Environmental Movement Research Articles

Petroleum Industries and Its Impact of Petroleum Extraction on the Environment

The petroleum sector has prioritized reducing the environmental effect of its activities in response to the growing environmental conservation movement. Personnel in the sector need to be properly educated and trained in order to safeguard the environment. The environmental effects of petroleum operations and strategies to reduce them are the subject of a wealth of valuable information. However, this information is dispersed throughout thousands of books, reports, and papers, making it challenging for industry personnel to find specific details on mitigating the environmental effects of specific operations. The breadth and complexity of environmental concerns confronting the petroleum sector can be daunting for many engineers. While a large number of outstanding papers have been given on particular environmental topics, there is still a need for overview papers that set the stage for those more in-depth investigations. This review article examines the main upstream petroleum industry waste sources, the effects those wastes have on the environment, waste management, treatment, and disposal strategies, and contaminated site cleaning techniques.

Economic policy of environmental protection facing modern challenges

Issues of environmental protection in the 21st century are becoming more and more crucial for leading countries and, therefore, for the whole world. This has led to growing the effects of global warming and the lack of certain resources, the reduction of which can cause incredible damage to the world economy. The reaction to the degradation of nature in the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain, and other economically developed countries was manifested by the creation of a legal system in the field of environmental protection. The public ecological movement was and is considered to be an essential impetus for the development of legislation in the field of environmental protection in the mentioned countries. Laws adopted in the field of environmental protection are mostly a reaction to an acute ecological problem. Environmental protection issues differ between countries. It is known that developed countries regulate environmental pollution, the processing of chemical waste, and the use of chemical materials at work with special legislative acts. Some developing countries do not have these laws, which allow multinational companies to pollute at higher levels than would be allowed in their own countries. Countries are trying to reach a consensus on many environmental issues, reduce emissions, and find new ways of production that will not cause damage to the environment. Keywords: Environmental protection, Economic policy, Environment pollution, Paris Green Agreement, National environmental programs, EU Climate and Energy Plan

‘Consequences of this Climate’: Disabling Environmental Effects in Beckett's Late Work

This article analyses the change in the representation of disability in Beckett's work from medical impairments in the 1940s and 1950s to bodies that are limited by environmental conditions from the 1960s onwards. I suggest the term ‘disability effects’ to describe the condition of characters who are limited or harmed by the harsh environments of Beckett's imagination. A ‘disability effect’ arises from the interaction between a harmful environment and a human body through conditions such as confinement, toxic atmosphere, or extreme heat. While the social model of disability is useful for reading disability in the earlier works, it does not adequately account for the environmental pressures that lead to disability effects. Instead, the ecological–enactive model developed by Toro et al. provides a better framework that allows for a variety of subjective responses to the restrictions imposed by the Beckett's narrative ecologies. The representation of disability in Beckett's later work thus places at the centre of attention harmed bodies that are marginalised in too many discourses around the Anthropocene or held up as a warning sign for the terrible consequences of inaction, and can be read as a critique of ableist attitudes, which are also common in environmental movements. As climate change has become a present reality rather than a future danger to be averted, a rapidly changing environment is generating a range of disability and disability effects affecting whole populations and amplifying the shortcomings of the ableist social model that views disability as an exception that must be accommodated by an abled society. Beckett's work can help us come to terms with the continuity of adverse conditions, while leaving a space for the variability of personal adaptations.

The Digital Strategies and Efficacy of Environmental Movements in Hong Kong

Does the adoption of digital media platforms affect the success of environmental movements? We address this question by using a representative sample of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) from Hong Kong and examining the linkages between their digital media adoption and reach and their level of success. Guided by the agenda setting theory, we test whether the digital strategies are related to the shifts in the media and government agenda from 2007–2018. Our findings show that the adoption of digital media contributes to ENGOs’ own media visibility and specific issue salience in the news media agenda, and that the extent of digital reach of ENGOs is also associated with ENGOs’ visibility in the news media. Furthermore, although we find no direct relationships between the digital adoption and the government agenda, we argue that the legislative processes on biodiversity and green energy issues in Hong Kong suggest a pattern of mutually reinforcing interactions between the media agenda and the policy agenda. It is therefore likely that digital strategies contribute to policy changes indirectly, that is, by increasing issue salience in the local news media.

