Global ChangeIntersection of Nature and Culture

American environmentalism: Distinct flavors, porous borders, and effective action

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Earth First.  Greenpeace.  Sierra Club.  Apollo Alliance.  The Nature Conservancy.  The Wilderness Society.  National Resources Defense Council.  Sustainable South Bronx.  350.org— Organizations that share a common interest in the environment but with fundamental philosophical differences.

In an earlier post, Can’t we all just get along?, we looked at a paper by Clare Saunders, who suggested that social movements like environmentalism are comprised of many different organizations, each fostering a collective identity that is often incompatible with other organizations in the same movement.  Ordinarily, we think of the overall movement goals as having a binding effect among these subgroups.  Apparently not.  Her work suggested that people form identities with other individuals cut from the same ideological cloth rather than the identity of the social movement itself.

In a recent issue^1,2 of Organization and Environment, Debra Salazar designed a study that lets us look at this problem in more detail.  Specifically, to what extent are environmentalists identifying with different flavors of environmentalism, and to what extent are beliefs shared across individuals?   Where disputes arise, what’s driving them? How can coalitions be built, and why might certain groups be better positioned to lead, given the circumstances of particular environmental problems?

Here’s how she approached this challenge and what she found…

She interviewed 42 environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest, USA.  Her goal was to understand how individuals identify (or not) with a set of political claims, allowing her to define groups emerging from these responses and to identify where commonalities and differences lie.  Note that this approach is different than asking questions like, “Do you agree with environmental group x, y, or z on this issue” because that predetermines what kinds of categories exist, and it doesn’t allow us to see if there are commonalities or exactly why differences show up.

She chose several hundred political claims that spanned four broad themes, including

• democracy and citizenship (DC)
• political economic institutions and processes (PEIP)
• social justice (SJ)
• environment or nature (EN)

When presented with each claim, people ranked themselves from -5 (most unlike my view) to + 5 (most like my view).  Based on the responses, Salazar was then able to group the 42 individuals into clusters defined by similar views.

Her results:

Four environmental types emerged, each with the following general opinions about the themes (excerpted and paraphrased from Table 3):

(1) Civic republican

Mantra:

civic engagement seeking consensus around common good

Values:

• (DC) valued public deliberation with a view that common good will emerge; work within existing political institutions
• (PEIP) need bioregional institutions; policies are moving in the right direction so stick with them
• (SJ) protect both economic livelihood and environment; we don’t owe landowners compensation for protecting the environment
• (EN) nature and people are part of spiritual whole

Representative perspectives (excerpts):

Being pro-business is a way to educate people and bring them around to responsible behavior…We need to be responsive to how people can have a livelihood, to create economies that are tailored to local ecological circumstances…I rarely go to church anymore but I do need to get out regularly in God’s creation.

(2) Liberal ecocentric

Mantra:

Scientific enlightenment and liberal democracy in the protection of nature against  human forces of destruction

Values:

• (DC) activism is essential to reclaim democracy; compromise can undermine goals
• (PEIP) political system is broken; corporations have taken over; science has priority over politics and culture
• (SJ) humans must adapt to protect the environment; we don’t owe landowners compensation for protecting the environment
• (EN) protect other species; people have lost touch with nature; population is a central problem

Representative perspectives (excerpts):

Businesses have control over politics. I see it getting a lot worse before politicians will make the necessary changes…Until a broad cross section of the public is willing to take on responsibilities of citizenship, we will be in trouble…I would like to believe that indigenous people have a right to carry on cultural traditions. But their desire to do so does not supersede environmental interest . . . I’m a meat-is-murder kind of person. We all need to make sacrifices….I’m ticked off at the loggers for siding with the corporations . . . Big union guys bought the corporate line and they should have known better…Yeah, people lost their jobs and . . . nobody makes buggy whips anymore either…I see no racism in the environmental movement. If you walk into a room of environmentalists they’ll be mostly white, but not because they’re racist. It’s because they have the money, time, and vision into what is wrong…We’re in trouble because of corporate power that dominates the globe, not because of racism.

