Transnational Environmental Activism Research Articles

Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement by Simon Avenell

Reviewed by: Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement by Simon Avenell Timothy S. George Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement. By Simon Avenell. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017. 328 pages. Hardcover, $65.00. In his second monograph, historian Simon Avenell goes beyond the nation-level analysis of his earlier work, Making Japanese Citizens.1 Tracing Japanese environmentalists’ global engagement from the 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century, he argues that their “transnational” activism was both informed by the local experiences of victims of environmental tragedies in Japan and transformed by the reflexivity brought on by the global impact of the country’s policies, which complicated the victimization narrative of Japanese pollution activists. Chapter 1 begins by briefly tracing major cases of industrial pollution in Japan, including not only the well-known “Big Four”—the outbreak of mercury poisoning in the city of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, that became known generally as “Minamata disease”; the same illness in Niigata Prefecture; itai-itai disease (from the Japanese for “it hurts, it hurts”), mass cadmium poisoning that occurred in Toyama Prefecture; and “Yokkaichi asthma” in Mie Prefecture, caused by air pollution—but also the tainting of Morinaga Milk products with arsenic in 1955 and of Kanemi rice-bran oil with PCBs in 1968. Several works in English describe these incidents and the responses by patients and their supporters, journalists, companies, local and national governments, and the legal system.2 While this existing literature has already made it clear that these experiences gave Japan’s environmentalism what [End Page 143] Avenell calls an “anthropocentric perspective,” what he adds here is the significance of how this perspective “deeply informed later transnational involvement” (p. 36). The rest of the first chapter, together with the second and third chapters, constitutes one of Avenell’s most important contributions: a focus on key members of the Research Committee on Pollution (RCP), founded in 1963 by economist Tsuru Shigeto (1912–2006) and seven other progressive academics. Avenell traces the research, activism, and thinking of Miyamoto Ken’ichi (1930–), Ui Jun (1932–2006), Harada Masazumi (1934–2012), and Tsuru up to and beyond the landmark 1972 United Nations Conference on Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm. Their stories have long deserved to be told at this length in English. Economist Miyamoto Ken’ichi published Osorubeku kōgai (Fearsome Pollution) with fellow RCP member Shōji Hikaru in 1964. The book is often compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which was published two years earlier, but as Avenell rightly notes, this combination of scientific discussion by Shōji and analysis of the political economy of pollution by Miyamoto served as more than a wake-up call, providing not only motivation but also a vocabulary and even guidelines for antipollution movements. Miyamoto started from a Marxist standpoint before realizing that pollution existed in socialist countries as well. He eventually came to share “an affinity with later global discourses on human rights . . . , in which groups subject to injustices because of race, gender, sexuality, or even the environment would become part of” what Ernesto LaClau and Chantal Mouffe called a “chain of equivalence,”3 but need not “surrender their unique identities for a shared subjectivity of class” (p. 45). Through Miyamoto, Avenell shows us two of the major characteristics of antipollution movements in Japan: a focus on injustice and on links with victims of other injustices and a hesitant and incomplete affiliation with the established radical left, including the Communist and Socialist parties. Ui Jun was a chemical engineer whose concern with the mercury pollution in Minamata in the late 1950s led him to become Japan’s best-known activist environmental scientist. Avenell rightly calls him “arguably the most important figure in transnational environmental activism in postwar Japan” for the way in which his work to understand and combat the poisoning and discriminatory treatment of victims in Minamata and Niigata impelled him to global research and activism (p. 46). Ui spent a good deal of time in Europe in the 1960s investigating pollution there as well as spreading awareness of Japan’s pollution problems as warnings to other industrialized countries. Beginning in 1970 he organized the Independent Lectures on Pollution...

Transnational Environmental Activism in North America: Wielding Soft Power through Knowledge Sharing?

AbstractWhile a majority of scholarship on the study of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) has focused on the role of value‐and‐belief‐sharing as these networks link activists across nations together, less has been written concerning the role of knowledge exchange among environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) in helping effect policy change. This article examines how transnational coalitions of ENGOs in North America have helped shape environmental policy across the Canada–U.S.–Mexico borders. In the paper, I explore two cases of nonstate actor mobilization: the North American Pollutant Release, and Transfer Registry Project and the Citizen Submission on Enforcement Matters. In this article, I bridge notions of “soft power” with scholarship on knowledge sharing, thereby showing that nonstate actors use it as a model to build stronger transnational coalitions, effecting pressure on industry and intergovernmental actors, and provide policy input in environmental decision making across borders.

