Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns
for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of
the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to
incorporate the concerns of non-human elements. Environmentalism advocates the
preservation, restoration and/or improvement of the natural environment, and
may be referred to as a movement to control pollution. For this
reason, concepts such as a land ethic, environmental
ethics, biodiversity, ecology and the biophilia hypothesis figure
predominantly. At its crux, environmentalism is an attempt to balance relations
between humans and the various natural systems on which they depend in such a
way that all the components are accorded a proper degree of respect. The exact
nature of this balance is controversial and there are many different ways for
environmental concerns to be expressed in practice. Environmentalism and
environmental concerns are often represented by the color green, but this association has been
appropriated by the marketing industries and is a key tactic
of greenwashing. Environmentalism is opposed
by anti-environmentalism, which takes a skeptical stance against many
environmentalist perspectives.
According to the Oxford dictionary the words
«ecology» and «environment» first took on their modern meanings in the early
1960s. The words existed before, but with scientific definitions. It was in 1963
that Aldous Huxley gave the word «ecology» its current sense in a paper called
«The Politics of Ecology» - a title which, however banal it may seem today, was
linguistically innovative then. At this time too, environmentalism ceased to
connote a scientific theory about the relative weights of nature and nurture
and entered common parlance as a major new force in public affairs. This does
not mean that there was no action on what we now describe as environmental
issues before the 1960s, only that there was no word for it.
Perhaps the first major antipollution action
of the industrial era was UK’s Alkali Act of 1863. The history of cooperative
action by groups of countries to tackle environmental problems whose effects
extended across international borders goes back almost as far. It was in 1872
that the Swiss first proposed the establishment of an international commission
to protect migrating birds. Probably first ever international environmental
agreement was the 1900 Convention for the Preservation of Animals, Birds and
Fish in Africa, signed in London by the European colonial powers with the
intention of preserving game in east Africa by limiting ivory exports from the
region. The late 19th and early 20th century also saw an international
convention to protect fur seals and a US-Canadian agreement on the protection
of migrating birds. The newly born clutch of international organizations of the
first half of 20th century often took on environmental responsibilities: the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for conservation of natural resources,
the International Labour Organization (ILO) for worker protection against
occupational environmental hazards and the International Maritime Organization
(IMO) for marine pollution control. The first effort at global environmental
management may date from 1909 with an unsuccessful US initiative to convene a
world conference on natural resource conservation. Probably the first global
resource management instrument actually agreed was the whaling convention of
1931, which led to the establishment of the International Whaling Commission in
1946. The most striking feature of this prehistory of international
environmental activity is its emphasis on conservation and wildlife problems.
This stemmed from the early rise of nature preservation movements in the UK and
US.
The first pollution problem to receive
extended attention at the international level was the discharge of oil from
tankers into the oceans. This was already a source of concern in the 1920s,
largely because of its effects on birds and beaches. After a number of failed
international initiatives on the subject, the British government prompted by
special interest groups such as bird protection societies, convened a meeting
in London in 1954 which agreed upon the first ever international instrument to
tackle pollution: the International Convention for the Prevention of Oil
Pollution. This agreement was prophetic in a number of ways. Its principal
negotiators and early signatories were the developed countries of the North
Atlantic, with developing countries joining much more slowly. A key motivation
driving the parties to seek progress through international agreement rather
than domestic legislation was their determination that their tanker fleets
should not be placed at a competitive disadvantage by being subjected to
tougher domestic regulation than that imposed by other countries on their
fleets. The agreement was strengthened by rounds of amendments in 1962, 1969
and 1971. Statistics suggest than it made a significant contribution to the
reduction of deliberate oil discharges into the oceans. A 1981 IMO report concluded
that such discharges fell by about 30 % over the 1970s, a period when the
amount of oil transported by sea increased by about 17 %. The oil agreements
were very much the product of a government driven process which attracted
little public interest except among special interest group like the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds. Public concern played a much larger part
in the other international agreement of the period which had a significant
environmental component: he Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. But while
public interest in this treaty was to some extent motivated by growing fears
about the effects of radioactive fallout, this was clearly only a subsidiary
consideration in the minds of both publics and governments by comparison with
the military and security applications.
