Environmentalism Resistance And Solidarity

Drawing from a rich mix of survey data, interviews, and access to internal meetings, Brian Doherty and Timothy Doyle show how FoEI has developed a distinctive environmentalism, which allows for the differences in context between regions and across the North-South divide.

Drawing from a rich mix of survey data, interviews, and access to internal meetings, Brian Doherty and Timothy Doyle show how FoEI has developed a distinctive environmentalism, which allows for the differences in context between regions and across the North-South divide.

Ecological Solidarity and the Kurdish Freedom Movement: Thought, Practice, Challenges, and Opportunities is a pioneering text that examines the ideas about social ecology and communalism behind the evolving political structures in the Kurdish region. The collection evaluates practical green projects, including the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement, Jinwar women’s eco-village, food sovereignty in a solidarity economy, environmental defenders in Iranian Kurdistan, and Make Rojava Green Again. Contributors also critically reflect on such contested themes as Alevi nature beliefs, anti-dam demonstrations, human-rights law and climate change, the Gezi Park protests, and forest fires. Throughout this volume, the contributors consider the formidable challenges to the Kurdish initiatives, such as state repression, damaged infrastructure, and oil dependency. Nevertheless, contributors assert that the West has much to learn from the Kurdish ecological paradigm, which offers insight into social movement debates about development and decolonization.

Health figures centrally in late twentieth-century environmental activism. There are many competing claims about the health of ecosystems, the health of the planet, and the health of humans, yet there is little agreement among the likes of D.C. lobbyists, grassroots organizers, eco-anarchist collectives, and science-based advocacy organizations about whose health matters most, or what health even means. In this book, Jennifer Thomson untangles the complex web of political, social, and intellectual developments that gave rise to the multiplicity of claims and concerns about environmental health. Thomson traces four strands of activism from the 1970s to the present: the environmental lobby, environmental justice groups, radical environmentalism and bioregionalism, and climate justice activism. By focusing on health, environmentalists were empowered to intervene in the rise of neoliberalism, the erosion of the regulatory state, and the decimation of mass-based progressive politics. Yet, as this book reveals, an individualist definition of health ultimately won out over more communal understandings. Considering this turn from collective solidarity toward individual health helps explain the near paralysis of collective action in the face of planetary disaster.

The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world’s largest democracies – Brazil, India, and the United States – now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

Environment and Politics 4th Edition is a concise introduction to this ever-expanding interdisciplinary field, explaining and illustrating how concepts, conflicts, movements, political systems and the practices of policy-making can be analysed in a systematic way. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the key themes that shape the field, and examines a diverse range of environmental problems and policy solutions found in different countries and cultures. The new edition has been extensively revised to include up-to-date explanation of green political theories and traditions and the debates that shape action on the ground. It contains an expanded discussion of environmental movements that work in the Global North, the Global South and transnationally. Greater attention has been given to the roles of corporations, non-governmental organizations, the media, consumers and citizens in order to reflect the changing nature of environmental governance. The text also focuses throughout on debates surrounding the concepts of environmental security, environmental justice and environmental citizenship. The authors examine the institutional responses of parliaments, administrative, legal and electoral systems; the more informal politics of social movements; and the politics of markets and the corporate sector as they respond to (or resist) the greening of societies. This engaging text has been fully updated to offer readers a greater understanding of international, national and local environmental politics as well as expected future developments at all levels. Environment and Politics continues to use illustrative examples of conflicts, people and events spanning North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, giving it global perspective and relevance. Each chapter includes questions for debate as well as a list of key words and resources for independent research. This successful textbook remains a key resource for undergraduate and postgraduate studies across politics, environmental studies, development studies and human geography courses.

A provocative and urgent essay collection that asks how we can live with hope in “an age of ecocide” Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist—an ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on “sustainability” rather than the defense of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. He gave up what he saw as the false hope that residents of the First World would ever make the kind of sacrifices that might avert the severe consequences of climate change. Full of grief and fury as well as passionate, lyrical evocations of nature and the wild, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist gathers the wave-making essays that have charted the change in Kingsnorth’s thinking. In them he articulates a new vision that he calls “dark ecology,” which stands firmly in opposition to the belief that technology can save us, and he argues for a renewed balance between the human and nonhuman worlds. This iconoclastic, fearless, and ultimately hopeful book, which includes the much-discussed “Uncivilization” manifesto, asks hard questions about how we’ve lived and how we should live.

A provocative reassessment of the relationship between states and environmental politics in Africa From climate-related risks such as crop failure and famine to longer-term concerns about sustainable urbanization, environmental justice, and biodiversity conservation, African states face a range of environmental issues. As Carl Death demonstrates, the ways in which they are addressing them have important political ramifications, and challenge current understandings of green politics. Death draws on almost a decade of research to reveal how central African environmental politics are to the transformation of African states.