Environmental Protest Research Articles

Vulnerability and disobedience: New repertoires in French environmental protests

The emergence of the counter-globalisation movement in France has been accompanied by an apparent diversification of social protest repertoires. Protest events carried out by groups associated with a wide array of issues have been remarkable for their use of spectacular and novel actions, while civil disobedience campaigns have been prominent features of environmental and civil rights protests in particular. Drawing on a number of examples of contemporary environmental and global justice campaigns, opposing advertising, four-wheeled drive vehicles, nuclear energy and, especially, open field trials of genetically modified crops, this article discusses the rise of such new forms of protest, placing them in the wider context of transformations in protest repertoires in France. It identifies key examples of innovation, before discussing the twin processes of diffusion and domestication that shape them. It is argued that, although transnational agents and processes are key determinants of repertoire innovation, it is vital to identify the national, movement and sectoral contexts and discourses which enable the naturalisation and legitimisation of new action forms.

New Caledonia

New Caledonia David Chappell (bio) The "post-colonial" process of nation building continued in Kanaky/New Caledonia in 2005, as the new government elected in May 2004 entered its second year. The political stars of Avenir Ensemble (AE, or Future [End Page 399] Together) and Palika-UNI (Parti de Liberation Kanak plus the rump Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste, or FLNKS) rose, relative to the stars of Jacques Lafleur and his Rassemblement pour la Calédonie dans la République (RPCR) and the pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC), though the minority AE government (only 16 out of 54 seats in Congress) had to share power in the cabinet and thus continue nurturing a case-by-case consensus in order to pass local "laws of the country." Moreover, contentious issues remained unresolved, such as creating a local citizenship, protecting local hiring, restricting the electorate on important votes, and balancing economic development with much-needed social programs. The struggles over increasing nickel exports in the North and South provinces, in the face of militant labor strikes and Kanak customary and/or environmental protests, often disrupted the country. In January, supporters of independence organized a three-day commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the assassination by French sharpshooters of Eloi Machoro and Marcel Nonaro in La Foa. Both are regarded as martyrs in the FLNKS uprising of 1984–85, though the French State and loyalist settlers called them terrorists. At the opening of a new sociocultural hall in Canala named after Machoro, Jean Pierre Pouperon of the organizing committee said the event expressed both a duty to remember and a message of unity. The organizers hoped to show that Machoro and Nonaro were fighting for justice and freedom, both for the indigenous Kanak and for other ethnic groups exploited by French colonialism. Because of post-1980s divisions in the FLNKS, the organizers wanted to remind people of the need for solidarity in order to achieve the "common destiny" proposed by the 1998 Noumea Accord. Palika spokesman Sylvain Pabouty argued that Machoro, who smashed a ballot box in a famous incident in November 1984 and then conducted an active rural struggle to recover stolen lands, had helped to unify the Kanak movement on the ground, shake up the colonial system, and internationalize the independence struggle by attracting more support abroad, culminating in the United Nations' inscription of the territory on its decolonization list in 1986. Jean-Paul Caillard, another activist, said that the FLNKS revolt had forced France to create three provinces, so that Kanak leaders could govern the North and Islands provinces—a success that "saved the existence of a people"—and that individual democratic rights, which had once been used as a colonial weapon against collective indigenous liberation, now served decolonization instead (KOL, 13 Jan, 17 Jan 2005). The local branch of the League of the Rights of Man, led by Kanak activist Elie Poigoune, held several colloquia during the year to encourage public discussion on important issues. In mid-June, Billy Wapotro of the Protestant Educational Alliance and author-teacher Dr Louis-José Barbançon spoke about the meaning of a "common destiny" and how to achieve it. Wapotro urged people to study history in order to change it; to avoid the tragic confrontations of the past, Kanak and non-Kanak must find [End Page 400] ways to coexist through active dialogue leading to greater mutual understanding. Barbançon said French settlers needed to become "Oceanians of European origin"; many were already intermarried with non-Europeans and should work toward better ways to share the country's riches. In the discussion that followed, Poigoune said, "The common destiny is built slowly every day if we believe in it," notably in schools, municipalities, churches, and mixed couples, though it still required more promotion in civic and political circles (KOL, 9 July 2005). At a second colloquium in July, Octave Togna, director of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center, reminded the audience of the 1983 Nainville-les-Roches roundtable in France, where Kanak and loyalists had agreed to recognize each other's heritages and rights; he advocated political cohesion through the teaching of cultural diversity to young people...

