research papers on environmental movement

History of the Environmental Movement

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First Online: 31 May 2022
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research papers on environmental movement

László Erdös 2

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For a long time during our evolution, the effect humans had on their environment was not qualitatively different from the effect of several other mammal species. The agricultural revolution changed the nature-human relationship fundamentally. From this time on, the non-human world was regarded as mere raw material: nature (and indigenous peoples living in harmony with nature) had to be destroyed, subdued, dominated, or exploited. This world view was dominant until the era of Romanticism, when poets, writers, painters, and philosophers recognized the beauty of nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were among these pioneers. National parks have been set up everywhere on the globe, non-governmental conservation organizations have been launched, and international agreements have come into force. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring and the 1970 Earth Day boosted the green movement. The 1986 ban on commercial whaling, the 1987 Montreal Protocol to phase out the chemicals destroying ozone, and the 1991 treaty to protect Antarctica are among the few global successes of the green movement, while efforts to combat climate change have not yet been crowned with success. Today, the importance of green issues is increasingly recognized. John Muir said, “The battle for conservation […] is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong.” Whether we can win this war may well depend on our ability to change our relationship with nature and to abandon the tragically obsolete myth of human superiority.

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László Erdös

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Erdös, L. (2022). History of the Environmental Movement. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38948-2_144-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38948-2_144-1

Received : 10 November 2021

Accepted : 06 January 2022

Published : 31 May 2022

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-38948-2

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-38948-2

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Environmental Justice: Approaches, Dimensions, and Movements

Introduction, general overviews.

The Roots of Environmental Justice—History of the US Movement against Environmental Racism
Global and International Perspectives
Environmental Justice Issues and Empirical Case Studies
Transnational Issues
Theorization of Environmental Justice
Theological Perspectives
Legal Perspectives
Labor and Environmental Justice
Indigenous Perspectives
Feminist Perspectives
Organizations
Methods of Environmental Justice Research

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Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

Abundance Biomass Comparison Method
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Environmental Justice: Approaches, Dimensions, and Movements by Leah Temper LAST REVIEWED: 27 February 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 27 February 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0209

Environmental justice (EJ) is the struggle for access to a safe and healthy environment free from pollution and for access to the environmental resources needed for survival, well being, and social reproduction. The term environmental justice was originally born in the United States from the resistance of African American communities linked to the civil rights movement protesting toxic dumping and the siting of hazardous facilities in their communities. Scholars soon joined activists, concerned citizens, and religious leaders and communities to systematically document injustices and demonstrate that “pollution is not color blind” by demonstrating that disparities of environmental exposure exist among racial lines. EJ provided a powerful challenge to the mainstream current of the environmentalism definition of environment and nature, which focused on wilderness conservation and natural areas, such as national parks and endangered species. Environmental justice considers the inseparability of the environment from everyday life and redefines the environment as “the places where people live, work, and play.” Over time, the environmental justice framing has continually expanded to engage with multiple spatialities and forms of inequalities and has brought a far wider range of issues under the umbrella of what is the environment. In the early 21st century, environmental justice can best be understood as a shared frame and coalition of anti-toxics; labor, civil rights, indigenous, environmental, and feminist movements; and radical scholars, among others. Their common conviction is that environmental problems are largely structural and political issues that cannot be solved apart from social and economic justice and that these call for a transformative approach and the restructuring of dominant economic models, social relations, and institutional arrangements. From an initial focus on the socio-spatial distribution of “bads” (emissions, toxins) and then “goods,” (parks, green spaces, services, healthy food), environmental justice in the early 21st century encompasses a huge array of issues and has increasingly taken on transnational and transdisciplinary character and has become a meeting place for action-research among a growing network of activists, scholars, and nongovernmental organizations. EJ can be said to be a “theory in practice,” in constant coevolution and redefinition by many activist groups, international coalitions, and intellectuals.

Environmental justice (EJ) as a field of study is, by its very nature, transdisciplinary, and the overview works here come from a broad range of scholars from fields including geography, sociology, law, public health, anthropology, political science, urban and regional studies, ecology, environmental ethics, communications, etc. They include single- and multiple-authored and edited collections. For a comprehensive introduction to the field, see Holifield, et al. 2017 ; for a links between environmental justice and sustainability, see Agyeman, et al. 2003 ; for a critical assessment of the movement up to the early 21st century, see Pellow and Brulle 2005 ; and for new perspectives from critical and feminist perspectives, respectively, see the edited collections Holifield, et al. 2010 and Stein 2004 . More succinct reviews of the field can be found in Mohai, et al. 2009 , and from a social movement perspective, Szasz and Meuser 1997 . For the most recent comprehensive study on health and pollution globally, see Landrigan, et al. 2017 . Many of these works are aimed toward both activist and academic audiences and would be appropriate for undergraduate students.

