Global Environmental Movement Research Articles

SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL PUBLIC POLICY FOR THE AMAZON BIOME: AN ESSAY OF THE PROAMBIENTE-POLO RIO CAPIM PROGRAM IN THE AMAZON OF PARÁ

From the 1990s onwards, the debate around environmental issues became increasingly present throughout the world. In this sense, the United Nations report entitled “Our Common Future”, known as the “Brundtland Report”, released in 1987, and the so-called United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (ECO-92), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (FILHO-MONTIBELLER, 2001), were two events of global notoriety, in which the search for a new form of development became evident, expressed not only by environmentalists, but also by social movements. Many proposals of a socio-environmental nature were triggered from the context of society's discussion about development. The COP-30 itself, to be held in Belém-PA, was not just a forum organized under the leadership of the United Nations, it represents a historic moment where the various matrices of the global environmental movement express themselves in parallel to the official event when the idea of ​​sustainable development is based on new premises of a guiding agenda for public policies.

Rising to the challenge: a systematic review of development of environmental justice in India

ABSTRACT Environmental justice has experienced rapid expansion in its scope and conceptualization in the last three decades. Literature on environmental justice narrates how individuals and communities mobilize to confront economic and environmental issues at the local, national, and global levels and how globalization, gender, racism, and class affect the environment. This article presents a systematic review of environmental justice in India, aimed at showing how the concept originated and came into common parlance and how it differs or actually resembles now a lot with the environmental justice discourse in the United States. The focus of this study is on various salient events that are crucial in the development of a well-established movement. The review contends that environmental justice may have only recently become a recognized concept in Indian environmental history, as a philosophy, it has been a mainstay of Indian environmental consciousness. India has an indigenous environmental justice movement, albeit not on the lines of the US. This review also suggests that the discourse on environmental justice in India is currently shaped by both global environmental justice movements as well as indigenous efforts and concerns about environmental challenges.

Public Awareness, and its Impacts on Climate Change

This research paper explores public awareness's important role in shaping effective responses to climate change. Focusing on the relationship between informed communities and environmental action, the paper investigates how heightened awareness directly influences climate change by inspiring sustainable practices and driving demand for shared work. Also, the research underscores the transformative power of public awareness, emphasizing its capacity to empower individuals as active participants in the collective endeavor toward a resilient and sustainable future. In essence, the research aims to highlight how public awareness contributes to climate action in Afghanistan, celebrating the local initiatives that contribute to a more sustainable future while recognizing the broader implications for the global environmental movement. The methodology extends to incorporating real-life narratives and experiences in Afghanistan and southeast countries, offering a rich tapestry of insights into how awareness manifests in everyday decisions amid unique climate challenges. Also, this research not only contributes to the localized understanding of climate action in Afghanistan but provides a broader perspective on the global implications of informed choices. To ensure the research's success, various sources were used. These included books, journals, and special reports (UNFCCC, UNESCO, COP27, COP28, IPCC, and Land Portal special reports on public awareness and education). Therefore, by utilizing surveys, interviews, and case studies, the research aims to provide a clear understanding of how public awareness translates into actions in the face of climate change.

Glued on for the grandkids: The gendered politics of care in the global environmental movement

AbstractThis paper explores the gendered politics of care in global environmental activism. Drawing on interviews with 96 Extinction Rebellion activists worldwide and a close analysis of 10 older women within this dataset, we contend that ‘care’ both replicated and contradicted the patriarchal order. Older women in Extinction Rebellion have often been relied upon to take on much of the caring labour involved in the maintenance of the movement at local and national levels. However, care also involved these women undertaking powerful—and empowering—forms of political action, often grounded in their knowledge and experience of organising social justice movements over decades. In contrast to prior research in the area, we found that women's participation in leadership roles within the movement against climate change appears to have increased over time. Using Sara Ahmed's (2004) concept of affective economies, we argue that the emotion of care came to be accumulated and attached to older women within Extinction Rebellion, producing inequalities in expectations for who would ‘care for the movement’ while also opening up opportunities for empowerment.

