National Environmental Movement Research Articles

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.

Characteristics of Large Environmental Nonprofits That Identify Climate Change and Social Justice as Focal Concerns

This article examines the uptake of social justice and climate change as focal issues among the largest U.S. environmental nonprofits. We use 2016 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filings to identify 5,413 large environmental nonprofits of which 8% attend to issues of climate and 10% to issues of social justice. Larger organizations are more likely to attend to issues of climate change and social justice, as are groups founded more recently. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling of organizational mission statements and descriptions of major activities is used to assign groups to six distinct issue categories. Results highlight the divide between wildlife groups that are decidedly unlikely to attend to issues of either climate or justice, and the rest of the national environmental movement. Energy and natural resource groups, while strongly vested in climate issues, rarely attend to social justice. These findings have clear implications for climate and justice advocates seeking change in the environmental advocacy sector.

Building the Capacity to Play on Multilevel Policy Processes: French Environmental Movement Organisations and the European Union

The European Union (EU) is a relevant case to address the dynamics of transnational politics, given the significance of the EU environmental legislation in member states. Infranational, national and supranational/EU decision-making arenas still co-exist, without completely overlapping. This study explores how the multilevel nature of the EU policy-making process is exploited by national environmental movement organisations (EMOs). Diverging from the explanation in terms of political opportunity structure or their resource basis, we examine EMOs that do not automatically adapt to the EU multilevel policy process. The discussion takes up the classic debate between grievances (intentionality) and resources (capacity) hypothesising that both are constructed in EMOs' actions and through their interactions with public authorities, allies and members. Within the analytical framework developed in this study, the organisation is viewed as a factor explaining EU activism by combining an endogenous action approach with classical resource mobilisation concepts. The ensuing longitudinal analysis compares the case of three French EMOs: France-Nature-Environnement, Friends of the Earth-France and Greenpeace-France.

Crisis and Continuity in U.S. Oil Politics, 1965-1980

June 2012 The Journal of American History 177 The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill has faded rapidly as a focus of public attention, leaving in its wake an important question about energy politics in the United States: What role do crises play in bringing change to the American energy system? This essay considers the relationship between crisis and continuity by examining halting and incomplete efforts to sever the link between oil consumption and American economic growth between 1965 and 1980. In recent years, commentators have looked back to the 1970s and seen in that decade lost opportunities to change the nation’s energy path. Yet those opportunities, upon closer examination, appear fewer and smaller than they seemed at the time and are sometimes described today. To be sure, Congress passed a great deal of legislation and three successive presidents made energy policy a priority of their administrations. New pollution laws, offshore drilling restrictions, financial reforms, and efficiency measures represented significant breaks from the past. At the same time, however, underlying obstacles, including a national commitment to low oil prices and the enduring conflict between energy producers and consumers, blocked more substantial changes. The political context of the 1970s also diluted and distorted national policy making. The rise of a national environmental movement absorbed anger about oil pollution into a broader set of environmental initiatives, reducing the focus on oil. Public fears about national security resulted in policies, such as promoting new domestic production, that targeted dependence on oil from foreign countries only, rather than petroleum dependency more generally. While striving to reduce imports, the United States simultaneously secured inexpensive oil from overseas by deploying its military in the Middle East. As a result of these contradictory impulses, national political leaders only modestly changed the lockstep relationship between oil and the American economy during the 1970s. Assessing the significance of 1970s energy reforms from the vantage point of more than thirty years later risks applying an unrealistically high standard for change. Yet understanding the significant limitations of 1970s reforms still helps illuminate why U.S. energy policy has remained stalled and why crises such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are likely insufficient catalysts for large-scale change in energy and climate policy. To Crisis and Continuity in U.S. Oil Politics, 1965–1980

Ecological Threat and the Founding of U.S. National Environmental Movement Organizations, 1962–1998

This study examines the role of “ecological threat” in shaping the U.S. environmental movement. Statistical analysis combines founding data on 772 national environmental movement organizations with ecological data on air pollution levels and amphibian and bird populations. We examine these data longitudinally, from 1962 through 1998. Net of other social, economic, and political factors suggested by social movement theory, we find evidence of segmented effects in the expected directions: Declines in wildlife populations are associated with the foundings of wildlife and wilderness protection organizations while increases in air pollution are associated with the foundings of organizations focused on ecosystem well-being and public health. These findings help refine long-held assumptions about the relationship between ecological degradation and environmental activism, and demonstrate the broader utility of the threat concept for strengthening theories of social movement mobilization.

