Environmental Movement Research Articles

How social movements use religious creativity to address environmental crises in Indonesian local communities

Religions play an important yet poorly understood part in how social movements motivate societies to respond to environmental crises and the rapidly changing climate. Indonesia sits on the global frontline of environmental crises, with a rich history of religious diversity and environmental activism. Using framework synthesis, we analyzed 244 empirical studies (English and Indonesian) on 208 environmental social movements operating in local communities in Indonesia from 1990 through 2022. We developed a conceptual model showing how grassroots movements used lived religion to create new environmental practices and motivate environmental behavioral changes in diverse local communities. Our study inventoried 571 examples of lived religious concepts, practices, rituals and systems that movements used to create environmental concepts and practices. We found three patterns in the creative process: 1) conceptual hybridization, meaning that movements often blended official religions, Indigenous religions, and local knowledges and traditions (often called cultural practices), and they fused these aspects of lived religion with economic, legal and scientific concepts; 2) contextual imagination, meaning that movements adopted multiple religious and other strategies to respond to local economic, environmental, political, and religio-cultural contexts; and, 3) contestation-driven improvisation, meaning that movements faced intense opposition, and this dynamic both motivated improvisation and increased the vulnerability of movements and of local communities adapting to rapid environmental change. We propose that future studies on adaptation and sustainable transitions could include lived eco-religion as a meeting point for critical partnerships between environmental scholars in the sciences and the humanities.

The interests, ideas, and institutions shaping public participation in local climate change governance in Ireland

ABSTRACT Public participation in local governance is crucial for effective climate action and for ensuring that policies are designed in a way that respects the rights of communities. Policy developments and choices are shaped by the groups that participate, by the ideas that they hold, and by the institutions that enable and constrain their participation. This paper seeks to understand local climate change governance in Ireland by identifying the environmental interests and the ideas of the groups that participate, and by examining how they engage with institutionalised local policymaking processes and with the organisations that represent the officially recognised views of the country’s national environmental movement. An analysis of survey data collected from the groups that are members of one of Ireland’s Public Participation Networks shows that a majority of groups are small, rural, voluntary, interested in a wide variety of environmental issues and have a pro-ecological worldview. Most groups follow a pro-institutional advocacy strategy at the local level, while only a minority interact with the national environmental movement, mostly limiting their engagement to the acquisition of information. This paper contributes to the literature that examines how interests, ideas, and institutions shape public participation in local climate politics.

Unyielding humanity from catastrophic ruins: new political society for social and environmental justice after Bhopal

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the ways in which a site of catastrophic ruins transpires as a new political society for critical social and environmental justice. Predicated on two and half months of fieldwork in Bhopal – consisting of 60 interviews with gas and water victims and activists, archival research, and observation of sites and events – the paper specifically explains how the Bhopal Movement, the longest-running social movement in post-colonial India, has become an exemplar of what I call ‘unyielding humanity,’ one that rejects conciliatory posturing and ad-hoc solutions, constraining states and corporations alike to meaningfully address the ongoing social and environmental mutilation of Bhopal. Underlining the agency, targets, means, objectives, and determinations of the subaltern people, the paper illustrates how this women-led movement poses triumphant challenges to dominant narratives by focusing on the politics of long-term, intergenerational suffering. Findings indicate that prolonged marginalization can give rise to distinct forms of politics, diverging not only from labor and identity politics but also from various environmental justice movements that have been theorized emphasizing primarily material, visible, and immediate consequences. The paper holds implications for social and environmental justice struggles worldwide.

Expressions of untruth, suppressions of truth. A 21st century reintroduction to “Simulation and Dissimulation”

In this article, we explore the paradoxical relationship between simulation and dissimulation. We draw on nine contributions to an eponymous virtual special issue of Futures to emphasise that overreliance on simulations or their confusion with research methods is associated with the risk of abetting academic or political dissimulation or immunization strategies that escape conventional forms of control or scrutiny. Next, we contend that simulations are mostly forms of knowledge engineering for purposes other than science, before concluding that experiences with simulations and simulation-based policies during the coronavirus crisis might have undermined the higher goals of environmental research, policies, and movements.