LIFT-OFF
In the early 1960s, the genuinely new
phenomenon of widespread public fears on the general subject of pollution
emerged and the concept of environmentalism entered the language. The
catalysing event which is often taken as marking the birth of this new
environmental consciousness was the publication of Silent Spring in
1962. Rachel Carson’s book stands at the head of and has in many cases been the
inspiration for the long stream of environmentalist literature which has
followed it. It sold half a million copies in hardback, was on the US
bestseller list for 31 weeks and was published in 15 other countries. Once
incorporated into the vocabulary, the environment moved with extraordinary
rapidity up the agenda of public concern. In the US, the number of opinion poll
respondents who identified pollution as among the most important problems for
government quadrupled between 1965-70. The period also saw the establishment of
a spate of new, and in general much more radical environmental groups, notably
the Environment Defense Fund (1967) and the Natural Resources Defense Council
(1970). The US pattern was broadly repeated throughout the developed world.
Studies on France, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands all
showed a significant rise in public concern about environmental issues through
the 1960s and early 1970s. The first national «Green Party» was established in
New Zealand in 1972. The case of Japan is particularly interesting. In a polity
with a well-earned reputation for public passivity and conformity, the first
ever explosion of citizen activism was driven by concern about environmental
pollution. By 1973, about 3000 environmentally concerned citizens’ movements
had come into existence.
CAUSES
1. First and foremost, pollution had in fact
been rising. The period since Second World War had seen an unprecedented growth
of material wealth. Gross world product more than doubled between 1950 and 1970
and a lot of this growth took place in highly effluent industries.
2. World population increased by about 40 %
between 1950 and 1970, thus causing anxiety about whether the planet could
support or tolerate the pollution from, the exponentially rising number of
people living on it.
3. Western press took up the issue. The
quantity of press coverage was in fact boosted by a number of significant
disasters, which, as any journalist will confirm, always make a good copy.
4. A counter revolutionary culture was
developed in the 1960s.
5. Nuclear risks (1963-Cuban missile crisis).
NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM
During the 1980s the growing awareness of global
warming and other climate change issues brought environmentalism into greater
public debate. In 1986 the international conservation organization the World Wildlife Fund renamed itself
the Worldwide Fund For Nature
to reflect a shift to
a more strategic approach. WWF brought together
religious authorities representing the 5 major world
religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism) to prepare the 1986 Assisi
Declarations. Today environmentalism has also changed
to deal with new issues such as global warming, overpopulation and genetic
engineering. Many youth of today’s society have become
more aware of the state of the planet and are deeming themselves
environmentalists. In the future, many
of the jobs opening up will have environmentalist aspects.
THE STOCHOLM CONFERENCE
Sweden first
suggested to ECOSOC (United Nations
Economic and Social Council) in 1968 the idea of having a UN conference to focus on
human interactions with the environment. ECOSOC passed resolution 1346
supporting the idea. General Assembly Resolution 2398 in 1969 decided to
convene a conference in 1972 and mandated a set of reports from the UN
secretary-general suggested that the conference focus on "stimulating and
providing guidelines for action by national government and international
organizations" facing environmental issues. 1970-1972 period was preparatory and each
country was expected to prepare a comprehensive report on its environmental
situation and the policies it was putting into place to deal with the problems.
Finally, 110 such reports were received. The Western enthusiasm for conference
was not shared elsewhere in the world. The communist bloc took the position
that pollution was the product of capitalism, and consequently a problem from
which they did not suffer. The USSR and the East Europeans then dropped out of
the preparatory process and the conference itself because of a separate Cold
War dispute hinging on the international status of East Germany. Stockholm was
the first high-profile political attempt to draw the developing countries into
international discussion of environmental issues. It thus put on display for
the first time the central tension which has dogged global environmental
discussion ever since. The major developing countries approached the conference
with caution bordering on hostility. Indira Gandhi of India for instance said
that it’s the poverty, not the pollution was major problem for her country.
The conference, in striking contrast to most
UN meetings, seems to have generated a feeling of excitement and anticipation.
This was the first UN theme conference. Many of the participants were young,
and as yet uncynical about the tortuous and wearisome ways on international
negotiation. Many hoped that the conference would mark a breakthrough on the
environment and a major step towards effective international action to succour
the biosphere. Stockholm had two other features which were to become highly
characteristic of international environmental business. The first was the
extent of media interest. There were over 100 journalists present, and the
substantial coverage which they produced further raised the public profile of
environmental issues, both in the West and more widely.
The second distinctive feature of Stockholm
was the involvement of non-governmental organizations. The rapid growth of the
environmental NGO movement in the West, and its international character from an
early date, has already been mentioned. The movement was such an evident force
in Western environmental policy-making that the conference organizers decided
to give it a major role at Stockholm, and throughout the preparatory process.