Agyeman, J., R. D. Bullard, and B. Evans, eds. 2003. Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world . Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

A collection of essays from authors across disciplines that argues for centering questions of equity and social justice within sustainability discourses, introducing the concept of just sustainability that requires sustainability to take on a redistributive function. Touches on case studies from the United States and beyond on themes such as toxic waste dumps, mining, bioprospecting, petroleum exploration, and governance. Geared toward upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses.

Cole, L. W., and S. R. Foster. 2001. From the ground up: Environmental racism and the rise of the environmental justice movement . New York: New York Univ. Press.

Cole and Foster write on several US-based case studies as activist participant observers. They develop a deliberative model of governance and put forward EJ’s transformative potential for radicalizing individuals, communities, and institutions. Includes chapters written by both academics and activists. The book addresses controversial issues seldom dealt with in the movement itself as well as a set of recommendations toward its improved effectiveness.

Holifield, R., J. Chakraborty, and G. Walker, eds. 2017. The Routledge handbook of environmental justice . London: Routledge.

A large volume that provides a broad overview of the field. Can serve as an introduction and reference to the most important debates, controversies, and questions in current research. Primarily geared toward academics and students.

Holifield, R., M. Porter, and G. Walker, eds. 2010. Spaces of environmental justice . Antipode Book Series 25. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

A critical geographical perspective. Includes chapters on actor-network analysis; on the need for in-depth gender analysis in environmental justice research; and on state theories, highlighting the significant role the state plays in shaping racialized patterns of spatial injustice. Includes several case studies from the United States, Ghana, and England.

Landrigan, P. J., R. Fuller, N. J. Acosta, et al. 2017. The Lancet Commission on pollution and health. The Lancet 391.10119: 462–512.

DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32345-0

The most comprehensive assessment of global pollution and its health and economic effects to date. The report shows that pollution is linked to nine million deaths in 2015 (one in six), and that 92 percent of pollution-associated mortality occurs in low- and middle-income countries and that it is most prevalent among ethnic minorities and the marginalized. The report calls for urgent action, arguing that pollution can no longer be viewed as an isolated environmental issue.

Mohai, P., D. Pellow, and J. T. Roberts. 2009. Environmental justice. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34:405–430.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-environ-082508-094348

A comprehensive review article. Situates the movement in its historical context and provides a broad definition. Discusses methodological problems in documenting evidence and considers mechanisms that lead to inequitable exposure to harm, from multiple perspectives. Summarizes a wide range of case studies and lists principles of environmental justice.

Pellow, D. N., and R. J. Brulle. 2005. Power, justice, and the environment . Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

This book continues a dialogue that started with a special panel at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, at which social movement and environmental justice scholars appraised the record of the environmental justice movement. Its contribution includes a critical assessment of the movement’s effectiveness through an analysis of its strategies, practices, and ideology.

Stein, R., ed. 2004. New perspectives on environmental justice: Gender, sexuality and activism . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.

An edited collection that applies novel theoretical perspectives to environmental justice, including queer theory, ecofeminism, eco-criticism, literary and film criticism, and more. A much-needed call for addressing issues of chauvinism and homophobia related to the environment as well as within environmental movements.

Szasz, A., and M. Meuser. 1997. Environmental inequalities: Literature review and proposals for new directions in research and theory. Current Sociology 45.3: 99–120.

DOI: 10.1177/001139297045003006

A review of the literature from sociology. The authors assess what the intimate link between research and social movement has meant for environmental justice research and the silences that this has provoked. In particular, they critique the emphasis on race versus class, direct attention to studying the upper classes, and redefine global historical sociological phenomena as environmental justice issues.

Taylor, D. 2000. The rise of the environmental justice paradigm. American Behavioral Scientist 43.5: 508–580.

Uses social movement theory to comment on the appeal of the environmental justice frame and the reasons for its success. Compares the environmental justice paradigm with other environmental paradigms, such as the new environmental paradigm, and notes that its pluralism in its concepts, foci, strategies, and actions have led to its resonance with a wide range of constituencies.

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Resources that Help Sustain Environmental Volunteer Activist Leaders

Robyn e. gulliver.

1 School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072 Australia

Charlie Pittaway

2 School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072 Australia

Kelly S. Fielding

Winnifred r. louis.

Environmental activism organizations depend on recruiting and retaining individuals willing to engage in leadership tasks on a voluntary basis. This study examined the resources which help or hinder sustained environmental volunteer activist leadership behaviors. Interviews with 21 environmental volunteer activist leaders were analyzed within a Resource Mobilization Theory framework. While six resources supporting sustained engagement in volunteer activist leadership behaviors were identified, only three were sought by all participants: time, community support, and social relationships. Money, volunteers and network connections were considered valuable resources, however their acquisition generated significant additional administrative burdens. Social relationships sustained volunteer activist leaders through fostering feelings of positive emotions connected with the group. We conclude with suggestions for organizations seeking to increase retention of activist volunteer leaders: namely larger organizations sharing their resources to reduce administrative demands on volunteer activist leaders in smaller organizations; developing movement infrastructure groups to build and sustain networks; and the prioritization of positive relationships within volunteer teams.