Poverty, Industry, and Environmental Quality: Weighing Paths to Economic Development at the Dawn of the Environmental Era

In early October 1969, Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik Company (BASF) announced plans to build a petrochemical plant near Beaufort, South Carolina. Overwhelmingly supported by state officials, the plan attracted opposition from developers and residents of nearby resorts on Hilton Head Island. Early in the debate, advocates and opponents of the plant clashed mainly over the type of development best suited for Beaufort—manufacturing or recreation. Yet each side changed their framing as they sought to attract national support. By 1970 opposition groups reached out to the burgeoning national environmental movement by discussing the controversy in terms of the environment. Supporters of the facility stressed the plant's role in combating poverty and providing economic aid to Beaufort's sizable poor population. The controversy therefore pitted two of the largest movements in the twentieth century against each other: the eradication of poverty and environmentalism. This study therefore reveals the strength of the environmental movement both regionally and nationally, and how environmentalism was beginning to compete with other major issues on the national agenda. It also complicates the usual portrayal of environmentalists and reveals the competing motives and visions that often made up environmental campaigns.

The national and the local: Relationships among environmental movement organisations in London

It is frequently asserted that national environmental movement organisations (EMOs) have, as an unintended consequence of their public relations strategies, a tendency to ignore local activists. Using a variety of research methods – participant observation, semi-structured interviews, a survey and network analysis of national, regional and local EMOs in London – we explode that myth. Although national EMOs cooperate mostly with other national EMOs, they do not turn their backs on local campaigners. On the contrary, several highly influential national EMOs (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Campaign to Protect Rural England) seek to involve grassroots activists. Local campaigners make surprisingly few demands on national EMOs, understand that national EMOs have resource constraints, and do not generally feel marginalised.

Is There Now a Political Climate for Policy Change? Policy and Politics after the Stern Review

Climate change is fuelling a significant renaissance in the national environmental movement in the UK. The broad aim of this article is better to understand the extent to which the 2006 Stern Review on climate change marked a decisive turning point in the battle against climate change or just another missed opportunity. Labelled as the most comprehensive review of the economics of climate change ever produced, the Stern Review was commissioned by the Chancellor in the summer of 2005 as part of the G8 Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change. The main themes of and reactions to the Stern Review are analysed against the backdrop of changing domestic party politics. Then, the follow through in terms of new political and policy pronouncements is examined. It is concluded that finding a way to tie together domestic and international actions on climate change represents an enormously tricky political challenge for whoever succeeds Blair as prime minister.

Whither Japan's Environmental Movement? An Assessment of Problems and Prospects at the National Level

J N MOST INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES, environmental NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) lobby, protest, participate in administrative decisionmaking, and garner wide media attention. Japan's national environmental movement, by contrast, is politically marginalized, more underfunded than most, and almost unrecognized by the general public. Why is Japan so at odds with its OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) counterparts?' In what measure is Japan's underdeveloped civic culture attributable to lack of opportunities for meaningful participation and to what degree can it be explained by lack of inclination to participate? Though weakly consolidated at the national level,Japan's environmental NGOs are far from impotent. Indeed, at times especially in the early 1970s, when public concern about environmental pollution was at a peak they exerted considerable influence. This cyclicality of public concern is described by Anthony Downs as the issue-attention cycle.2Downs contends that public interest peaks, as it did in the early 1970s, and then gradually declines. But occasional recurrences of interest, usually with lower peaks, can be expected over the long term. In some ways, it appears as if the Japan of the early and mid-1990s had entered a period of resurging environmental interest, with heightened activity by environmental NGOs. A series of significant events among them local and national political upheavals, a tragic earthquake, oil spills, nuclear accidents, and the December 1997 United Nations climate convention in Kyoto3 have kept attention focused on environmental problems and citizen concerns. To what extent are these events creating an expanded niche, fragile though it may be, for environmental NGOs at the national level?

The Effect of the Growth Management Act on Local Comprehensive Planning Expenditures: The South Florida Experience