(3) Green justice

Mantra:

environment is embedded in race/class hierarchies in the political economy

Values:

• (DC) we have a right to a healthy environment; activism is essential to achieve goals
• (PEIP) political institutions are too responsive to corporations; experts don’t have all the answers
• (SJ) address race-based inequalities; respect autonomy of indigenous cultures; find ways to protect livelihood and environment
• (EN) environment is more than wilderness; protect a balance of nature

Representative perspectives (excerpts):

A lot of people in the environmental community see civilization as bad.
Concentration of people is good and not unnatural. To distance ourselves from cities is to distance ourselves from society, to distance ourselves from our selves…Environmentalists who think this is not important are ignorant about the political viability of their movement. Look at smart growth—most environmentalists support this and it makes a lot of sense environmentally. [But] it is politically vulnerable—why will smart growth fail? If it is only supported by environmentalists. Why would people of color and working class White people not support this? Because they don’t see that they will get any benefits; instead they fear they will be displaced…In advocating for a specific change, are we willing to support the people who will undergo the changes?

(4) Global ecocentric

Mantra:

global wilderness is central to the good life, and connection to nature is essential

Values:

• (DC) too much at stake to rely on conventional politics; need a global environmental movement
• (PEIP) corporations control politics; public lands should not be managed for profit
• (SJ) Humans must adapt to protect the environment; experts don’t have all the answers
• (EN) No right to destroy other species; nature and people are part of a spiritual whole

Representative perspectives (excerpts):

[I]t’s beyond racism. It’s sexism; it’s classism. . . speciesism…I don’t think that corporations are the only problem. People are still people even if we get rid of corporations…The root of any environmental problem—a person thinking they own something means other people don’t…the mentality around here—‘it’s my property, I’ll do what I want with it….You can find another job, but you can’t find another extinct species.

Summary:

If you compare the four groups, there are several spots where the boundaries are permeable, and there is more agreement than disagreement (potential opportunities for inter-group coalition building):

• All shared a strong sense of democratic commitment
• Most were skeptical of the ties between government and corporate America.
• None shared an instrumental view of nature (nature’s value lies in it’s usefulness to humans).
• The notion of equal consideration for all species shared broad support.
• There was a shared value of nature protection.
• Public concerns take precedent over private property claims.

Nevertheless, there were often sharp distinctions around the familiar issues of jobs and race/class:

• Although most groups believed in democratic participation, how groups handled this differed.  Civic republicans and green justice folks tend more towards coalition building, whereas the liberal and global ecocentrics believe that coalition building and seeking consensus compromises principles.
• How race gets handled in environmental discourses differed strongly between green justice and liberal ecocentrism.  Ecocentrists tend to emphasize human population growth and its threats to other species, whereas green justice folks see race and class as key antecedents to engaging people in the environment.
• How jobs get handled in environmental discourses differed strongly among groups.  Here, liberal ecocentrism and global ecocentrics join forces in opposition to protecting workers from job loss caused by environmental protection.  Instead, people and cultures have to change to adapt to environmental protection.  In contrast, green justice folks made economic concerns a necessary precondition for engaging environment.

Bottom line:

Although some commonalities exist, the major philosophical differences among environmental groups remains a challenge for coalition building.  But just because there’s disagreement, does that mean it’s hard to get things done?  Not always.  Focusing specifically on the Northwest, Salazar suggests that green justice might offer the best approach for dealing with many of the difficult challenges of past decades, such as logging, agricultural pesticides, and gentrification, which also matter to people of color and the working class.  This approach may also be the best for unifying multiple fronts of progressive politics that include environment, labor, and race/class/gender.

Related post:  Cant we all just get along?

¹Salazar, D.J. (2009) Saving Nature and Seeking Justice: Environmental Activists in the Pacific Northwest. Organization and Environment 22(2): 230-254.

²Bowdoin people can access the article here.

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Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/350org/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0