Introduction

Volunteer activist leaders are critical for sustaining and growing social movements (Carman & Nesbit, 2013 ; Louis et al., 2020 ; Mati et al., 2016 ). The environmental movement in particular has grown substantially over the last decade while having a heavy reliance of volunteer groups (Gulliver et al., 2021b ). As such, volunteer leaders of environmental activist groups in particular play a critical role in sustaining environmental mobilization over time (Ganz & McKenna, 2018 ; Gulliver et al., 2020 ; Maloney & Rossteutscher, 2007 ). However, activist leaders who engage in intense, long-term activism often experience fatigue and burnout (Chen & Gorski, 2015 ; Saunders et al., 2012 ; see also Vestergren et al., 2017 for a review). Indeed, research shows that new not-for-profit organizations which depend on volunteers often struggle to persist over time (Bennett, 2016 ). Effectively supporting volunteers engaging in leadership tasks for these groups remains a significant challenge. Yet the substantial literature investigating paid leadership is in contrast to the comparative lack of research on volunteer activist leaders, who operate in a context with different motivations and incentives (Mati et al., 2016 ; Nesbit et al., 2016 ; Smith, 2015 ). Previous researchers have pointed to the unique dimensions of voluntary activist leadership (Chiariello, 2008 ; Ganz & McKenna, 2018 ; Nesbit et al., 2016 ). Volunteer activist leaders must recruit other volunteers, mentor them, and retain them (Bunnage, 2014 ). They help form and maintain relations with partners while maintaining a group’s vision and shaping norms about collective action, all over the long term without renumeration (Nesbit et al., 2016 ; Reicher et al., 2005 ; Thomas & Louis, 2013 ).

New research is needed to provide insight into what influences volunteer activist leaders to persist with and balance the myriad tasks required for ongoing social movement mobilization (Nesbit et al., 2016 ; Posner, 2015 ). The current study aims to address this research gap by investigating the factors that support volunteer activist leaders in continuing their efforts. To do this, interviews with environmental volunteer activist leaders were conducted and analyzed through the lens of Resource Mobilization Theory (RMT: McCarthy & Zald, 1977 ). RMT argues that resources underpin the emergence and survival of social movement organizations. While RMT has commonly been applied to consider organizations as a whole, given that volunteer leaders are crucial for acquiring and converting resources into mobilization and action (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004a ; Gulliver et al., 2020 ; Morris & Staggenborg, 2004 ), we reasoned that insights from RMT may also identify factors that support individuals to persist as volunteer activist leaders, and provide insights into how to overcome barriers to sustaining such leadership.

This study contributes to the field in two important ways. First, the broader leadership literature indicates that leadership behaviors are motivated by factors such as status, high renumeration, and agency (Haslam et al., 2010 ). However, in the volunteer space, the research primarily examines the motivations and characteristics of leaders who are either paid to manage volunteers, or lead non-activist volunteer organizations, such as community, hobby, or sports groups (e.g., De Clerck et al., 2021 ). These voluntary ‘associations’ may have well-defined roles and leadership positions, such as ‘President’ and ‘Secretary’ (Nesbit, 2017 ; Nesbit et al., 2016 ). In contrast, volunteer activist leaders have fuzzy, ill-defined roles, no renumeration, no particular status, and a record of ongoing struggle and failure (Gulliver et al., 2022 ; Louis, 2009 ; Nesbit et al., 2016 ). Furthermore, research examining volunteer participation in activism (also called ‘activist/protest volunteering’, see Mati et al., 2016 ) most commonly focuses on what motivates individuals to participate in collective action, usually on a one-off, or occasional, basis (e.g., Van Zomeren, 2013 ). These occasional volunteer behaviors may be driven by different motivations than sustained volunteer activist leadership behaviors (Alisat & Riemer, 2015 ; Gulliver et al., 2022 ). The current research therefore explores a type of leadership that has not been the focus of past research.

Our second contribution to the field is to extend the RMT framework to interrogate the complex dynamics of volunteer activist leadership, the motivations of individuals who are simultaneously resource managers and mobilization resources themselves. Given the theoretical validity of RMT in explaining long-term mobilization, this approach will advance our understanding of how RMT applies to both volunteer activist organizations and the individuals who form them. This understanding can then assist volunteer activist organizations in prioritizing the acquisition of resources which may have the greatest impact in sustaining their volunteer leaders.

Theoretical Background and Research Questions

Resource mobilization theory.

