Account for the emergence and growth of the transnational environmentalist movement

Also, the environmentalist movement has begun to frame the issues it pursues in a more open light to people of wide-ranging political persuasions. Rather than focussing on the political terminology of individual property rights, it has begun to focus on issues relating to public good .  This is an important change, because traditionally, particularly in America the concept of environmental protection has its origins in the Government’s protection of an individual’s property rights, for example, one individual has no right to pollute the water of another.  In the past, this environmental idea often became bogged down in political philosophical debate leading to major divides between the political right and left.  However, because of the transnational movements focus on public goods, it has been able to steer clear of the majority of the divisions created by the more traditional property rights strand of environmentalism cutting across “different peoples classes, regions and cultures”.  For example, when it comes to rainforest destruction, the movement argues the point that this destruction is not generally in the global public good, as on a global scale we may lose cures for diseases and resources, and the destruction will lead to climate change. Similarly with respect to the burning of fossil fuels, it brings factions together by saying it is not in the public’s interests to harm the environment or be dependent on unsustainable resources, this a clever use of frame bridging by the movement, which is where movement has been able associate environmental issues with other public concerns.  The wide net it casts, means that people no longer have to view environmental politics in such a divisionary political fashion, since it brings together members of both the right and left .  “environmentalism is less a set of universally agreed upon principles than it is a frame within which the relations among a variety of claims about resource use, property, rights and power may be reconfigured”.  This wide appeal and lack of partisanship has naturally allowed the movement to prosper in all areas on the globe amongst all manner of politically inclined people.

Mobilizing structures

The clever ‘frame bridging’ of the movement has made it accessible to people of all political persuasions and socio-economic backgrounds, and created the conditions for a variety of different mobilizing structures. These wide ranging structures have been very important to the rise of the various movements, including conservationist groups, research groups, campaigning groups and transnational coalitions.  

The various conservationist organisations provide the environmental movements with an important base due to their long history, with long running organisations such as the Commission for International Protection of Nature which started in 1923 and the World Wildlife Fund created in 1962. These well known and reassuringly homely brands were extremely important in establishing the movement’s framing of public good.  At the same time they provided a recognised and unintimidating face, creating a safe base for the movement to build on and raise the profile of a variety of issues which the majority of individuals found easy to support.  The research structures have given the movement the credibility and drive it requires to push forward and grow. While many transnational movements such as the anti-war movement have had to trade on morality and play on people’s emotions, the environmental movement with structures such as the International Institute for Environment and Development has been able to produce hard scientific evidence and promote itself not as a philosophical movement but as one based on hard facts and scientific evidence.  By making these facts accessible and digestible to the majority of individuals, campaigning groups such as Green Peace provide a work base for those who are actively pursuing the goals of the movement and spreading its message, and also provide a loud canvassing voice to encourage the growth of the movement as a whole.  Likewise, trans-national coalitions such as the Climate Action Network provide the framework to allow, and figureheads to bring together, the wide ranging desires of the people within the movement - something that the anti-globalisation movements often lack.

These structures, while not wholly responsible for the movement’s success, are vitally important to the movement’s growth, providing the framework, leadership, and information required for a successful trans-national social movements.  While many other transnational movements are stagnated, this transnational movement seems  to be moving from strength to strength through the structures it has fashioned,  creating an ever growing web to allow more people to join and voice their opinion on a range of very well framed global issue.    

Opportunity structures

The role that opportunity structures have had on the growth of the environmental movement in my opinion cannot be over stated.  The pivotal role of environmental man-made disasters, such as the contamination caused by Chernobyl and Bhopal, has greatly aided the movements growth in recent years.  Through the use of better information techniques and the movement’s powerful grass roots mobilisation structures, it has encouraged people to fear for the environment and to be concerned about their impact on it by “establishing what counts as adequate description, explanation and social response in the wake of environmental disaster”. The movements are then able to capitalise on these fears by telling the world that they have the answers to the environmental problems -  be it engaging in alternative power sources which are neither fossil fuels or nuclear power, or encouraging people to live in balance with nature, as then they shall be safe, it is well generated and well used fear politics.    

Scientific advances have also changed the operational structures that the movement has had to operate in.  Science has become progressively more able to actively demonstrate the effects that humans have on the environment, for instance certain chemicals used in aerosols depleting the o-zone layer or leading to climate change.  These new opportunity structures have greatly aided the growth of the movement as a whole, since it has meant that the movement has been able to deal in facts not in hypothetical effects that other trans-national social movements deal in, they can actively demonstrate the effects of certain behaviour and the cure for environmental problems.  And thanks to research mobilizing structures, they are able to create these new opportunity structures themselves, by giving the movement easy access to  empirical evidence “scientific analysis provides significant information to enviromentalists” that inturn lead to the growth of the movements expanding the mobilizing structures which are creating and backing up the opportunity structures it is a powerful circle of growth.

Finally, the change in values of the post-industrial age has led to a political opportunity structure which has allowed the main stream success of the movement.  This is due to the concern of economically developed states citizenry, as the move into post industrialisation.  Movment away from their industrial economy, which would have been diametrically opposed to the environmental movements goals.  A post industrial society has arisen which has become free to be more concerned with the very framing of the trans-national environmental movement which is the public good.  This led to the establishment of powerful international agency such as the Intergovernmental panel of climate change (IPCC) which was established to “provide an objective source of information about climate change”, and the fact even in the US you have right wing politicians such as governor Schwarzenegger actively courting the environmental vote when in 2006 he “signed the nations first environmental law”.  While, at the same time, left wing politicians in other countries such as the mayor of London (Ken Livingston) courting the same environmental vote.  This change in opportunity structures has meant the environmental movement has been able to demonstrate tangible political success and change.  Moving from the Kyoto protocol to the investment in carbon neutral tech.  These success only make the movement even stronger, as success in making real political change which alludes many trans national movements such as the anti-globalisation movements, means the movement is viewed as more viable and more mainstream to an even larger number of people effectively increasing the movements lobbying power and thus chance for even further political success creating a circle of success and growth.

Conclusion

Overall the environmental movements success when compared to other transnational social movements.  Is down to the changing opportunity structures, the arrival of the post industrial age, has meant economically developed states are free to support the movements goals.  Unlike anti-war or anti globalisation movements, that go against the vested interest of the most highly developed states.  Also the advances in technology have meant that the movements goals are hard to argue against, thus they have dissolved into the mainstream and far from being counter culture, the environmentalist movement is now a large part of all peoples lives, from congestion charges, to hybrid car production, the movement has the support of the majority of the political elite as well as prominent sections of the industrial powers are now seeking to gain from the success of the movement.    

Bibliography

Books

Ken Conca, green planet blues

Timothy Doyle, Enviromental movements in majority and minority worlds

Kim Fortun, advocacy after Bhopal

Articles

Robert Timmons:- The globalization and development reader

Websites

www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm

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