The Political Implications of Unequal Exchange: Towards a Common Agenda for Global Social Movements

ABSTRACT Unequal exchange in international trade lies at the crossroads of all the major contradictions of the current global capitalist system: class, spatial and ecological. Countering unequal exchange can offer the basis for a broad global social coalition demanding a new international economic and ecological order. It can unite the claims of social and ecological movements around a common agenda where global social justice meets global environmental justice. The objective conditions are provided by the common ground of concrete interests that binds together various political and social actors in the global South and North who are harmed by corporate neoliberal globalisation. Building the subjective conditions, however, requires overcoming theoretical reductionisms and political sectarianisms that contribute to the fragmentation of social struggles.

Protecting the Last Wild River in Europe from Hydropower Development in Albania: An Environmental Movement Strategy in a Flawed Democracy

In 2014, as anti-hydropower plant protests in Albania intensified, an initiative to protect rivers in the Balkans known as “Save the Blue Heart of Europe” launched the Vjosa River Campaign in Albania to save what is known as the “Last Wild River in Europe.” The Campaign’s main goals consisted of preventing the construction of hydropower plants and turning the Vjosa into Europe’s first “Wild River National Park,” a status that would severely limit future development. But, this Campaign would not be easy. Albania is a highly centralized, fragile democracy with a long history of political oppression and economic struggle whose top-down government is still generally inaccessible to public interest groups or influence. The country relies entirely on hydropower for its electricity production, leading to high uncertainties in energy security, especially in face of increasing periods of drought. The Campaign organizers and activists would have to strategize carefully and creatively to navigate the Albanian political landscape to reach its goals. What did they do? What worked or didn’t work along the way? Finally, would hydropower, considered a renewable energy source with low carbon emissions, enhance the country’s energy security? Or, would hydropower development on the Vjosa just not be worth it as a national and cultural treasure is destroyed alongside local livelihoods related to fisheries, agriculture, and tourism? Upon reading this case study, readers will learn about how environmental campaign organizers and activists mobilize in the face of the complexities of hydropower development in Albania, a struggling democracy.

How different types of environmentalists are perceived: changing perceptions by the feature.

Previous research found stereotypes of environmentalists as barriers to public engagement and identification with environmentalism. Yet, there is limited understanding of the distinct attributes of an environmentalist that influence public perceptions and self-identification. In our research, we address this knowledge gap by analyzing reactions to a range of fictional environmentalist profiles. We investigated how multiple features of these profiles (e.g., gender, occupation, type of pro-environmentalism) influenced stereotypes (such as competence, friendliness, and trustworthiness), perceived typicality, and participants' self-identification with the described profiles, using a novel conjoint experiment approach with 678 US residents. We found that profiles described as women, Asians, working as a cleaner or office clerk, and politically moderate or liberal, exhibiting private to moderate environmental behaviors and global environmental concerns, were generally perceived as more typical for environmentalists. Moreover, participants most identified with profiles depicted as women, in a cleaner occupation, and exhibiting private pro-environmental behaviors. Atypical profile descriptions, based on prior research, enhanced participants' impressions only when associated with private pro-environmental behaviors or the cleaner occupation. We introduce new avenues in impression formation research and the use of conjoint analyses in psychological research; moreover, we contribute valuable input to the environmental movement regarding message framing considering the source and content relative to the targeted audience.

Understanding Faith-Based Ecological Citizenship: A Case Study of Korea Soka Gakkai International (KSGI)

This paper tries to examine how ecological aspects of religiosity are associated with the ecological citizenship necessary for coping with a global ecological crisis. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the notion of ecological citizenship has been paid serious attention to by numerous scholars from different research fields. Here, we measure how religiosity can work on the sustainability of ecological citizenship, focusing on Korea Soka Gakkai International (KSGI) which has been actively engaged in the environmental–ecological movement since the 1980s. First, they show a distinct tendency to religiously reinterpret the COVID-19 pandemic, an understanding of the pandemic as an ecological issue, and worldly optimism that human efforts can prevent the current or upcoming ecological crisis. Second, KSGI members with a high level of ecological religiosity tend to support ecological citizenship, independent of secular ecologism such as ecological politicization or deep ecology. In conclusion, this study is the first empirical research exploring how people of faith belonging to a minority religious tradition such as KSGI develop their ecological religiosity into ecological citizenship, namely a faith-based ecological citizenship.