In response to citizens' concerns about the environment, state governments have been actively involved in establishing programs for managing growth since the early 1970s. Most of the earlier growth management programs attempted to balance the needs of development with the protection of natural systems such as land, air, and water (DeGrove, 1990). The implementation of the earlier programs had achieved some mixed results. Some states (e.g., Oregon) received sustained financial and political support from citizens, the legislatures, and executives of government, while other states (e.g., Florida and Colorado) suffered from underfunding and unsustained political support during implementation (DeGrove, 1990). To improve upon earlier growth management programs, Florida established a comprehensive growth management system in 1985 and became the first state to do so. Similar statewide growth management systems were adopted later by New Jersey, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Georgia, and Washington. The new systems redefine the roles and responsibilities of local government in planning and growth management, and require local governments to share their planning responsibilities with state and regional levels of government (DeGrove, 1991). The purpose of this article is to evaluate the fiscal effect of new growth management systems by examining the impact of the Florida Omnibus Growth Management Act (GMA) of 1985 on comprehensive planning expenditures of local governments in south Florida. We first review previous empirical research on the effects of growth management and the growth management experience in Florida. Using the interrupted time-series analysis technique, we then empirically examine the change of local comprehensive planning expenditures before and after the 1985 GMA. Considering the effect of city size on the planning expenditures, we compare the impact of GMA between larger and smaller cities. Florida's Growth Management Experience For the past two decades, Florida has been a national leader in the effort to manage growth (DeGrove, 1989). The growth management experience in Florida can be described in terms of three periods based on different characteristics (DeGrove, 1990; Turner 1990): the pre-1975 responding period, the 1975-1985 implementing and reassessing period, and the post-1985 comprehensive system period. The Pre-1975 Period: Responding to the Challenge The rise of environmental concerns in Florida was closely related to the national environmental movement of the 1950s and 1960s and to a number of environmental issues occurring in Florida during the 1960s. In 1972, Governor Reubin Askew presented four pieces of legislation to the Florida legislature that addressed rising environmental concerns and the pressures of population growth. These laws, including the Environmental Land and Water Management Act (chap. 380), the Water Resources Act (chap. 373), the State Comprehensive Planning Act (chap. 23), and the Land Conservation Act (chap. 259), constituted Florida's first major effort to accommodate growth in a responsible way (DeGrove, 1990). The State Comprehensive Planning Act in particular recognized that planning is vital to the management of growth and that a state comprehensive plan would lend rationality to decisions affecting environmentally sensitive areas and provide direction for future growth. The 1975-1985 Period. Implementing and Reassessing Efforts In 1975, the Florida legislature enacted the Local Government Comprehensive Planning Act (LGCPA) (F.S. 163.3161), mandating comprehensive planning for cities and counties. Emphasizing the centralized approach to the planning process throughout the state (Turner, 1990; deHaven-Smith, 1984), the LGCPA left the contents of the plan and the implementation of it to local government discretion. In assessing these earlier laws, DeGrove (1990) pointed out that the lack of state funding to support the increased costs of comprehensive planning was one major weakness. …

This Land, This South: An Environmental History

Here is the story of the long interaction between humans, land, and climate in the American South. It is a tale of exploitation and erosion, of destruction, disease, and defeat, but also of the persistent search for knowledge and wisdom. It is a story whose villains were also its victims and sometimes its heroes. Ancient forces created the southern landscape, but, as Albert E. Cowdrey shows, humankind from the time of earliest habitation has been at work reshaping it. The southern Indians, far from being the "natural ecologists" of myth, radically transformed their environment by hunting and burning. Such patterns were greatly accelerated by the arrival of Europeans, who viewed the land as a commodity to be exploited for immediate economic benefit. Their greed and ignorance took a heavy toll on the land and all those it supported. Cowdrey documents not only the long decline but the painfully slow struggle to repair the damage of human folly. The eighteenth century saw widespread though ineffectual efforts to protect game and conserve the soil. In the nineteenth century the first hesitant steps were taken toward scientific flood control, forestry, wildlife protection, and improved medicine. In this century, the New Deal, the explosion in scientific knowledge, and the national environmental movement have spurred more rapid improvements. But the efforts to harness the South's great rivers, to save its wild species, and to avert serious environmental pollution have often had equivocal results.

Local Community Vs. National Industry: The Tmi and Santa Barbara Protests Compared

Comparing two examples of local protest—one a failure and the other a success–this paper shows the importance of the interaction between local groups and national social movements in predicting the outcomes of struggles pitting communitites against established industries. A critical difference between the unsuccessful attempt of Santa Barbara activists to prevent the resumption of oil drilling after the 1969 spill, on the one hand, and the successful efforts of TMI residents to block the restart of the reactor adjacent to the one damaged in the 1979 nuclear accident, on the other, is the maturity of the national environmental movement. Focusing primarily on the relatively successful TMI protest, the paper emphasizes the importance of the national antinuclear movement's resources in forcing resourseful actors (individual and organizational) into adversarial positions vis-à-vis the offending utility.

This Land, This South: An Environmental History

Here is the story of the long interaction between humans, land, and climate in the American South. It is a tale of exploitation and erosion, of destruction, disease, and defeat, but also of the persistent search for knowledge and wisdom. It is a story whose villains were also its victims and sometimes its heroes. Ancient forces created the southern landscape, but, as Albert E. Cowdrey shows, humankind from the time of earliest habitation has been at work reshaping it. The southern Indians, far from being the natural ecologists of myth, radically transformed their environment by hunting and burning. Such patterns were greatly accelerated by the arrival of Europeans, who viewed the land as a commodity to be exploited for immediate economic benefit. Their greed and ignorance took a heavy toll on the land and all those it supported. Cowdrey documents not only the long decline but the painfully slow struggle to repair the damage of human folly. The eighteenth century saw widespread though ineffectual efforts to protect game and conserve the soil. In the nineteenth century the first hesitant steps were taken toward scientific flood control, forestry, wildlife protection, and improved medicine. In this century, the New Deal, the explosion in scientific knowledge, and the national environmental movement have spurred more rapid improvements. But the efforts to harness the South's great rivers, to save its wild species, and to avert serious environmental pollution have often had equivocal results.