Outdoor Sports and Environmental Protection in Mountainous Areas Under Ecological Civilisation

Abstract Since the mid and late 19th century, people have paid more and more attention to the ecological environment, and environmental awareness and behaviour have been gradually strengthened. The global environmental protection movement is rising daily, and environmental protection will become the focus of human attention in the 21st century. Accelerate the establishment and improvement of the system and mechanism of land and space development, resource conservation and utilisation, and ecological preservation of the environment in the system of ecological civilisation, and promote the formation of a new pattern of harmonious development between man and nature and modernisation. Although China has formulated policies and regulations on environmental protection in outdoor sports development, environmental protection is grim due to problems such as insufficient government supervision, weak public awareness of environmental protection, and relatively backward environmental protection concepts and management methods. During the visit, outdoor sports lovers and club leaders were interviewed. In this context, with the continuous development of outdoor mountain sports driven by the improvement of people’s pursuit of life, there began to be contradictions between outdoor mountain sports and the ecological preservation of the environment, which also became the cause of the author’s concern and research.

Entangled Futures: Big Oil, Political Will, and the Global Environmental Movement

Abstract The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identified a lack of “political will” by national leaders as the main obstacle to mitigating the climate emergency in its 2022 report. However, the report makes no mention that contributing to this political deficiency has been rising antidemocracy over the past two decades, furthered by the support of the powerful fossil fuel industry. This article explores the synergy between antidemocratic leaders embracing anti-climate agendas that prioritize oil and gas companies over the rights of their citizens. I conclude by reflecting on possible responses to this bleak reality from members of the global environmental movement. This involves acknowledging the deep complicity of liberal democratic states in extractive capitalism, while also rethinking democratic principles of social equality and political inclusion to ensure that historically underrepresented communities can engage in emancipatory pro-climate political mobilization.

The Socio-ecological Question, the Global Environmental Justice Movement and Anti-systemic Environmentalism

Abstract This article makes two central arguments: i) we can understand the current phase of anti-systemic movements predominantly through the globally expanding forms of resistance centered on environment, food, climate, soil, water, and so on as a collective socio-ecological critique and confrontation of the global capitalist relations of production; and ii) we can conceptually specify the global environmental justice movement through the notion of anti-systemic environmentalism expressing “the second contradiction of capitalism,” i.e., the socio-ecological crisis of the capitalist world system. In making these arguments, it introduces the concept of the socio-ecological question, theoretically grounded in the value theory of nature, in establishing the world-historical relationality among diverse place-based socio-environmental movements.

Wake Up; Look Around; Get Involved

The strategy, tactics, and aesthetics of the global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion can serve as inspiration for the theatre and performance community to unleash its creativity in response to the climate crisis.

Freeing Animals: Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Environmentalism and Ecological Challenges

Buddhist environmentalism in its varieties across the world is an integral part of the global environmental discourse centered on exploring new planetary ethics for sustainable futures. While recognizing the Buddhist role in global environmental movements, the author of this article proposes that the observable strength of Buddhist environmentalism is in local and global environmental advocacy grounded in the Buddhist ethics of interdependence, even as, canonically, Buddhism does not offer what is commonly recognized by scientists and scholars as traditional ecological knowledge or religious ecology. To substantiate this, this article offers a textual assessment of the Buddhist canon’s lack of systematic ecological knowledge, and a case study of how freeing domestic animals and advocating vegetarianism among contemporary Tibetan Buddhists in China, inclusive of non-Tibetan converts, mainly benefits human wellbeing and at the same time is entangled in social affairs that have little to do with the ecological wellbeing of the Tibetan Plateau and urban China. This debate is by no means intended to negate the successes of Buddhist environmentalism; instead, it draws fine lines between the claimed canonic basis of Buddhist ecology, the strength of Buddhist environmental advocacy, the everyday practices of Buddhism, and the aspirations for strengthening the ecological foundation of Buddhist environmental activism. Thinking in line with eco-Buddhists, the author concludes the article by proposing an Earth Sutra, a hypothetical future canonic text as the ecological basis of Buddhist environmentalism.

Ndu-Mmili-Ndu-Azu ("Live-and-Let-Live")

In three parts, this article sketches the version of African environmental ethics that was developed and promoted by Chigbo Ekwealo who was a renowned environmental philosopher in Africa. The first part is a sketch of the principles and doctrine of his environmental ethics. The second part traces the intellectual history of his environmental ethics, the influences on it and its influence on the global environmental ethics movement. The third part is a critique of his environmental ethics based on contemporary and global circumstances. It is demonstrated how Ekwealo’s environmental ethics attempted to consciously depart from earlier versions of African environmental ethics in terms of its rejection of the neo-materialist, polemical, and supernatural features of other views. This article contributes to a reconstruction of the environmental thought of one of the founders of the African environmental movement whose thoughts are not accessible to most contemporary environmental philosophers today.