Celluloid chain reactions: The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island

In March 1979, Americans watched two nuclear incidents unfold. On television, news reporters covered a real-life partial meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. At the movie-theater, a fictional atomic plant in California nearly met disaster in The China Syndrome directed by James Bridges. This article explores how the nuclear industry, environmental protesters and the American public responded to the two dramas. It discusses the extent to which a Hollywood thriller provided a window on events at Three Mile Island. It highlights the role of fiction in common comprehensions of the nuclear age and in the formation of nationwide nuclear anxieties.

Blackwood roads protest 2004: an emerging (re)cycle of UK eco-action?

Using the Blackwood (South Wales) roads protest during February to April 2004 as a case study, the article discusses the potential for a re-emergence of UK eco-action, examining the possibility that re-engagement with ‘single issue’ environmental protests is a probable direction for the UK direct action movement. Tactically and strategically, Blackwood could be a signifier for a new environmentally focused ‘cycle of contention’ which explicitly makes the links between the environment/climate change, and the frames of oil, war and capitalism which have been some of the key discursive repertoires of the anti-globalisation and anti-war movement(s). A potential return to ‘single issue’ eco-action should not be seen as ‘wheel reinvention’ but rather evidence of a movement which has reflexively built capacity over an activist generation. The article provides evidence of predisposed and latent mobilisation potential; emergent networks and campaigns focusing on eco-action in the United Kingdom.

Environmental protest and tap-dancing with the media in the information age

Environmental politics and values gain legitimacy through their constant presence in the media. This article outlines and critiques a theoretical approach that can increase understanding of the relationship between environmental protest and news media representation. Manuel Castells, pre-eminent theorist of the information age and 'the network society', is useful in this regard. He describes the relationship between media organizations and environmentalists as 'tap-dancing'. His explanation of this dance and its choreography, however, is overly general, ignoring its specific features and workings in terms of representation. In order to detail some of these features, we have selected for study Australia's most famous environmental protest and a globally significant moment for green politics: the 1982 Franklin Dam blockade in Tasmania. We argue that it was during this blockade that an enduring pattern of media environmentalist relations was established in Australia, and substantiate this case by examining subsequent protests. The article concludes by critiquing current understandings of media environmentalist relations and explains the dynamics of the mediation process that determines the reporting of protests.

Environmental Protest in Western Europe

Environmental Protest in Western Europe

Environmental Protest and the State in France

Environmental Protest and the State in France

“Wild Capitalism” and “Ecocolonialism”: A Tale of Two Rivers

The development and pollution of two rivers, the Danube and Tisza, have been the site and subject of environmental protests and projects in Hungary since the late 1980s. Protests against the damming of the Danube rallied opposition to the state socialist government, drawing on discourses of national sovereignty and international environmentalism. The Tisza suffered a major environmental disaster in 2000, when a globally financed gold mine in Romania spilled thousands of tons of cyanide and other heavy metals into the river, sending a plume of pollution downriver into neighboring countries. In this article, I examine the symbolic ecologies that emerged in the two moments of environmental protest, as well as Hungarian activists' reflections on the changing political ecology of the region in their discourses of “ecocolonialism” (ökógyarmatosítás) and “wild capitalism” (vadkapitaliszmus).

Book Review: Environmental Protest in Western Europe

Book Review: Environmental Protest in Western Europe

Patrick Bond et al. Unsustainable South Africa: Environment, Development and Social Protest. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London: Merlin Press, 2003. xxvi + 449 pp. Map. Figures. Tables. Photographs. Images. Notes. References. Index. $39.95. Paper.