The European Parliament and Fridays for Future: analysing reactions to a new environmental movement by Europe’s climate policy champion

ABSTRACT The Fridays for Future movement has shaped public debates on climate policy all over Europe and beyond in recent years. It demands politicians to take action and fulfil the promises of the Paris Agreement. This article turns to the European Union and asks how the European Parliament met this movement. In doing so, we reflect potential tensions between its reputation as an environmental policy champion and the most direct link to the European demos on the one side and its composition of various political groups on the other side. Indeed, our analysis shows most political groups in the Parliament, even conservatives and liberals, support the movement. This is somewhat surprising given their general stances on environmental and climate policy. To explain the broad support given to Fridays for Future, we turn to the inner-parliamentary dynamics and the overall status of the Parliament in the supranational political system.

Re-thinking energy justice to achieve a fair distribution of shared electricity from rooftop photovoltaics in a typical multi-apartment building in Germany: an interdisciplinary approach

An important development in decarbonising energy consumption is the installation of shared rooftop photovoltaics on multiapartment buildings. It is widely agreed that the distribution of this relatively cheap electricity should be “fair” to all the users, and simultaneously maximise local use, to reduce global CO2 emissions and local electricity grid load. Most technical studies model or investigate distribution patterns on this basis, but without critical reflection on the energy justice issues that arise in sharing a common electricity source. This study brings together two distinct disciplines to move this discussion forward: technical issues in distributing shared photovoltaic output; and philosophical issues of energy justice. It sets this within Bhaskar's philosophy of interdisciplinary science which shows why narrow, highly specialist disciplines are necessary and why their findings must be brought together to inform us about the actual world we live in. On the technical side, the study models an apparently fair distribution pattern for a shared photovoltaic system in a case study multiapartment building in Germany. It then interrogates the outcome in terms of four different strands of energy justice philosophy: Rawlsian, Wittgensteinian, pragmatic, and “theological” (stemming from the environmental justice movement). It finds that Rawlsian concepts provide a basis for a just sharing pattern but with serious anomalies, while Wittgensteinian, pragmatic, and theological energy justice concepts provide avenues for these anomalies to be mitigated. This comprehensive cluster of energy justice approaches is therefore very useful alongside technical expertise, in the ongoing development of shared rooftop photovoltaics in multiapartment buildings.

Prefiguring the Environmental Justice Movement: the Ecodramaturgy of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1958) exposed environmental racism and prefigured the tenants of environmental justice by depicting the impacts of poverty and environmental degradation on communities of color. Thirty years before the rise of the current environmental justice movement, Hansberry’s play details the intersectional aims of environmental justice by centering women's experience, by making connections between the health and well-being of women and children, and the larger environment. In this way, an ecodramaturical lens illuminates the power and potential of theatre to inspire civic action. Hansberry’s play stands as a keystone in the rhetorical architecture of the environmental justice movement, which insists that environmental policy must include consideration of where people live, work, play, and worship.  As a historiographic lens, ecodramaturgy can (re)illuminate canonical plays to show their ecological through-lines. Examining the representation of life experience, asking questions about the welfare of bodies, families, and communities affected by racism and economic injustice, ecodramaturgy illuminates canonical plays in new ways, revealing how ideologies of domination and white supremacy that have caused both social and ecological havoc across the land. Rob Nixon (2013) identifies the environmental degradation resulting from longstanding patterns of U.S. imperialism as “slow violence” perpetrated on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities. As the environmental justice movement would argue some 30 years later, Hansberry’s play makes clear that environmental health and social justice are inextricably linked, and that ecological concerns must be understood as intertwined with economic justice as well as gender and racial equity. Below, I examine the way environmental and social justice concerns came together in this hallmark play, revealing a (then) radical ecological viewpoint that the environment is coupled with human health and welfare. I contend that the white supremacy that the Youngers face when they plan to move to a new home not only constitutes systemic environmental racism but reflects and arises out of the historic abuse of land and bodies on which the U.S.extractive economies depend. My analysis traces the subtle ways those legacies infect and damage the day-to-day lives of those who carry the disproportional burdens of that historic abuse. I foreground clues to the ecologies represented on stage, including human bodies and habitat, in order to examine the environmental implications of the Youngers’ struggle and racial and class-based oppression and hierarchies the play represents. Hansberry’s claim to homeplace in the milieu 1950s foreshadows the principles of environmental justice in prescient ways.