RMT examines the influence of resources on the emergence and activities of social movement organizations (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004a ; McCarthy & Zald, 2001 ). While earlier social movement theories suggested mobilization was driven by irrational, alienated individuals sharing a common grievance, RMT argued that grievances alone could not explain mobilization; instead, mobilization is a rational process of organization which develops only when aggrieved individuals can acquire sufficient outside resources to act. Organizations with access to fewer resources and less capacity to manage them are less able to act on their grievances.

In general, a ‘resource’ refers to any asset able to be drawn upon by a person or organization to aid their functioning (Macmillan, 2022 ; see also, Cress & Snow, 1996 ). Three broad resource categories were identified in early RMT literature: human resources such as volunteers and staff, material resources such as money or land, and organizational resources such as network connections between groups (McCarthy & Zald, 1987 ). Additional categories such as cultural or moral resources have also been identified (Bomberg & Hague, 2018 ; Edwards & McCarthy, 2004a ), which can include symbolic objects such as images and icons (Edwards & Kane, 2014 ). Cultural resources can also include social-psychological factors such as spiritual values (Bomberg & Hague, 2018 ), leaders’ charisma (Ahmed, 2022 ), a group’s vision and mission (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004a ), and shared identities (Louis et al., 2016 ).

As well as aiding mobilization, RMT postulates that organizations with greater access to resources will be more likely to persist (McCarthy & Zald, 1987 ). Indeed, some scholars argue that the primary barrier to ongoing activism is lack of resources (Almog-Bar & Schmid, 2014 ; Bass et al., 2007 ). RMT therefore may provide a useful lens to consider the factors influencing ongoing volunteer activist leadership, given its central role in maintaining activist organizations over time.

Resources and Volunteer Activist Leadership

In this section we consider what resources have been identified as important to sustaining activist groups and reflect on the extent to which they may apply to individuals who engage in leadership tasks for those groups. Sourcing human resources—individuals willing to engage in both one-off and ongoing activities on behalf of the group—is central for social movement organizations given their aim to mobilize large numbers of individuals to act collectively for a cause (Balduck et al., 2015 ; Brown et al., 2016 ).

In general, RMT research on the use of resources in volunteer contexts has often assumed that paid human resources (staff) will be responsible for the acquisition and management of financial, material, and other resources that attract volunteers and structure volunteers’ experiences (Nesbit et al., 2016 ). In contrast, social movement organizations primarily depend on volunteers to acquire and manage these resources themselves (Gulliver et al., 2020 ). Social movement organizations are often also heavily dependent on long-term volunteers for organizational tasks (Bräuer, 2008 ). Indeed, some studies show that over two-thirds of nonprofit groups have no paid staff at all, while the majority also have no formal organization status that enables them to acquire or manage financial resources (Gulliver et al., 2020 , 2021a ; Maloney & Rossteutscher, 2007 ). Accordingly, research has suggested that the most common responsibility of volunteer activist leaders is the acquisition and management of human resources; namely, recruiting and retaining other volunteers (Nesbit et al., 2016 ).

However, it cannot be assumed that additional volunteers are necessarily a positive resource for volunteer activist leaders. Volunteer teams often have high turnover rates (Christens & Speer, 2011 ; Han, 2017 ), and while some volunteers have useful skills, others can assist only in unspecialized tasks (Jenkins, 1983 ). Furthermore, volunteer leaders must manage volunteers in an environment where many traditional management processes are less effective (Nesbit et al., 2016 ). They may not have well-defined authority, particularly in decentralized or non-hierarchical activist groups. As a result of these factors, some scholars have also argued that specific leadership related resources such as charismatic authority may play an important role in mobilizing individuals in the social movement context (Ahmed, 2022 ; Andreas, 2007 ).

In groups using radical tactics, leaders may face a higher degree of personal risk when organizing volunteers (Smith, 2015 ). In fact, traditional ‘command and control’ management styles may be highly ineffective in volunteer activist groups. The growth of movements describing themselves as decentralized, or even ‘leaderless’ (Fotaki & Foroughi, 2021 ; Gulliver et al., 2021b ) suggests that some groups may even reject the idea of leaders entirely. Instead, volunteer activist leaders may find that volunteer demands reduce their capacity to offer long-term leadership.

Similarly, material resources such as funding and office space may be challenging for volunteer activist leaders to manage without paid staff to assist. While increased financial resources have been shown to increase a group’s ability to mobilize individuals (e.g., Kohl-Arenas, 2014 ), research from the broader social movement and activism literature suggests that it can also have the opposite effect, consuming time and energy in fund-raising, reporting, and accounting requirements, while influencing the type of advocacy organizations can engage in (Child & Grønbjerg, 2007 ; Mati, 2012 ). Critically, research demonstrating that more financial resources are linked to increased activism is based on organizations with paid staff to manage these resources (Bass et al., 2007 ; Child & Grønbjerg, 2007 ).

