Christopher Rootes

Environmental protest in western Europe

Preface List of Contributors List of Figures List of Tables Abbreviations and Accronyms 1. The Transformation of Environmental Activism: An Introduction 2. Britain 3. France 4. Germany 5. Greece 6. Italy 7. Spain 8. The Basque Country 9. Sweden 10. Conclusion: Environmental Protest Transformed? Appendix A: The Methodology of Protest Event Analysis and the Media Politics of Reporting Environmental Protest Events Appendix B: The TEA (Transformation of Environmental Activism) Project Index

Acting Locally: the character, contexts and significance of local environmental mobilisations

Abstract Local environmental campaigns are ubiquitous and recurrent, even in times when environmental issues are not salient on national agenda. Yet their relationship to translocal environmental movements and issues has been relatively neglected. Local environmental campaigners are variously related to national and local organisations, and the peculiarities of place are one factor in that variation. But place itself acquires meaning through campaigns, and communities forge identity even as they mobilise against threats to their survival. The relationship between local campaigns and global environmental issues is problematic, but the ways in which local mobilisations often combine issues of environment, economic justice and democracy mirror the emerging agenda of transnational environmentalism.

Environmental movements, waste and waste infrastructure: an introduction

The increasing amount and complex nature of municipal waste presents problems of management. Recognising the inadequacies of landfill, waste management authorities proposed incineration, but large-scale incineration provoked more public concern and protest. Concerns about toxicity of incinerator emissions led to tighter regulation, but as evidence of the impacts of air pollution upon human health has hardened, opposition to incineration has persisted. The inequitable distribution of exposure to waste-related risks has generalised demands for environmental justice. There is variation in the extent to which anti-incinerator campaigns are networked among themselves and with environmental NGOs, but such networking has increased and is now transnational. New technologies mitigate some of the hazards of modern waste management but are unlikely to eliminate public protest over the siting of waste infrastructure.

Facing South? British Environmental Movement Organisations and the Challenge of Globalisation

Abstract Environmental movement organisations in Britain have responded differently to globalisation. WWF, Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace all have transnational origins, affiliations and aspirations, but whereas WWF and FoE have broadened their agenda to embrace the concerns of the global South with sustainable development and social justice, Greenpeace appears little changed. Explanations are sought in their forms of engagement with other, more powerful actors and with local supporters. Whereas Greenpeace has mainly worked alone on strictly environmental issues, WWF has engaged partners in government and corporations and joined campaign coalitions on global issues. FoE has eschewed corporate partnerships, but has played a leading role in campaign coalitions within and beyond the environmental movement, including the emergent global justice movement. Attentive to the concerns of its local groups and prominent in FoE International, FoE is uniquely exposed to grassroots pressures and influences from the South.

Acting globally, thinking locally? Prospects for a global environmental movement

Because understanding of global environmental problems is very limited except amongst the most highly educated populations of the most industrialised countries, it is not surprising that the latter should dominate environmental movement action on global issues, and that other, less highly educated people should be involved principally in local environmental campaigns. However, the success of local campaigns depends increasingly on the actions of non‐local actors, and solutions even to local environmental problems demand transnational organisation. Effective transnational environmental movement organisations, however, are neither democratically accountable nor simply universalist in their assumptions. The prospects of a genuinely global environmental movement may nevertheless be improved by education.

The first climate change election? The Australian general election of 24 November 2007

Australia, under the leadership of John Howard and his Liberal-National coalition government, acquired notoriety as the only developed country other than the US to decline to ratify the Kyoto protocol. So when the first official act of Kevin Rudd, the incoming Labor Prime Minister elected on 24 November 2007, was to sign the instrument of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, it was seen as a sea-change in Australia’s policy. The announcement of the news at the UN climate talks in Bali was greeted with sustained applause: the global politics of climate change appeared to have turned a corner, the US was isolated and a new, more inclusive agreement seemed possible (Christoff 2008).

Denied, deferred, triumphant? Climate change, carbon trading and the Greens in the Australian federal election of 21 August 2010

In November 2007, the Labor party won a convincing victory and, in a symbolic break with the past, the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, immediately announced his government’s intention to sign the Kyoto protocol (Rootes 2008). The introduction of a greenhouse gas reduction strategy was a key priority of the government. Yet, less than three years later, despite Australia’s having come relatively unscathed through the global financial crisis, the proposed emissions trading scheme (ETS) had been deferred indefinitely, Rudd had been deposed by his own party, and Labor, which had been riding high in the polls only a few months earlier, had lost its parliamentary majority and was able to cling to power only with the support of the Greens and three independent members of parliament (MPs). The Greens, meanwhile, enjoyed their best electoral results on record, increasing their vote by some 50%, and for the first time at a general election, gained a seat in the House of Representatives as well as record representation in the Senate.

Environmental movements and campaigns against waste infrastructure in the United States

Campaigns against waste infrastructure in the US emerged in the 1970s against a background of increasing public anxiety about the impacts of high-tech industrialism upon the environment and human health. Independently of major environmental NGOs, and unlike earlier anti-nuclear campaigns, which also involved grassroots protests, waste campaigners quickly became networked and raised new issues of environmental justice. Initially focused upon landfills and hazardous waste, the environmental justice movement took up and amplified local protests against waste incineration. Independently of popular protest, changes in public policy and the economics of the waste industry also contributed to the unpopularity of waste incineration, and recycling regained appeal. Campaigns against waste infrastructure have contributed to the broadening of the US environmental movement as well as to ecological modernisation.

Global Visions: Global Civil Society and the Lessons of European Environmentalism

To illuminate the obstacles to the development of a global civil society, the experience of the most developed transnational social movement—the environmental movement—in the most developed supranational political system—the European Union—is considered. National differences are shown to be persistent and there is little evidence of Europeanization. It is argued that the impediments to the development of a global civil society are yet greater and that, despite the advent of antiglobalization protests, global civil society remains an aspiration rather thanan accomplished fact

From local conflict to national issue: when and how environmental campaigns succeed in transcending the local

As power is increasingly removed from local to national and global arenas, local environmental activists struggle both to secure local redress of their grievances and to place their concerns on supra-local agendas. Yet some succeed in doing so. In order to elucidate the conditions that facilitate such successes, campaigns concerning three issues – road-building, waste incineration and airport expansion – are examined. In each, local campaigners in England have, at least briefly, achieved national attention. Local campaigns are most likely to succeed in elevating their concerns to the status of national issues where they frame those concerns as translocal issues by networking with others with similar grievances. They are most likely to do this with the assistance of non-local actors such as national environmental non-governmental organisations, assistance that is most likely to be provided where the issue concerns a problematic government policy, and to be sustained only so long as that issue is nationally salient and consistent with the campaign priorities of those organisations. The rise of climate change as the ‘master frame’ of environmentalism has had diverse implications for local campaigns.