Reforms and coalition building around the reindeer pastoralism of the Indigenous Sámi people in Sweden, 2012–2022

In Sweden, Indigenous Sámi reindeer pastoralists must find effective ways to improve ecological conditions conducive to natural pasture-based reindeer pastoralism in a rapidly changing environment. In particular, they must challenge the conventional climate policy agenda of the dominant economic and political actors. This paper seeks to contribute to the emergence of a social movement that can push for reforms towards such improvements. Theoretically, we combine a theory of hegemony and counter-hegemonic politics, and the contentious politics approach to social movement theory, to discuss how meaningful reforms could be achieved by assembling a broad social coalition. Empirically, we examine 10 years of data from a public media outlet that reports on Sámi issues to show what demands are being made, who is making them, and the reforms and changes in social relations that they imply. The analysis identifies current coalitions and demand clusters. We discuss potential opportunities for a new reform agenda and actor constellations, with a focus on rural and Indigenous cultures and livelihoods, in relation to a broader environmental movement.

Penggunaan Biopot dan Media Tanam dalam Gerakan Go Green: Perspektif Seminar Eco-Harmony

This research investigates the impact of the Eco Harmony Seminar: Exploring the Potential of Bioporeen, Biopot, and Growing Media on participants' knowledge of the Go Green movement and environmentally friendly practices. Utilizing a one-group pretest-posttest experimental design, the study involved 39 high school students from SMA Negeri 8 Kota Serang. The data analysis revealed a significant improvement in participants' understanding after the seminar, despite the data not meeting the normality assumption. Participants acknowledged the importance of using Go Green-based biopot and growing media, although implementation challenges such as the availability of supplementary materials were noted. In conclusion, the Eco Harmony Seminar not only enhanced participants' knowledge but also motivated them to support environmentally friendly practices. This study highlights the urgency of education and training in advancing the environmental movement and creating higher environmental awareness among the public.

"Penang Rejects Reclamation": Pre-capitalist worldviews and post-development ideals within a Malaysian environmental movement

Malaysia's indigenous and rural communities have played a vital role in the growth of the country's environmental movement. Yet, the ways in which their cultures and ancestral attachments to territory come to underpin their activism has remained understudied. This article focuses on the current dispute between state authorities in Penang Island, keen on reclaiming land for industrial development, and "Penang Tolak Tambak", a movement composed of traditional fisherfolk and environmental activists who aim at preserving the coastal ecosystem. Employing Arturo Escobar's "ecology of difference" and Erik Olin Wright's "anti-capitalist strategies" as theoretical framework, this article uncovers multiple ways in which fisherfolk's identity became a salient part of their environmental struggle. Most importantly, the spiritual principle of fardhu kifayah, by which ecosystem preservation becomes a divinely-ordained responsibility towards one another, comes to directly clash with neoliberal-capitalist development as pursued by the state. While the study illustrates how Malaysian rural communities preserve pre-capitalist human-nature relations, it also shows how fisherfolk face serious material constraints in promoting their lifestyle, their mobilization being thus limited to strategies of resistance. The conclusion encourages further research on "ecologies of difference" and how these can not only be defended but also promoted as broader, systemic alternatives.

Jewish Environmentalism in the United States: Achievements, Characteristics, and Challenges

Abstract Concern for the environment is recognizably present in contemporary Judaism, especially in the United States. Along with practitioners of other world religions, Jews have responded to the eco-crisis by reinterpreting canonic texts, articulating eco-theologies, and reenvisioning traditional Jewish rituals. Today there are Jewish environmental organizations and Jewish thinkers who inspire Jews to appreciate the agricultural roots of Judaism, cultivate an environmentally concerned lifestyle, green the practices of Jewish institutions, and advocate the ethics of creation care. Together these activities constitute a Jewish environmental sensibility that allows us to generalize about “Jewish environmentalism,” although it falls short of constituting a cohesive “environmental movement.” Focusing exclusively on Jewish environmentalism in the U.S., this essay features the academic discourse on Judaism and ecology, the official resolutions of Jewish denominations about environmental matters, and the main activities of Jewish environmental organizations. Judaism is a highly variegated religious tradition that speaks in many voices. Nonetheless, there are shared canonic texts, foundational beliefs, ethical values, and literary tropes that characterize a distinctive Judaic perspective. From that vantage point, development of the physical world is religiously permissible, but it must cohere with the ethical values and legal principles of Judaism. It is not surprising, therefore, that socially progressive Jewish environmentalists have been vocal critics of the extraction industries, transnational capitalism, and wasteful consumerism that have greatly contributed to the eco-crisis. Highlighting the biblical commandment to pursue justice (tzedek), some Jewish environmentalists have applied social justice to ecological matters and promoted the ideal of tikkun olam (“repair of the world”). The essay surveys the achievements of Jewish environmentalism and notes persistent challenges.

