether the climate change campaigns organized by the environmental advocacy groups are successful in achieving their goals, nor the degree to which other benefits may accrue to groups who run them. To investigate this further, we report a case study of the Australian climate change advocacy sector. Three methods were used to gather data to inform this case study: content analysis of climate change organizations’ websites, analysis of website text relating to campaign outcomes, and interviews with climate change campaigners. Findings demonstrate that climate change advocacy is diverse and achieving substantial successes such as the development of climate change-related legislation and divestment commitments from a range of organizations. The data also highlights additional benefits of campaigning such as gaining access to political power and increasing groups’ financial and volunteer resources. The successful outcomes of campaigns were influenced by the ability of groups to sustain strong personal support networks, use skills and resources available across the wider environmental advocacy network, and form consensus around shared strategic values. Communicating the successes of climate change advocacy could help mobilize collective action to address climate change. As such, this case study of the Australian climate change movement is relevant for both academics focusing on social movements and collective action and advocacy-focused practitioners, philanthropists, and non-governmental organizations.

The Characteristics, Activities and Goals of Environmental Organizations Engaged in Advocacy Within the Australian Environmental Movement

ABSTRACT A sustained groundswell of grassroots advocacy is required to trigger the urgent action required to solve our many global environmental problems. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the characteristics, issue focus, tactics and targets of this grassroots advocacy, we analyzed the website communications of 497 environmental movement organizations (EMOs) undertaking advocacy in Australia. Findings indicate that Conservation and Protection issues continue to dominate, although a wave of new climate change-related issue groups have emerged in recent years. Almost half of all groups operate at a local level. EMO websites suggest that their actions are primarily normative (vs. radical), and focus primarily on information provision. Of the 960 campaign targets identified, just over half were political, however, climate change, renewable energy and sustainability campaigns more often targeted individuals or business entities. We identify the areas where further investigation could advance the research agenda on grassroots environmental advocacy.

Renegotiating nature in the Anthropocene: Australia’s environment movement in a time of crisis

ABSTRACTThe Anthropocene raises two interrelated problems for the Australian environment movement. The first concerns the movement’s normative and political relationship to non-human nature: climate change in particular is forcing an urgent reconsideration of how nature is to be understood and managed. The second problem concerns the implications of full recognition of the rights of First Peoples for environmental justice. These issues may lead to crises of identity, legitimacy, and effectiveness for the Australian movement. The normative bases upon which Australian environmentalists may draw in order to ‘protect nature’ in the Anthropocene are discussed. Setting aside the simple emancipatory ambition of preservationist environmentalism and the Australian movement’s earlier Romantic protectionism, a new pragmatic, pluralistic environmental politics – based on precaution, the avoidance of pain and suffering, and protection of the most vulnerable – is suggested.

Scales of Environmental Engagement in an Industrial Town: Glocal Perspectives from Gladstone, Queensland

ABSTRACTGladstone, Queensland, is one of Australia’s largest coal ports and the site of many industries. Few of the 65,000 residents of the region are socially and economically independent of the fossil fuel industry. Environmental engagement is fragmented. The city epitomises, in a striking way, the double bind of growth and sustainability. The Australian environmental movement is generally seen as distant and irrelevant to local concerns. The article analyses conditions for, forms of and implications of environmental engagement in a city where coal, gas and industry are taken for granted as necessary conditions for prosperity and economic security. To what extent are ecological relevant to the residents; and how can they be dealt with within the parameters that define their lifeworlds? What can the Gladstone experience teach us about possible solutions to the double bind of growth and sustainability?

Wilderness and the Media Politics of Place Branding

It is 30 years since the Australian environmental movement enlisted the term “wilderness” to protect Tasmania's remote Franklin River from hydroelectric development. Environmentalists deployed “wilderness” strategically during the conflict to build public support for their no-dam campaign, aided by national and international media who used the term liberally, while Tasmanian news media and pro-development elites acknowledged the term's inherent political qualities by suppressing its use. Our interest is in the political and media framing of “wilderness” since the concept was “branded” by government and industry at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on continuing environmental conflict over Tasmania's remote Tarkine region as a case study, we ask to what extent media portrayals of “wilderness” have changed since the Franklin dam was stopped and the Tasmanian World Heritage Wilderness Area was created in 1982. Using content analysis of related articles in the local media and qualitative analysis of international travel journalism about Tasmania published over an extended period, we find that place branding has contributed to the routinization of “wilderness” and to a shift in the focus of mediated conflict from “wilderness” to “tourism.” The Tasmanian experience demonstrates that while the actions of the environmental movement can valorize place, branding can depoliticize contested natural areas. Yet brands that incorporate or allude to “wilderness” may have the unanticipated consequence of valorizing “wilderness” transnationally, in a manner that the environmental movement would struggle to emulate.

Environmental Ngos, Elections and Community Organising

This paper examines current changes within the Australian environment movement to project where the movement might be trending in coming years. It references the movement’s past history to describe why it lost its way around the turn of the century. However, it paints a more positive picture of current trends, especially community organising, and co-operative relationships between groups. The renewal is sourced to (a) new climate change groups that have benefitted from US influence; and (b) the strength of domestic groups that cut across traditional political lines, such as the very successful Lock the Gate organisation.