TRAINING OF FUTURE TEACHERS IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN THE USA

Resolving the problem of the global environmental crisis determines not only the modification of production technologies, but also changes in people's lives, their consciousness and attitude towards nature. Compliance of the values of a new culture, a person of a post-industrial society with global environmental laws requires targeted environmental preparation. Consequently, the leading role in this process belongs to the educational system. Valuable experience in environmental education has been accumulated in the USA. Its study and implementation of best practices in the Ukrainian educational sphere makes it possible to increase the level of environmental culture of future teachers. The purpose of the article is to study the experience of training of future teachers in environmental education in higher education institutions in the USA. Research methods: analysis of scientific literature, systematization (to clarify the key concepts of the study), study of educational programs (to determine their environmental content), comparison, generalization (to form the author's conclusions). The features of environmental training of future teachers in some US universities have been studied. Using the example of teacher training at the University of Portland, it was established that environmental education is implemented through the study of various disciplines («Introduction to environmental education», «Factors of environmental education», «Methods of studying ecology»), as well as extracurricular work (participation in the environmental movement, work of the student ecological association). The activities of the Center for Natural Education and the interfaculty association «Environmental Science and Natural Resources Management», which operate at the university and provide environmental training to students, have been studied. The areas of environmentalization of the training of future teachers, which can be implemented in Ukrainian higher education institutions, have been identified: the formation of a system of continuous ecological training of teachers in higher education; creation of special structures (centres, associations) of environmental orientation in universities, the functions of which are the development of interdisciplinary educational programs of environmental content for future teachers of various specialties, preparation of educational and methodological materials for environmental courses, conducting environmental events.

How to move from conflict to opportunity in the not-in-my-backyard dilemma: A case study of the Asuwei waste incineration plant in Beijing

Environmental Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) conflicts pose significant challenges to environmental sustainability and governance capacity, particularly in transition economies like China. However, existing literature has largely overlooked the potential for transforming environmental NIMBY conflicts into opportunities, leaving a gap in our comprehension of the underlying mechanisms facilitating such transformations. Building upon the traditional conflict transformation theory, we develop a theoretical framework of Environmental NIMBY Conflict Transformation (ENCT) specifically tailored to environmental NIMBY conflicts. To validate and enrich ENCT empirically, we employ the theory-testing process tracing approach, utilizing the case study of the Asuwei waste incineration plant as a representative case of the successful transformation of an environmental NIMBY conflict. Our findings reveal that intricate environmental NIMBY conflicts are not inherently destructive, but rather, when approached with suitable strategies, they possess the potential to be transformed into opportunities. Furthermore, environmental NIMBY conflicts can undergo transformation through the underlying mechanisms of five main categories: actor transformation, structure transformation, mode transformation, issue transformation, and situation transformation. In addition, we further link the relationship between conflict and opportunity from ten subcategories. These insights are expected to encourage environmental regulators to adopt conflict-shifted perspectives when dealing with potential environmental justice movements, thereby improving the effectiveness of environmental governance.

Analysis of Consumer Awareness’ Values and Attitudes towards Green Purchase Behavior: Study on Millennial and Generation Z

Environmental problems made the Indonesian people aware of green buying behavior. Various environmental movements spread throughout Indonesia, and people's attitudes and behavior toward being environmentally friendly changed. However, research indicates that there is still a gap between environmental knowledge and behavior. This study aims to explain how consumer environmental awareness influences green buying behavior, boosted by green product quality collected by distributing questionnaires to 388 Millennial and Generation Z respondents in West Java. The results show that consumer environmental awareness positively influences green buying behavior with the support of attitude toward environmental problems bolstered by the quality of the green product. However, environmental awareness does not succeed in influencing green buying behavior if it is through an attitude toward eco-social advantages. Then, information on a green product does not directly affect green buying behavior but is successful if there is a booster from the quality of the green products.

Protect Endangered Earth

This collage represents the foundational goal of environmental movements: we must protect Earth and all its endangered species.