Patrick Bond et al. Unsustainable South Africa: Environment, Development and Social Protest. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/ London: Merlin Press, 2003. xxvi + 449 pp. Map. Figures. Tables. Photographs. Images. Notes. References. Index. $39.95. Paper. Bond and his ten coauthors (George Dor, Michael Dorsey, Maj Fiil-Flynn, Stephen Greenberg, Thulani Guliwe, David Hallowes, Becky Himlin, Stephen Hosking, Greg Ruiters and Robyn Stein) have achieved a tour de force with this refreshing volume. Their rich analysis of social policy choices made in South Africa by the postapartheid government is a courageous contribution to the corpus of literature linking society, environment, and development in that country. Published in the aftermath of the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002, Bond's publication appears as a rejoinder to that galvanizing event. The book is composed of four parts, the first of which focuses on the legacy of South Africa's unsustainable environmental policies and practices. Here the authors outline three discrete environment-development discourses-neoliberalism, sustainable development, and environmental justice-which provide a useful analytical framework for the discussion in subsequent chapters. Part 2 presents detailed case studies of unsustainable projects. The story turns on examples such as Coega, a mega-industrial development project underway in the Eastern Cape, and the controversial Lesotho Highlands Water Project, which supplies Gauteng Province with water from Lesotho. In the context of a vast backlog in basic services facing the ANC, these serve as battlegrounds between government, privatizing companies, and service providers on the one hand, and ordinary South Africans seeking water, sanitation, and electricity on the other. Part 3 focuses on unsustainable policies, primarily in the energy and water sectors, some inherited from the National Party, with equally poor social and environmental policies employed by current government officials. Part 4 includes only one chapter, the conclusion, which pulls the disparate threads together in a coherent, if sweeping, canvas. Class, race, gender, ideology, and power politics all enlarge and enhance this work, just as they feature prominently in South Africa's sociopolitical landscape. This book fills a yawning gap in our knowledge base. Government departments do release indicators on service delivery, and statistics are available from reliable sources such as Statistics South Africa. However, these are insufficient to provide a comprehensive picture of spatial and structural changes in infrastructure and energy and water policies, particularly in townships and rural regions. Statistics alone do not explain how far the government has progressed in widening access, in determining prices for users, or in terms of the quality and sustainability of methods used and services provided. The old comparison between statistics and bikinis is useful: What they reveal is important, but what they conceal is critical. Electrification figures in South Africa are a moving target. Households may be connected, but entire blocks are disconnected if one user fails to pay, rendering such figures unhelpful. In contrast, by relying on detailed research and data, the authors analyze the evolution of policy and practice in key sectors. They examine issues such as access and differential pricing, and utilize cost-benefit analyses to investigate alternative options, pointing to structural impediments and policies that need to be addressed before black South Africans can become full citizens with access to the same opportunities that were afforded to whites over the previous four decades. The strength of the book lies in the analytical case studies of large development projects, which require major capital outlays and expenditure from both public and private sectors. For instance, Bond et al. conclude that the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, which diverted water to South Africa while displacing two thousand residents in Lesotho, was poorly designed, badly implemented, economically detrimental, and ecologically pernicious. …

"Lord, We're Just Trying to Save Your Water": Environmental Activism and Dissent in the Appalachian South

Environmental protest - its causes and consequences - and the challenges of organizing to confront government and big business are the focus of this book, which brings to life the grassroots activism of southern Appalachia's rural citizens in the face of environmental threats to their communities. One of the first books to examine environmental activism case studies in the South, this insider's view is both academically rigorous and highly personal - its scholar-activist author is a member of Friends of Terrapin Creek, one of the groups featured in the book. Drawing upon qualitative data from oral histories and the papers of grassroots organizations, Suzanne Marshall gives voice to ordinary southerners who created activist networks in rural Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama - a region of southern Appalachia often ignored by scholars. These tales of rural empowerment offer a unique blend of ethnographic narrative and environmental policy history that never loses sight of the real people at the center of contested natural environments in the Appalachian South, an area that historically has suppressed organized environmental activism despite a host of ecological problems. Marshall provides insight into the links between national policy and regional political economy and their implications for local communities; she shows how, periodically, obstacles have been overcome. She illustrates how coalitions formed and examines the variety of political tactics and strategies used by local activists in their struggles against bureaucracy and private industry.

Economic opportunities and threats in contentious environmental politics: A view from the European South

Aiming to contribute to the discussion of how opportunities and threats are put into motion by focusing on the understudied economic factors, this article presents four illustrative accounts from the post-dictatorial experience of environmental contentious politics in Greece, Spain and Portugal, selectively. First, it documents that the incorporation of professional environmental organizations into dominant sustainable development practices in Greece is tied to an economic opportunity spiral that merges from contemporary economic liberalization policies and practices. Secondly, on the basis of protest-event analysis it shows how economic liberalization in Greece acts as a constraint for environmental protests, but an opportunity for anti-privatization ones. Third, via protest-case analysis it documents how economic dependency performs as a spiral of opportunities and constraints for groups tied to different interests in Crete. For example, tourism interest groups appear to opt for environmental protest more often when these interests are threatened by non-tourism-related environmentally damaging activities. Finally, using protest-case analysis the article illustrates how in Southern European local environmental conflict, spirals of economic opportunities and constraints portrayed in state responses to protesters, play a significant role in shaping the dynamics of local environmental contentious politics.

A transformative political campaign? The new rhetoric of protest against airport expansion in the UK

This article explores the logic of political protest by focussing on how, and in what form, groups reproduce themselves. It analyses how HACAN ClearSkies, a local airport protest group, has challenged the dominant ideology governing British aviation policy by articulating a new rhetoric of environmental protest. What we deem a transformative campaign extends the particularistic demand of stopping expansion at Heathrow to a more universal struggle against airport expansion per se. Using political discourse theory, we argue that the campaign was prompted by HACAN's failure to stop the building of Heathrow's Fifth Terminal, the emergence of a new political leadership, and the construction of an innovative political ideology. In so doing, we focus on four discursive logics: the role and practice of naming; the drawing of political frontiers; the creation of equivalences; and the campaign's ideological means of representation. The article concludes by evaluating the challenges facing the campaign.