Surviving the Gang Bang Theory of Nature: The Environment Movement during the Howard Years

This article investigates the Australian environment movement during the Howard years, 1996–2007. First, the author maps out key issues which emerged during this period of governance, and then focuses on outlining the strategic and tactical repertoire of the movement at this time. The author argues the case that the movement embraced a neoliberal ideology often expressed within the dominant discourses shared by the state and big business, as the movement sought to operate more and more on business principles. In addition, environmentalists pursued a neoconservative moral agenda, so typical of the Howard years, right across the policy-making realm. Finally, the article concludes with the argument that the Australian green movement, mistaking a neoliberal geo-economic agenda as postmodernity, reorganized itself in such a way as to deliver political wins to its traditional adversaries, fundamentally weakening its position within Australian society as an advocate of radical social change.

Who Owns Brisbane's Radical Past?

When a history of the Australian environment movement was published several years ago, the joke that went around the environment movement was that the first (and sometimes the only thing) purveyors of the book would read was the index to check whether their names were there. If some of the reports we have heard from around the bookshops of Brisbane are true, Radical Brisbane has received a similar response. We feel for Ray Evans and Carole Ferrier, the editors of Radical Brisbane, because everyone who has been around the activist scene in Brisbane over the last 40 years will want to see themselves, or at least their organisations, represented. Inevitably, given the limitations of such publications, many have been disappointed. The point of this review essay is not to critique the inclusions and omissions in order to assuage individual egos, but to further an understanding of the basis of radical politics and to interpret why Brisbane has been the seat of dissent as much as of development in this state.

Community Organizing by the Book: A Critical Appraisal of Midwest Academy Training As a Possible Model for the Australian Environment Movement

(2002). Community Organizing by the Book: A Critical Appraisal of Midwest Academy Training As a Possible Model for the Australian Environment Movement. Applied Environmental Education & Communication: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 115-122.

A History of the Australian Environment Movement

Introduction Part I. The First Wave: 1860s to World War II: 1. The professional base 2. Sane citizens and sanatarians Part II. The Second Wave Builds: World War II to 1972: 3. Old meets new Part III. The Campaigning Movement: 1973-83: 4. Taking to the streets 5. Taking to the bush Part IV. The Professional Movement: 1983-90: 6. Fighting for wilderness 7. Urban issues and pollution 8. Green politics Part V. The Green Momentum Falters: 1990-8: 9. Neo-liberalism and the green agenda Epilogue.

To Constitute a Nation. A Cultural History of Australia's Constitution. Helen Irving. A History of the Australian Environment movement. Drew Hutton and Libby Conners.

To Constitute a Nation. A Cultural History of Australia's Constitution. Helen Irving. A History of the Australian Environment movement. Drew Hutton and Libby Conners.

To Constitute a Nation. A Cultural History of Australia's Constitution. Helen Irving. A History of the Australian Environment movement. Drew Hutton and Libby Conners.

Received

A History of the Australian Environment Movement. By Drew Hutton and Libby Connors. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xi + 324pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $64.95, paper $24.95

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsA History of the Australian Environment Movement. By Drew Hutton and Libby Connors. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xi + 324pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $64.95, paper $24.95Tom BrookingTom Brooking Otago in Dunedin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 5, Number 2April 2000 Published for the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society Views: 1Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3985638 Views: 1Total views on this site © 2000 American Society for Environmental History and Forest History SocietyPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Briefly Noted: A History of the Australian Environment Movement

Briefly Noted: A History of the Australian Environment Movement

A history of the Australian environment movement

Introduction Part I. The First Wave: 1860s to World War II: 1. The professional base 2. Sane citizens and sanatarians Part II. The Second Wave Builds: World War II to 1972: 3. Old meets new Part III. The Campaigning Movement: 1973-83: 4. Taking to the streets 5. Taking to the bush Part IV. The Professional Movement: 1983-90: 6. Fighting for wilderness 7. Urban issues and pollution 8. Green politics Part V. The Green Momentum Falters: 1990-8: 9. Neo-liberalism and the green agenda Epilogue.

Founders of Environmental Education: narratives of the Australian environmental education movement

Summary The environmental education movement in Australia and elsewhere is nearly three decades old. The discourses which frame the movement, the ‘goals, objectives and guiding principles’ did not come out of the air; they were proposed by people who have become the founders’ of the movement. The influence of one of these founders is discussed and the statements which he proposed are analysed in terms of their roots in an environmentalism of a rational science variety and an instrumentalist view of education. Attention is also drawn to the colonial domination implicit in the founda‐tional discourses of the movement and the need to be aware of these and other contexts of their development over two decades ago is discussed. While it is important to celebrate the founders and foundations, that these foundational statements continue to be endorsed without modification is considered to be a serious impediment to the future development of the field.

A WHOLE NEW WORLD:

The impact of feminism on men has produced both backlash and attempts to reconstruct masculinity. The Australian environmental movement, strongly influenced by countercultural ideas, is a case in which feminist pressure has produced significant attempts at change among men. These are explored through life-history interviews founded on a practice-based theory of gender. Six life histories are traced through three dialectical moments: engagement with hegemonic masculinity; separation focused on an individualized remaking of the self, involving an attempt to undo oedipal masculinization; and a shift toward collective politics. This last and most important step remains tentative.