An Exotic Tree in a Foreign Country: A Cultural Biography of the Lodgepole Pine in Sweden

The movement of plants, animals, and microorganisms by humans, consciously or unconsciously, has changed both ecosystems and societies throughout history. This article focuses on one such transformative species, lodgepole pine, and its relocation from northwestern America to northern Sweden in the mid-twentieth century. A cultural biography of the lodgepole pine’s existence in Sweden examines how this tree has been linked to different value regimes, which creates a historical pattern. Through so-called ‘thinning processes’, powerful actors, in both production forestry and the environmental movement, have tried to reduce the importance of the species to a limited meaning and context. At the same time, more arguments, knowledge and changed contexts have made the lodgepole pine a ‘thick thing’, with superimposed values and meanings. Although the tree has moved far geographically, from one continent to another, its importance has continued to be framed by interacting international, national and local perspectives. The lodgepole pine, however, is not just an inert thing that is determined by cultural discourses. It is a living tree, with its own ability to act and whose life in a foreign land has created a dynamic that crosses the border between nature and culture.

A Comprehensive Report on Environmental Sustainability: A Global Perspective

In the last three decades, protecting the earth's environment has become a major challenge in international relations. Hundreds of regional and bilateral agreements, as well as at least ten global environmental agreements, were negotiated. Environmentalism can be seen as a social movement that seeks to influence jobs and education to conserve natural resources and ecosystems. Concerns for environmental protection have emerged in various forms in various parts of the world throughout history. The environmental movement is a diverse scientific, social and political movement. The movement is committed to ecology, health and human rights while accepting people as workers in the ecosystem. Today, it is generally accepted that environmental protection is a part of national policies and plans. The accepted standard to achieve this reduction target is "sustainable development". In fact, all existing laws and policies on environmental protection and human development, at the national or international level, aim at achieving "sustainable development". Despite the great environmental protection that humans have used in the past three decades, global warming has not reduced the occurrence of anomalous atmospheric phenomena due to scientific knowledge and available technology. Although many environmental policies and action plans have been negotiated over the past three decades, significant gaps remain in international environmental policy law. The framework has not yet become a method or method. Rather, each is a collection of commitments related to a democratic international or regional environmental issue. Nature has become negative by affecting the climate on the one hand and the health and safety of all living and non-living beings on the other. The ecosystem resonates with abnormal noise, vibration, dust and smoke from human activities. These events remind people that the environment must be protected with all enthusiasm and energy no matter what. Given the progress we have made in destroying the earth's environment, future global environmental efforts will focus more on environmental restoration than conservation. Human rights will also provide important opportunities for better protection of the environment.

Culture workers against big oil: the importance of labor education in fighting the climate crisis

This article argues for the importance of labor education in fighting the climate crisis, a vital form of education too often overlooked in the climate movement. Drawing on a case study of unionized culture workers in the United Kingdom, the article seeks to show the distinctive embedded nature of labor education. Success of labor education on the climate crisis hinges not so much on a particular pedagogy or curriculum in any one classroom setting, but on the ways in which a range of formal and informal educational actors and spaces work together across the labor and environmental movements, as part of a mobilizing project that seeks to link worker interests directly to the climate crisis, and identify actions that workers can take to address the crisis effectively. Labor education has a central role to play in ensuring a just transition in the move away from a fossil fuel based economy.

The Environmentalism of the Far-Right Pagans

Far-Right Pagans, like most other contemporary Pagans, view their spirituality as earth-based. They are concerned about the environment, however that concern is integrated with their politics of White Supremacy. Based on my research of their online discourse, I find that they use four major themes to frame the environmental crisis: (1) The embrace of human beings as part of the natural world and not above it. (2) The acceptance of natural laws as the basis of ethical behavior. (3) A focus on purity and (4) A view that immigration and more generally human population needs to be limited to protect the environment. All of these to a greater or less degree can be found as aspects of the larger environmental movement. They, however, take a particular twist within the extremist logic and agenda of the far-right that is used to justify their radical solutions.