The democratic deficit of transnational environmental activism: a case study of e‐waste governance in India

AbstractThe literature on transnational activism often associates environmental NGOs with democratic legitimacy, grassroots representation and environmental justice. Authors employ case studies to demonstrate how engaging in transnational networks increases the political agency of environmental NGOs. Yet, there is a tendency mostly to select successful cases. In this article, I investigate the political activities of the environmental NGO, Toxics Link, surrounding the recycling of electronic waste in India. Based on qualitative research, this study shows how the political incorporation of Toxics Link in transnational advocacy networks and domestic governance networks constrains their political agency. The structural exclusion of e‐waste labourers from Indian policy negotiations negates the discursive claims of legitimacy, representation and justice. These incorporation processes create a democratic deficit. I use the insights gained from this case study to provide a critical assessment of theories of transnational environmental activism.

Global Capital, National Development and Transnational Environmental Activism: Conflict and the Three Gorges Dam

This article uses the controversy over China's Three Gorges Dam to examine the interaction between the Chinese state and transnational civil society that has unfolded in the global arena. It uses the human rights disputes and the emergent Chinese “hydropower discourse” to explore the global politics of the dam. The conflict flared up in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. The increasing interconnectedness of the world enabled the Three Gorges technocrats to solicit global capital for the project. Transnational activists, however, mobilised opposition to the dam through public opinion forums, including the Internet, and cross-border networking to seek to constrain the Chinese government's agenda. They also championed principles of environmental protection and human rights as a challenge to the investment policies of multinational corporations. But the Chinese developmentalists insisted on a particularist interpretation of people's rights. Furthermore, dam advocates turned the tables on the opponents by appropriating the environmental principle of sustainability and forming a new “hydropower discourse.” The struggle illuminates the complex interplay of socio-political forces embedded in the global-national-local nexus of exchange. The paper addresses the tension between developmentalism and environmentalism, particular interests and universal values, and national sovereignty and global activism.

Chapter 7 - State-led social boundary change: Transnational environmental activism, ‘ecoterrorism’ and September 11

(2012). Chapter 7 - State-led social boundary change: Transnational environmental activism, ‘ecoterrorism’ and September 11. Routledge Online Studies on the Olympic and Paralympic Games: Vol. 1, Power and Transnational Activism, pp. 130-150.

Transnational environmental activism in Central Asia: the coupling of domestic law and international conventions

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, local environmental activism in Central Asia was widespread. While environmental activists had managed to create mutually beneficial alliances with the titular elite during the Soviet period, these alliances disintegrated as the Soviet successor states became increasingly integrated into the international system. In their place, new transnational alliances emerged between local environmental activists and international non-governmental organisations. Yet, the ensuing transnational alliances did not merely entail international activists exerting pressure from outside on their domestic governments. Rather, local environmental activists have also carved out a separate realm for independent political action, facilitated by the coupling of national law with international conventions. Then, over time, environmental activism has moved from dependent activism to interdependent activism. In order to explicate the ways in which the coupling of national law with international conventions influences environmental activism and outcomes, evidence is provided from petroleum development at the Karachaganak and Kashagan oil fields in Kazakhstan and environmental activism in Turkmenistan. In particular, the authors examine how the 1998 Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (i.e. Aarhus Convention) has transformed environmental activism and domestic law in Central Asia.

Horizontal Politics: Transnational Environmental Activism and Global Cultural Change

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engage in a host of activities to influence world political affairs. They lobby states, pressure economic actors and alter cultural frames to shape widespread thought and behavior. Most scholars of international relations ignore the cultural dimension of NGO work either because it seemingly lacks clear political significance or because alterations in cultural life are difficult to gauge. In this article I demonstrate that, while less direct and obvious, NGO cultural challenges may have, ironically, more political relevance than conventional forms of activism and engagement. Additionally, I show that, notwithstanding formidable methodological challenges, there are ways to measure shifts in broad ideational frameworks—even across borders—and scholars can adopt these in productive ways. I develop both these points through a study of environmental NGOs. The article's findings, however, can be generalized beyond environmental organizations to all types of NGOs.