Contested governance between politics and professionalism in Taiwan

This essay critically examines the evolution of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) in Taiwan. The ‘American-style’ EIA was originally introduced in Taiwan as an economic policy-making instrument. During the 1980s, grassroots environmental protests rose. The state first met the popular opposition by denying their professional status, and then sought a more peaceful resolution by upgrading the EIA. In 1994, owing to the combined effects of more accountable parliamentary and environmentalists' lobbying, the EIA was finally codified. Democratization also made the codified EIA more powerful and professional, as environmentalists preferred. The latter part of this essay examines the actual practice of the EIA since 1995, with special attention to some controversial cases. The current EIA failed the proclaimed standard of “science and objectivity,” as politics lurked in the disguise of professionalism.

Environmental protest and the state in France

List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Political Opportunities and Environmental Protest in France Environmental Protest in France Political Opportunities and Policy Communities: Developing a Network Approach to State-Group Relations Institutional Change and the Fifth Republic Water Resource Management and the Loire Development Programme Vive la Loire Sauvage! Serre de la Fare and the Political Opportunity Structure of Protest Roads Policy and Multi-level Decisionmaking Opportunity, Protest, and the Somport Tunnel Conclusion Bibliography Index

Nuclear reactions: the politics of opening a radioactive waste disposal site

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), located beneath the desolate flatlands near Carlsbad in south-eastern New Mexico, is the first facility of its kind in the world -- the most elaborate and expensive landfill opened to date that permanently houses mankind's deadliest rubbish. The project is intended to entomb, in a salt formation 2,150 feet underground, four decades' worth of protective gloves, clothing, and other items contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive materials used in building nuclear weapons. The nuclear waste -- enough to fill over sixty-five football fields -- is sent to WIPP from US Department of Energy sites in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, Washington, and elsewhere. The plant is regarded both as a coda to the Cold War legacy of weapons production and as a prototype for future environmental cleanup projects. Although WIPP has won widespread scientific and political support, it has been a quagmire of conflicting views about national energy policy. Technical and environmental questions dogged it long before being built, and debates over its use have continued since its opening in 1999. This book marks the first effort to trace WIPP's evolution comprehensively and impartially, from its earliest days as the brainchild of a group of local residents eager to create jobs through two decades of scientific studies, political decisions, environmental protests, and court challenges. It includes interviews with and character sketches of politicians, environmentalists, and scientists and explores the lessons that this hotly divisive project can teach us.

Democratization and Environmental Policy–Making in Korea

Democratization in Korea since 1987 has led to the gradual establishment of a diverse set of institutional arrangements—competitive electoral systems, local autonomy, freedom of the press, and freedom of association—that facilitate the articulation of diffuse environmental interests in policy–making processes. Yet, as illustrated by the cases of the Youngwol Dam project and the Wichon Industrial Complex, the policy–making system is still unsettled by numerous environmental protests and by difficulties in resolving distributional conflicts among different groups and communities. To resolve these difficulties, Korea needs to overcome some adverse legacies from its authoritarian era and to develop multiple channels and mechanisms for citizen participation in policy–making and for conflict resolution among different groups and communities. The experience of Korea illustrates the complex dynamics between democratization and environmental policy–making.

Book Review: Digging up trouble. The environment protest and opencast coal mining

Book Review: Digging up trouble. The environment protest and opencast coal mining

Faking it? The multiple meanings of environmental restoration near Twyford Down

Resistance to the construction of a new motorway link through Twyford Down in the 1990s made the name of this small part of Hampshire, England, symbolic of contemporary environmental protest in Britain. But a little-known part of the story concerns the use of environmental restoration by proponents and opponents of the new road. This paper investigates how the ‘restoration rhetoric’ was used in the Twyford Down case and also how it was translated into practice on the ground. It shows that environmental restoration is neither necessarily good nor bad for environmental protection, but that its very plasticity can be moulded by different hands and contexts.

Ecological Rites

Social scientists have noted how radical social movements operate largely in terms of symbol and meaning, both at the level of everyday life and at that of public protest. Using examples from contemporary environmental protest, I argue that this insight can be further elucidated through applying the notion of ritualization. I argue that ritual action is used in environmental protest for a number of different reasons. First, ritual is used to link particular cases to universal meanings and values. Second, ritual is used to set up particular relationships between what is and what could be the case. Third, ritual is used because of the effects of operating through symbol, association and connotation. Fourth, ritual is used to mark out the protest community and its actions from its wider social milieu. Fifth and finally, ritual is used to carve out a 'practical environment' - a segment of space and time made suitable for certain kinds of action and experience.