Assessing environmental awareness activism to river decay and recurring pollution using parallel multiple mediator model

ABSTRACT The decay of rivers coupled with its escalated pollution is a concern worldwide. The present study intends to assess the agony of the riverine people due to the contamination of the Churni River and the transformation of their grievance into environmental activism at individual and community levels for rejuvenating the river and for a secured livelihood. The study observed an enriched concentration of biological oxygen demand, nitrate, and phosphate and a reduced concentration of dissolved oxygen during 2011–2020 due to the release of untreated industrial wastewater, sewage from urban areas, and agricultural runoff into the river. A systematic investigation reveals pollution-induced socio-psychological trauma and community awareness leading to the active involvement of the people in the environmental awareness movement, which was mediated by self-efficacy, self-responsibility, self-identity, and community value. A parallel multiple mediator model was employed, which included 29 parameters for exploring the key-mediated factors for the environmental movement. The model-based results identified that self-responsibility and community-value for upper stretch villages and self-efficacy and community-value for the lower stretch villages are significant mediators of environmental activism. A canonical component analysis predicted socio-demographic factors (e.g. age, dependency ratio female-male ratio, etc.) as intrinsically linked to environmental activism. This study is significant because it reveals how pollution and river degradation affect riverine people. It also clarifies how local grievances turned into environmental activism as a result of the documented socio-psychological trauma and growing community awareness. This study would thus play a pivotal role in understanding the human-nature complex to better planning and river restoration.

What is Mother Earth?

A rich appreciation of Mother Earth—in the entwined contexts of Native American, Australian Aboriginal, Western intellectual, and contemporary ecological movements—is accomplished in this paper using new perspectives and strategies: Mother Earth as name, meme, and conspiracy. This approach is developed and illustrated to offer insight into the dynamics of identity formation of individual cultures, amalgams of cultures, academic approaches, and ecological movements that span the globe, always occurring in the context of threatening, yet creative, encounters. Projecting beyond the Mother Earth example, the paper proposes a vision of the academic study of cultures and religions that focuses on gesture and repetition demonstrating that conditions of coherence, in the presence of the constant threat of incoherence, may be more valuable than discerning meaning.

Seeking ‘to cease existing as we are’: dynamic strategies of environmental activism in Russia

How and why do civil society actors change their modes of activism and strategies under the condition of shrinking civil society space in authoritarian states? Previous studies have tended to juxtapose participatory activism, associated with broader mobilisation, and transactional activism, based on coalition building and professionalised civil society organisations. Using the illustrative example of the environmental social movement organisation RazDel’niy Sbor (‘Separate Collection’) in Saint Petersburg, we demonstrate how the strategic repertoire of civil society organisations changes from participatory to transactional activism over time. The study takes a dynamic outlook on strategies and explores how transactional activism and professionalisation are built on the previous successful participatory phase. Furthermore, the study expands our understanding of the participatory mode of activism that is interpreted in an innovative and safe way to avoid repression in the authoritarian political context of modern Russia.

A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Silent Spring from the Discourse-Historical Perspective

Silent Spring, an ecological work written by Rachel Carson, symbolizes the inception of the modern environmentalist movement since it reveals the astonishing and catastrophic consequences brought by the abuse of insecticides without beautification. The work struck the whole world and brought environmental protection to attention through its powerful arguments and rigorous logic. As a problem-oriented approach, the discourse-historical approach (DHA) examines a discourse from three aspects, namely context, discourse and text. This study integrates quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the linguistic features of Silent Spring within the theoretical framework of DHA. It is found that the work centers around the abuse of insecticides and utilizes the nomination strategy and predicate strategy to present a negative image of human beings. In doing so, the writer opposes anthropocentrism and constructs her ecological holism thoughts in this work.

Religiosity and climate change: An eco-religious approach

Abstract An eco-religious approach is one that combines religious beliefs with ecological awareness, thus giving rise to responsibility for the natural environment, such as the threat of a climate crisis due to climate change, as part of the understanding of religion itself. This approach is not universally accepted because views on climate change, and the role of humans in addressing it, can vary among different religions and religious traditions. This research explores the relationship between religiosity and climate change, with a focus on the concept of an eco-religious approach. The aim was to understand how religiosity can influence climate change using the ecological footprint as a proxy. The cross-country robust regression analysis method was employed to address this objective. Robustness and sensitivity model checks were also performed, resulting in reliable regression analysis that can be generalized to various situations. The results of the study suggest that increased religiosity is associated with a decrease in per person ecological footprint. This research suggests a transformation of religious values towards a more inclusive eco-religious perspective, encompassing bio-centric and eco-centric ethics, and not just anthropocentric views. Collaboration between religious and non-religious communities is key in addressing climate change. Religious institutions are also identified as essential agents in mobilizing environmental movements, participating in international forums, and incorporating climate change issues into educational curricula. This research supports the potential of religiosity as a positive catalyst in global efforts to preserve environmental sustainability and address the holistic challenges of climate change.