They therefore organized an ‘environmental forum’ for non-governmental debate
and activity to run in parallel with the conference proper. Some 500 NGOs participated. These included
all the mainstream Western environmental organizations as well as a huge
variety of scientific groups and other special interest groups concerned with
the environment. There were also a few NGOs from developing countries.
The Stockholm process was designed to produce
what we have defined as a level one response to world environmental problems –
political statements intended as a basis for later, legally binding, action at
levels two and three. The key products of the conference were three in number:
- The
Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (The
Stockholm Declaration), consisting of 26 principles (next page) as a
foundation for future development.
- The
Action Plan for the Human Environment, consisting of 109 recommendations
for governmental and intergovernmental action across the full range of
environmental policy ranging through species conservation, forests and
atmospheric and marine pollution to development policy, technology
transfer and the impact of environment on trade.
- Resolutions
agreed by the conference to set up a new UN environment body and fund.
26 PRINCIPLES
1. Human rights must
be asserted, apartheid and colonialism
condemned.
2. Natural resources must be safeguarded.
3. The Earth’s capacity to produce renewable resources must be maintained.
4. Wildlife must be safeguarded.
5. Non-renewable resources must be shared and not exhausted.
6. Pollution must not exceed the environment’s capacity to clean itself.
7. Damaging oceanic pollution must be prevented.
8. Development is needed to improve the environment.
9. Developing countries therefore need assistance.
10. Developing countries
need reasonable prices for exports to carry out environmental management.
11. Environment
policy must not hamper development.
12. Developing
countries need money to develop environmental safeguards.
13. Integrated development planning is needed.
14. Rational planning should resolve conflicts between environment and
development.
15. Human settlements must be planned to eliminate environmental problems.
16. Governments should plan their own appropriate
population policies.
17. National institutions must plan development of states’ natural resources.
18. Science and technology must be used to improve the environment.
19. Environmental
education is essential.
20. Environmental
research must be promoted, particularly in developing countries.
21. States may
exploit their resources as they wish but must not endanger others.
22. Compensation is due to states thus endangered.
23. Each nation must establish its own standards.
24. There must be cooperation on international issues.
25. International organizations should help to improve the environment.
26. Weapons of mass destruction must be eliminated.
Finally, there are the resolutions agreed at
the end of the conference. These marked the end of a long and difficult debate.
One of the aims of Stockholm was of course to set guidelines for future
handling of environmental issues by the international system. A number of UN
agencies already had environmental responsibilities of one sort or another: the
IAEA for atomic energy, FAO for agriculture and forests, UNESCO for science and
WHO for environmental health. In the manner of such organizations they tended
to see the upsurge of Western political interest in the environment as a
justification for expanded activity in their particular areas and, they hoped,
for larger budgets. Other multilateral organizations, notably the big
development funds, found their activities being examined from a point of view
which was deeply dubious about the developmental philosophy which they had
hitherto been pursuing. In assessing the overall consequences of Stockholm it
is helpful to distinguish between the formal and the informal products of the
conference. With regard to the formal products, and with the partial exception
of UNEP, it is difficult to argue that they have had more than a marginal
effect on the subsequent history of international environmental action. The
Stockholm Declaration has not become the guiding hand for international law
that it was intended to be. The action plan provided material for the early
work plans of UNEP and other relevant UN agencies, and references to it
appeared for a short time in a variety of national and international fora. But
it is very hard to argue that it did more than catalogue existing environmental
concerns and activities, rather than redirect them or push them forward in any
significant way.
In terms of its
formal product it is difficult to view Stockholm as much more than a cosmetic
event. It demonstrated to Western publics that their governments were taking
the international environment seriously. It exposed developed countries and
developing countries to the gulf between their respective views of the
environmental issue and demonstrated the impossibility of conducting global
discussions on environmental problems without also facing the developmental
issues linked to them. This lack of fundamental agreement meant that many of
the conclusions were vacuous or doomed to non-implementation. The institutional
and financial outcomes, while eye-catching were marginal. Over subsequent
years, international activity on the environment would depend far more on
political pressures in individual states than on any agreement or machinery
that Stockholm created. On
the other hand, Stockholm was the first full-scale display of the new
environmental diplomacy, conducted largely in the open with intense media and
NGO attention.
Dr. Ozan ÖRMECİ
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
Brenton, Tony. 1994. The Greening of
Machiavelli. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., pp. 1-35.