Another common resource identified in RMT literature is network connections, referring to connections between groups within a larger movement. These connections act as a resource as they can increase a group’s recruitment opportunities and facilitate information-sharing (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004b ; Seyfang & Longhurst, 2013 ; Wakefield et al., 2006 ). However, as with human and financial resources, volunteer activist leaders may find network connections difficult to manage. Lack of time to establish and maintain connections alongside competition among groups can impact network strength (Mihaylov & Perkins, 2015 ). Given these mixed findings, the extent to which network connections and material resources enable volunteer activist leaders to sustain their efforts in the long-term, remains unknown.

Outside of RMT research, some studies suggest that positive interpersonal connections can influence individuals’ participation in activism over time. Feelings of empowerment, solidarity (Drury et al., 2005 ), commitment, connection to the cause (Driscoll, 2018 ), belonging, and friendship with others in the group (Aiken & Taylor, 2019 ; Schussman & Soule, 2005 ) can be drawn upon by volunteer activist leaders as resources which facilitate their ongoing participation. Collective identities and shared struggles may also play important roles as psychological resources binding individuals to movements (Carroll & Hackett, 2006 ; Van Zomeren, 2013 ). These findings suggest that volunteer activist leaders with stronger and more positive social relationships with group members may continue their volunteer efforts for longer.

The Current Study

A wide range of resources have been identified as important for sustaining groups engaging in activism. Yet despite volunteer leaders’ critical roles in organizing these groups, we know comparatively little about the resources which specifically support and sustain them. Given that sustaining activism over time is difficult (Han et al., 2017 ), this study seeks to advance our understanding of resources which may assist environmental activist groups to retain their voluntary leaders (Posner, 2015 ). This is important when considering that leaders may exit groups due to mental or emotional exhaustion (Scherer et al., 2016 ). The loss of these leaders can then lead to reduced organizational effectiveness (Han et al., 2011 ), or even the decline and disappearance of volunteer organizations in their entirety (Bennett, 2016 ; Smith, 2015 ). Better understanding what resources volunteer activist leaders need to continue their leadership is therefore beneficial in light of the importance of social mobilization in driving the changes needed to address our environmental crisis (Ripple et al., 2017 ).

In this study we focus specifically on environmental activist volunteer leaders’ experiences. We conducted a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 21 environmental volunteer activist leaders to identify what resources they use, and how these resources influence their sustained voluntary engagement in leadership behaviors. To help shed light on this topic, we examine the following three research questions:

What resources do volunteer activist leaders identify as important to their role?
What barriers and opportunities do volunteer activist leaders associate with these resources?
How do they perceive that these resources influence their volunteer leadership activities and ongoing service?

Participants

Volunteer activist leaders ( N = 21) were recruited through contacting specific environmental groups identified in the Australian environmental movement (Gulliver et al., 2019 , 2020 ). To ensure a diversity of participants we contacted groups who were active in different Australian regions and focused on different environmental issues. Groups were asked to share the interview request with their teams to ascertain interest, with 21 activists offering to participate. All interviewees engaged in leadership activities such as organizing or leading projects or the group. The sample comprised 14 women and 7 men, aged 23 to 80. Their experience of activism with local grassroots groups entirely dependent on volunteers ranged from 5 to 40 years. A total of nine participants undertook activism on conservation and protection issues, such as the preservation of forests and marine environments. Seven participants focused on climate change, with the remaining five participants focusing separately on sustainability, mining, nuclear, pollution and renewable energy issues.

Interview questions covered five broad areas: the activists’ personal motivation to engage in activism, their campaigning goals, their strategic and tactical campaign approaches, their engagement with other groups within the broader environmental movement, and their experiences as volunteer leaders. Questions were asked in broad terms in order to gather a wide perspective on participants use of resources without specifically leading activists to prioritize or identify any one resource over another. The interviews were semi-structured, enabling participants to freely discuss their perceptions, experiences, and opinions about environmental activism. Within each of the five broad areas participants were prompted with follow up inquiries, such as ‘could you explain that further?’, or ‘why do you think the outcome was a success/failure?’ All interviews were conducted by the first author and took place in May 2018 either in person or via telephone. The interviews lasted on average one hour and were recorded and transcribed.

Analytic Procedure

Transcribed interview data was coded through a thematic qualitative analysis process following Braun and colleagues (Braun & Clarke, 2020 ; Braun et al., 2014 ). This process involved a first stage of repeated close reading of all interviews to gain a comprehensive sense of the material. A list of resources (‘themes’) that interviewees said they drew upon in order to maintain or enhance their leadership activities was then collated. Following this, a coding frame based on the themes identified in round one was created to guide a second round of deductive coding undertaken using NVivo software (O’Connor & Joffe, 2020 ). Text excerpts identifying resources mentioned by participants were then reviewed to identify whether participants stated that the resource was useful or not useful in supporting their ongoing activities. All coding was undertaken by the first author of this study, with 20% of the data second-coded in three stages of review and discussion. Intercoder reliability was selected as the method to ensure credibility of results and prompt discussion of a common conceptual framework across the research team (O’Connor & Joffe, 2020 ). Assessing reliability was considered relevant for this study, given that RMT literature provides well-defined resources relevant for organizations that our data could be compared against. The final Krippendorff’s Alpha and Cohen’s Kappa reliability scores was 0.848, indicating a high level of agreement between coders (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007 ).