The framing of plastic pollution responsibility: comparing corporate versus environmental movement discursive evaluations

PurposeThis article aims to investigate evaluative framing of global plastic pollution as discursively performed by two opposed categories of social actors, namely corporations versus environmental movements.Design/methodology/approachThe article builds on the literature related to framing, issue arenas and moral evaluations to unravel how evaluative framing and counterframing are implemented in multimodal digital spaces and how social practices get legitimized or delegitimized according to different communicative purposes. It presents a longitudinal critical discourse analysis of the issue-related webpages and press releases of PepsiCo, one of the worst global plastic polluters, and of the global environmental movement #breakfreefromplastic.FindingsFindings suggest that the systematic recurrence of specific evaluative strategies has a double macro-function: (a) organizing discourses strategically through its presence or absence; (b) signalling the moral significance of recontextualized social practices by conferring legitimacy to remedial actions and/or illegitimacy to deviant actions.Social implicationsThis study contributes to increasing accountable environmental action and trustful communication for overcoming global sustainability issues.Originality/valueThe article offers a nuanced understanding of the role of evaluative framing in communicating global sustainability issues. Methodologically, it extends existing categories of moral evaluations and articulates a framework for future studies.

Harry Turbott in the Wide World

Harry Turbott (1930-2016) was much more than an architect and a landscape architect. In his self-effacing, humble, bare-foot,2 New Zealand way he challenged both the creeping gentrification of an increasingly passive society and the morphing of the built-environment into a threat to the future of a planet he both loved and respected. In this reflection Tony Watkins weaves relationships between Harry’s story and the story of the global environmental movement. At this time of environmental crisis looking back suggests how we might move forward.

Restor: Transparency and connectivity for the global environmental movement

Protecting and restoring biodiversity requires that nature becomes the economically sustainable option for local communities across the globe. Here, we present Restor, a data sharing platform developed to facilitate this process by providing transparency and connectivity to nature-based solutions. In the process, Restor provides a unique database to study the global environmental movement.

Global Local Linkages in Contemporary Environmental Movements: Networking, Diffusion and Scale Shift in the Niyamgiri Movement of Odisha

Taking the tribal resistance against Vedanta Alumina at Niyamgiri Hills of Odisha in India as a case in point, the present article deciphers the nuances of contemporary environmental movements. It discusses the manner in which movements like Niyamgiri address global environmental issues with local environmental actions. It examines the issue of scale shift of environmental activism and the process in which a local struggle over livelihood and resource capture becomes a global environmental movement. It unravels the subtle negotiations that the local agents of the movement engage in with their global counterparts. The major arguments of the article are based on empirical research at the site of contestation with the help of qualitative methods. The article vividly narrates the emergence of the Niyamgiri movement from that of a localised struggle against land acquisition to that of a transnational movement raising serious ecological concerns, which bridges the gap between the local and global in contemporary environmental movements. It argues that rather than an emphasis on ‘locale’, the point of departure should be the movement’s ability to establish networks with related as well as non-related social movement organisations, who share similar concerns with nature, and are ready to be a part of the mobilisation process.

The Holy See and the Global Environmental Movements

Laudato Si has garnered acclaim from world leaders and actors who support care for the environment. The encyclical has received praise for its ability to communicate the Church’s environmental views to the secular world. Yet the views of the Holy See in global environmental issues prior to Laudato Si have received inadequate attention. We conduct a historical review of the Holy See’s involvement in United Nations environmental efforts from the mid-20th Century to the present day. This reflects much of the work done in the late 20th Century by local dioceses all over the world. In doing so, we draw from the Holy See’s record of apostolic letters and speeches penned by Popes and various Church officials in the 20th Century, which we draw from the Vatican archives and libraries. We show that a clear critique of industrial pollution first emerged in the official addresses and letters penned by Pope Paul VI in the early 1960s. We also show that the Holy See has joined the global community on the pursuit of sustainable development that promotes human dignity, and the right to development and to a healthy environment for all, mainly the poorest populations. We argue that Laudato Si is better thought of as a culmination of the Catholic Church’s social teachings, which state that concern for the environment means respect for human life and dignity, promotion of the common good and the virtue of solidarity, and exercising responsibility to the poor and vulnerable. These are principles that align closely with the secular discourse on sustainable development.

Why do youth participate in climate activism? A mixed-methods investigation of the #FridaysForFuture climate protests.