Climate change: Overview of risks to pregnant persons and their offspring

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges confronting humanity. Pregnant persons, their unborn children, and offspring are particularly vulnerable, as evidenced by adverse perinatal outcomes and increased rates of childhood illnesses. Environmental inequities compound the problem of maternal health inequities, and have given rise to the environmental justice movement. The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics and other major medical societies have worked to heighten awareness and address the deleterious health effects of climate change and toxic environmental exposures. As part of routine prenatal, neonatal, and pediatric care, neonatal-perinatal care providers should incorporate discussions with their patients and families on potential harms and also identify actions to mitigate climate change effects on their health. This article provides clinicians with an overview of how climate change affects their patients, practical guidance in caring for them, and a frame setting of the articles to follow. Clinicians have a critical role to play, and the time to act is now.

Contesting in the policy sphere: stakeholders and policy formulation on the lower Subansiri dam in the Northeast

ABSTRACT We advance a framework for analysis of democratic contestation in the policy and media spheres, in the context of the interest group theory and the stages of public policy evolution, to assess whether the contestation process favors some stakeholders over others in India, with a model that predicts pro- or anti-dam policy discourses in the news. There is evidence from participation in environmental movements, especially in the case of anti-dam protest groups, in the policy sphere that play a role in the contestation of scientific knowledge. Our core concern is to understand whether representation of the voices of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and protest groups in the news media affects public policy on controversial mega-projects such as the building of a mega-dam. Our focus is on the timely and critically important case of the Lower Subansiri Hydro Electric Project (LSHEP), a mega-dam on the border of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, the highest earthquake zoned states through which runs the mighty Brahmaputra river. The mega-dam construction was suspended after widespread protests led by social and environmental activists in 2010–11. However, the construction resumed after the election of the BJP-led national government in 2014 and in the state of Assam in 2016. The revival precipitated a new phase of democratic contestation in the policy sphere in 2015–17 which is modeled here, based on content analysis of news reporting. We find that in the policy sphere, the voices of anti-dam activists did not succeed in fostering an anti-dam frame in the news media in the form of news stories opposing the dam.

Climate impact, institutional context, and national climate change adaptation IP protection rates

We study how the physical effects of climate change motivate entrepreneurs to develop and protect climate change adaptation (CCA) intellectual property (IP) in heterogeneous ways across countries. Integrating the sustainable entrepreneurship literature with the attention-based view, we show that country-level climate impact redirects managerial attention to the disruptive potential of climate change and spurs the sector into action to pursue and protect CCA-related IP. We also find that strong intellectual-property rights regulations and environmental movements in countries strengthen this effect. Our results extend the sustainable entrepreneurship literature by showing how the geography of climate impact explains how CCA IP protection efforts are distributed globally. Executive summaryWhy do entrepreneurs in some countries engage in more climate change adaptation (CCA) intellectual property (IP) protection than others? We postulate that entrepreneurs' attention is simultaneously situated in their country's climatic and institutional environments, and that these contexts shape the salience of CCA IP protection. Formally, we predict that entrepreneurs who would normally deprioritize CCA IP protection as an opportunity in the face of more urgent socioeconomic issues become more attuned to it as their country's climate impact increases. We then theorize institutional conditions that influence entrepreneurs' responsiveness to climate impact. First, we predict that stronger intellectual property rights institutions reduce entrepreneurs' uncertainty in capturing rents from their CCA IP and hence strengthen the relationship between climate impact and CCA IP protection. Second, we predict that informal institutions aligned with environmental movements increase the salience of climate impacts to corporate entrepreneurs by spurring their interests in environmental issues and hence also strengthen the climate impact-CCA IP protection relationship. Our empirical analyses using 689 country-year observations consisting of 95 countries over the period 2005 to 2015 reveal that country-level climate impact drives CCA IP protection, especially when there are strong intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes and environmental movements.

Female activists in environmental movements on Instagram: An ecofeminism perspective in the Indonesian context

Social media has become an essential instrument for activists and organizations to campaign and share their activism in the digital sphere. In Indonesia, while discussing digital activism, many activists also utilize social media to create, interact, and expand their networks. Numerous studies have analyzed the importance of environmental groups and activists in combating the climate issue; however, relatively few have examined how female activists depict and debate environmental activism on social media from an ecofeminist viewpoint, particularly on Instagram. Considering the contributions of female activists may provide broader and more critical viewpoints that link environmental challenges with other topics. Therefore, the growth of online networks and social media platforms may lead to a rise in the number of female activists who are able to voice their opinions and campaign on environmental concerns, particularly in the Indonesian setting.