Six resources important for helping volunteer activist leaders achieve success emerged from the data: time, network connections, money, volunteers, social relationships, and community support. Time was the only resource unanimously described by all 21 participants as both sought after and providing a universally positive influence on their ability to engage in volunteer leadership tasks; however, time was also the resource all volunteer leaders described as being the most difficult to acquire. Participants highlighted how managing the resources of network connections, money, and volunteers was a difficult balance to maintain within the limited time resources available, and in some cases reduced their ability to prioritize mobilization. In the following sections we highlight each of these six resources and the ambivalence felt relating to their acquisition and management.

Time was the resource most desired by volunteer activist leaders, with all participants saying they would prioritize gaining additional time over other resources. Furthermore, unlike the two other resources mentioned by all participants (network connections and money) there was no ambivalence or management challenges related to increased acquisition of time. Unsurprisingly, a lack of time not only affected activists’ ability to recruit, manage and retain their group members, but also to design and implement their campaigns.

“We didn't take that step [of creating the campaign] because of the time constraints. I think that's the problem a lot of volunteers have on top of everything else that they're doing. Just literally the fight that's involved, and the emotional stress and strain and everything else. It's pretty demoralizing.” (VL7)

Network Connections

The support provided by network connections with other groups was also mentioned by all 21 participants; however, significant ambivalence was expressed regarding the benefits and constraints of this resource. Many participants highlighted the positive support they have received from other environmental groups and the impact this made on their ability to succeed:

“We do quite a bit with the [other environmental group]. They were great, they actually mentored us. We got a grant which gave us funding to set our group up. Through that we engaged the [other environmental group], to send up one of their members to mentor us for 3 or 4 days to get some planning going” (VL3)

Yet despite the benefits of this resource, most participants also noted that collaborating with other groups was challenging and often ineffective. Collaboration was particularly fraught when volunteer activist leaders sought to engage with staffed environmental groups with greater resources. Maintaining effective network connections took substantial time, especially when these connections broke down, or conflicts arose. In addition, some participants argued that poor network connections in general had resulted in the failure to build a strong, united and powerful environmental campaigning sector.

“About 10 years ago there was an alliance of all the big groups set up to speak to the government. But for some reason that fell over or didn't achieve anything… I don't know how to do it, but I know we're not doing it. I don't know what the answer is. The small groups are pivotally important in their area, they're doing fabulous things. It’s just there’s no big picture.” (VL5)

All 21 volunteer activist leaders discussed this resource. As with network connections, participants were ambivalent about prioritizing the acquisition of money, with many participants also noting the complexity of how money can influence tactics and movement legitimacy. Some participants listed concrete campaign wins and other positive outcomes that money had enabled.

“We managed to get a $20,000 grant to run a research project in the [local forest] with the [partner organization]. We set up 30 research sites and involved over 100 community members. Those sites are still there and still being researched over 10 years later” (VL9)

However, participants also noted how acquiring, managing, and acquitting funds often drained their time and energy which could be better focused on other activities. The influence of money on tactical choice and organizational security was also identified by some participants. Environmental groups found that their access to funds affected their autonomy and strategic choice. Some volunteer activist leaders highlighted that while money enabled the acquisition of material resources such as office space and advertising, the absence of funding provided greater freedom in their mobilization choices and personal values.

“The sort of work we do is direct action… a donor would have to be quite secretive about it and certainly nobody would give you tax deduction… I don’t think people who are trying to bring down a really deeply unfair and ecocidal economic system are typically paid very well!” (VL4)

Twenty participants mentioned volunteer resources. Volunteers were critical in helping volunteer activist leaders achieve their goals; however, volunteer recruitment and retention were consistently identified as challenging. This was predominantly due to the high demands that were placed on volunteer activist leaders to mentor, train, and manage new volunteers.

Participants distinguished between volunteers who were able to complete well-defined tasks and volunteers who had initiative and were able to work autonomously. Participants argued that volunteers generally required high levels of training, support, and management, and so volunteers with initiative were highly valued.