Modernity, violence and ‘environmentalism of the poor’: the visuality of inauspicious in Orijit Sen’s River of Stories

ABSTRACT Modern and material development in the name of progress has always hindered and displaced a few specific communities like tribal, Adivasis, or indigenous people in India. In a developing country like India, most modern projects are implemented following the Nehruvian model of development, often criticised as ‘flawed.’ Once constructed, while much fuss and hype are made about such ‘Modern’ projects, the sufferings and plight of the surrounding local communities are often neglected, and their voice remains unheard. Analysing Orijit Sen’s graphic narrative River of Stories (1994, 2022), this article focuses on the ‘visuality of inauspicious’ in the form of constructing the Sardar Sarovar Dam in the country. The Dam displaced several Adivasis, and their society also ‘dislodged from its ideal state’ (Sen 2018, 110) and caused environmental degradation in the surrounding areas. This article underscores how the usurping of the villager’s land in the name of modernity, development, and national progress evokes the process of colonisation and its associated violence. The article also explores the environmental movement in the form of ‘Environmentalism of the Poor’ that rose against this project, and while analysing the movement, I discuss in detail how the villagers adopted an eco-conscious and Gandhian non-violent approach.

A Historical Perspective Review of the Environmental Pollution

Pollution of the surroundings has remained an enduring obstacle throughout human history, significantly influencing the dynamic between civilization and the natural environment. Thoroughly examining the development of the phenomenon, culminated in the industrial revolution and the subsequent escalation of pollution levels, followed early concerns and awareness of environmental pollution. Through an examination of significant environmental movements, legislative turning points, technological progress, and worldwide influences, our objective is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the profound consequences that pollution has on both ecosystems and society at large. By adopting this historical perspective, we will additionally investigate prospective trajectories and potential resolutions to the complex and urgent matter of environmental pollution.

CyberGaia: Earth as cyborg

Since the days of the transcendentalists, most environmental philosophers have assumed a dividing line between human-made technology and nature. In the context of our current technological world and the contemporary environmental movement, this way of thinking is perhaps more pervasive than ever. But from a cybernetic perspective, nature and technology together represent an inextricably connected network of signals and feedback, continuously developing as an organic whole. Drawing from cultural histories of the interconnectedness of life and of the cyborg concept, I propose CyberGaia as a metaphor to describe our biosphere in a fashion which acknowledges human technology as an integral part of nature. In this framework, humanity and technology represent an inseparable constituent of a larger interconnected system. Though CyberGaia does not distinguish nature and technology at a fundamental level, it recognizes that the technological world influences nature’s development by acting on the network within which it is embedded. By emphasizing the sublime beauty of nature’s interconnectedness, CyberGaia also preserves the spiritual-emotional connection to Earth which has heavily contributed to driving the environmental movement. CyberGaia merges physics and inspiration, encouraging us to create sustainable closed-loop technological systems that enable a flourishing biosphere. I argue that seeing the world as an interconnected cybernetic network may help us to better understand the biosphere in its totality while motivating us to take actions which help protect and preserve CyberGaia’s diverse menagerie of human and nonhuman life.

Skills for the edge of extinction

Move into Life with Sandra Reeve, based in West Dorset, UK is a foundation programme in embodiment and teaches the art of being in movement. Addressing the relevance of performance training at the edge of extinction, this article points to how two Move into Life modules cultivate contextuality and complexity both in how they are structured and through the somatic skills they propose: adaptation, attunement, calibration, flexibility, sharing and dialogue. It shows how individual and collective approaches can co-exist and can support us to begin to shift perception in an age of climate and ecological emergency as well as to challenge personal and cultural furrows by working on the edge of the unknown. Four movement dynamics within ecological movement prioritise awareness of movement as one of the registers that we share with the animate world. Moving on from a preoccupation with elaborating our human experience of the world through five senses, these dynamics (active/passive, transition/position, proportion and point/line/angle) enable us to experience ourselves in movement reciprocity, as moving creatures in a moving world. Working with the ecological lenses of niche, pattern and emergence, these dynamics cultivate a sense of ‘being among’ rather than ‘at the centre of’ and enable an embodied empathy with the animate and inanimate world, disabling our tendency to treat the environment as other.