The #FridaysForFuture movement has attracted young activists around the world. In the present mixed-method, socio-cultural psychological research, we investigate people's motivations for joining the movement in the privileged yet paradoxical context of Norway – a country that has gathered most of its wealth through oil production (i.e., the Norwegian Paradox). In Study 1, from a thematic analysis of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork from a series of major strikes and interviews with protestors (N = 93) it emerged that attributing responsibility for climate change, a necessity for shared action to mitigate the effects of climate change, and a shared sense of collective identity, helped to galvanize the prolonged social movement. These inductive and ecologically valid findings, combined with existing theory, in Study 2, partially confirmed and extended the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA; van Zomeren et al., 2008) with survey data from high school students (N = 362). Collective guilt, environmental threat, past protest participation, organized environmentalism, political orientation, and social capital predicted future protest intentions, whereas activist identification and group efficacy mediated these effects. We discuss how the understanding of global environmental movements from the perspective of participants, who are both structurally responsible for the crisis and will experience most of its consequences themselves, can contribute to the broader discussion on facilitating climate action within privileged contexts.

Joining the Global Environmental Protection Movement: an Exploration of Public Environmental Concern in the UAE

Abstract This study explores levels of concern about the environment in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Data for the study were obtained from the 2019 ‘Levels of Concern about the Environment in the UAE’ survey. A convenience sample of 1520 respondents were selected, contacted and interviewed by research assistants. Per the study’s findings, respondents did endorse three out of five dimensions of the Revised NEW Ecological Paradigm scale including the anthropocentric view of nature, balance of nature, and the possibility of eco-crisis. Nevertheless, respondents failed to support the other two dimensions of the given paradigm: limit to growth and human Exemptionalism.

Global environmental initiatives of the EU in Antarctica: Ukraine’s position harmonization and prospect (preceding Ukraine’s chairmanship in the CCAMLR, 2023–2024)

With the strengthening of the global environmental movement, the Southern Ocean has become an effective international testing ground for the development of spatial planning in marine environments beyond national jurisdiction. This note aims to review the European Union (EU) role in the progress on designation of environmentally representative network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Antarctica, and the effect of this process on the shaping of Ukraine’s strategy in this region. Following Ukraine’s external vector to European integration, in 2021 the country began formally aligning as a co-proponent with the EU-initiated two MPA proposals — in East Antarctica and the Weddell Sea. This alignment of positions is utterly important, taking into account the approaching of Ukraine's first chairmanship of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 2023–2024, which would be an exceptional opportunity for our country to make a significant progress in designation the largest MPAs ever implemented in Antarctica given national interests, including the creation of an international consortium with the involvement of Ukrainian scientific infrastructure in Antarctica, such as Ukrainian Antarctic Akademik Vernadsky station and the research vessel Noosfera, to implement internationally significant scientific and monitoring programs to evaluate MPAs efficiency with Ukraine as a co-initiator.

El Tren Maya: un escenario de conflictividad socioambiental en el posneoliberalismo mexicano

Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government in Mexico is self-denominated as a «postneoliberal» and «leftist» regime. However, its core strategic projects clearly belong to the former mainstream of extractivist and neocolonial geopolitics which tend to generate socioenvironmental conflicts and territorial defense by local stakeholders. This paper, as a result of interdisciplinary research carried out by the Intercolegial Research Group on Political Ecology of Mexico City’s Autonomous University, address the Maya Train case, a land-use planning project that promotes predator extractivist capital advance towards relatively isolated territories, even protected by environmental laws. It is also described the Consejo Regional Indígena y Popular de Xpujil’s (CRIPX’s) resistance as a clear demonstration of «ecologism of the poor» and the global environmental justice movement.

The Ecological Wars: The Notion, Concept And Dynamics

Drawing on a scientific literature on the Biosphere and the global SBT-structure and development, on Russian, foreign and my own investigations of global ecological issues and environmental movements, I came to the following conclusions. First, these issues are both important practically and theoretically. Second, under the ecological war I mean all kinds of harm which is caused by man to the natural, human and complex invasion into the natural and social ecosystems. Third, the researchers are still follow the principle ‘Firstly, we should to cope with the after-effects of a certain disaster and then to evaluate their immediate and far-reaching outcomes’. Four, our urgent task is to foresee the coming disaster and to have a time to take the preventive measures in advance. Five, I distinguish three main archetypes of the ecological wars that I conditionally names as the natural, social and the feedback’s wars conducted by the global SBT-system against natural, social and mixed ecosystems. Six, the time regime of the global SBT-system functioning and of the ecological wars is very important but still ill-investigated issues. Seven, the main resource of any ecological war is the speed of its spreading in time and space and transformation of natural ecosystems. Eight, the current pandemic showed that the systemic approach, interdisciplinary and prognostic researches are the main instruments for coping with the ecological wars. It follows that the sociologists have to learn and widely-use these three theoretical instruments.