“We make it clear [to new volunteers] that we’re already at full capacity ourselves. If you want to be part of this, you need to become part of the project team and take responsibility for yourself. We’ll skill you up and train you, but we’re not going to be doing a long mentoring process. We need you just to jump in, boots and all … Because that is quite a big ask, our volunteer base for the actual projects, committee, and the management is quite small.” (VL3)

Volunteers’ skills were also identified as important resources which could increase how efficiently volunteer activist leaders could organize their groups’ activities. For example, skills related to financial management and income generation were highly valued:

“We do everything without money, except with [this campaign]. [Our volunteer is] such a genius, he decided that we needed to do a crowd funding thing. And we did, and we got $10,000. So that campaign was very professional.” (VL15)

However, many participants highlighted how voluntary leadership skills were different from task-focused volunteering. Voluntary leadership skills were highly sought after by other volunteer leaders, primarily because they had firsthand experience of the volume of work leadership roles entailed.

“It's easy to be a volunteer but being that ‘next level volunteer’ is harder because you have more mental work. You can't necessarily work as much in your other job, because you've got to spend your time replying to emails, thinking about how the meetings are going to be run, contacting people for this and that, organizing events, thinking about how it's going to go and matching up all the dots. That sort of thing is a huge amount of work, huge.” (VL1)

Social Relationships

While RMT notes the importance of network connections between groups, these connections also exist between leaders and their group members as well as between individuals within groups. Participants frequently noted that the quality of these peer connections was of critical importance in their own ongoing engagement in activist leadership. Twenty participants specifically highlighted the importance of positive social relationships in sustaining their activities, primarily relationships with other volunteers within their groups. These relationships generated ongoing positive emotions, and participants described these relationships as critical to maintaining their ongoing desire to continue their volunteer work. Relationships functioned as personal rewards accrued through their volunteering.

“I just love it, I just love it. I've learnt so much, I spend time with really great people. I hang out with scientists, I am in the forest, I can read the forest more. I just love it. I can't believe I got so lucky.” (VL5)

Participants highlighted a range of positive emotions connected with these social relationships. These included emotions such as joy, solidarity, and love, which some participants linked to their sense of purpose and meaning.

“You know, it's been very enriching to my life also to have such a strong purpose and to work with really awesome people.” (VL3)

Community Support

Community support was identified by 18 participants as an important and beneficial resource. This was primarily due to the perception that community support could influence an environmental group’s ability to prosper, as well as increase opportunities to obtain other resources such as volunteers:

“I've lived in other communities where I wouldn't be contemplating forming a group … but there have just been some historical events in [our town] that have allowed people to make some interesting decisions about shared ownership, recycling, and environmental care that make our [campaign goal] seem possible.” (VL13)

Volunteer activist leaders form the core of social and environmental movements (Curtin & McGarty, 2016 ; Saunders et al., 2012 ) and yet little is known about the factors which influence their sustained engagement in leadership behaviors. In this study we interviewed 21 environmental volunteer activist leaders to identify the resources that helped or hindered their ongoing engagement in leadership activities. Six resources were identified that volunteer leaders identified as important to their role (RQ1). Time, network connections and money were resources mentioned by all participants, while volunteers, social relationships, and community support were mentioned by most, but not all, participants.

Our second research question considered the barriers and opportunities associated with these resources. In line with classical RMT theory (McCarthy & Zald, 1977 ), financial and human resources were focal for volunteer leaders. Money and volunteers were both seen to offer opportunities for volunteer activist leaders to increase the ability of the group to achieve their aims. However, volunteer activist leaders experienced significant barriers in acquiring and using these resources, most particularly if they did not already have sufficient financial and human resources to assist with administrative burdens. Indeed, unskilled volunteers could consume more resources than they produced, due to training, mentoring and supervision obligations (see also Warburg, 2018 ).

Our findings demonstrate that resource availability directly influences environmental volunteer activist leaders’ decision making. For example, participants noted how increased financial resources offered opportunities to expand activities while simultaneously presenting barriers to action. Some participants highlighted how financial resources facilitated long-lasting projects (see also, Kohl-Arenas, 2014 ); however, others noted how financial donors could influence (i.e., prevent) the use of more radical or disruptive mobilization tactics (see also Child & Grønbjerg, 2007 ; Saunders, 2007 ). Some volunteer activist leaders sought to avoid this influence by undertaking zero-cost activities or engaging in non-confrontational activities. Others accepted that their choice to engage in radical tactics dictated a reliance on volunteer labor with little financial support. Furthermore, our data provide further evidence of how network connections between and within groups can influence volunteer leadership. Some participants noted how their network connections provided strategic and financial support to their group (see also Edwards & McCarthy, 2004b ; Seyfang & Longhurst, 2013 ; Wakefield et al., 2006 ). However, they also noted that establishing and retaining network connections demanded significant time, while collaborating with network partners on projects could lead to disagreements around tactics and strategy (e.g., Tranter, 2009 ).

Research question 3 considered how these resources appeared to affect volunteer leaders’ activities and ongoing service. As highlighted by a number of scholars, choosing between resources involves trade-offs between how the resources could be used, and the administrative burden required to manage them (e.g., Bräuer, 2008 ). However, three of the six resources—time, positive relationships, and community support—were mentioned as resources which helped volunteer leaders sustain their activities without requiring trade-offs or presenting barriers. While RMT posits that network connections will be beneficial for sustaining groups, our data suggest that the quality of the personal relationships within these networks may also be important. Positive relationships can be a resource of particular value to individuals themselves, and this may be particularly important for individuals in voluntary leadership roles (see also Murdie & Peksen, 2015 ).

The beneficial role of these resources is consistent with other work in RMT showing relationships—whether between groups or between individuals—are important to volunteer groups (Aikin & Taylor, 2019 ; Schussman & Soule, 2005 ). Our research focus was on volunteer leaders; individuals who influence and engage with groups and therefore by necessity need to build relationships with other group members (Haslam et al., 2010 ; Platow et al., 2015 ). Accordingly, although our results support RMT in the resources that were identified by volunteer activist leaders, we found that the resource which appeared to play the most important role in sustaining volunteer activist leaders was the personal relationships they formed within their teams. These relationships—more than financial or human resources—generated strong positive emotions which could bind teams together by fostering feelings of joy, love and empowerment.

Applied Implications

Our findings suggest three areas where organizations can manage resources to better retain their volunteer activist leaders. First, larger organizations with greater resources can play an important role in helping volunteer activist leaders through provision of resources. Of particular value would be providing financial support or skilled volunteers; these two resources may be especially helpful for sustaining smaller volunteer groups at early stages in their development. Our findings demonstrated how balancing financial and human resources created a catch-22 for our participants: resources could only be obtained if volunteer activist leaders already had the resources to acquire them. As a result, organizations with greater resources could seek to assist volunteer leaders by supporting the retention of skilled, independent, and motivated volunteers, particularly skilled volunteers able to shoulder the burden of acquiring and managing financial and material resources to be distributed to others (see also Bräuer, 2008 ; Maloney & Rossteutscher, 2007 ). Another avenue for support could be via building partnerships with businesses willing to offer pro bono services to environmental organizations, which could provide financial management services (see also Kohl-Arenas, 2014 ) as well as help develop networks and build organizational capacity, skills, and knowledge (Seyfang & Longhurst, 2013 ).

Second, participants noted how network connections—while challenging to initiate and manage—had afforded mentoring and project development support at critical moments in their group’s development. Those aiming to support a growing environmental movement could seek to organize and manage networking services, such as events which bring together volunteer groups without adding substantial demands on volunteer activist leaders. Reducing competition between volunteer groups, for example over grant opportunities (e.g., Mihaylov & Perkins, 2015 ) could also assist in building network strength. One mechanism for enhancing network connections is through fostering the development of movement infrastructure groups. These can include groups which exclusively focus on the provision of training, human resources management, or funding services. The development of movement infrastructure groups also offers promising avenues for supporting volunteer activist leaders in the post-COVID-19 context. These groups could seek to build shared online spaces that facilitate relationship building and peer-support between volunteer activist leaders working on similar issues in different geographic contexts. Similarly, centralized activism volunteering hubs could be developed, potentially increasing volunteer recruitment by listing both in-person and remote volunteer activism opportunities.

Third, and most importantly, positive social relationships within groups played a critical role in sustaining environmental volunteer activist leaders. Positive social relationships have been shown to support long-term activists to gain a sense of purpose from the environmental activism they engage in (Bunnage, 2014 ; Driscoll, 2020 ). These positive feelings may help balance the anger and frustration which can drive initial participation in activism. Relatedly, some research indicates that intrinsic motivation (e.g., Self Determination Theory: Ryan & Deci, 2000 ) may be an important driver of activist behavior, particularly when combined with enjoyment in undertaking those behaviors (Sheldon et al., 2016 ). Strong relationships with others in the group may therefore be a prerequisite to building the sense of belonging, purpose and enjoyment which may sustain volunteer environmental activist leaders and their groups. Accordingly, organizations should seek to develop and offer free and easy to access services specifically aimed at nurturing positive relationships in teams. These can include group relationship building strategies, mediation and on demand psychological support. These services could be provided by larger established organizations, which may help smaller groups foster positive group relationships and support any volunteer activist leaders who may seek help.

Strengths, Limitations and Future Research

The present research benefits from rich interview data with a range of environmental volunteer activist leaders, many with decades of experience. However, given leaders’ close relationships with group members (Haslam et al., 2010 ; Platow et al., 2015 ), it would be of value to undertake a comparative analysis which compares insights on the resources which support volunteer activist leaders to those that support activists who are not leaders. Future research should also consider comparative analysis with volunteer activist leaders who have exited or are new to their roles. In addition, our study seeks to examine experienced environmental activist volunteers’ perceptions and experiences of the resources that sustain their leadership behaviors. Future research could build on literature noting the importance of leadership characteristics such as charisma (e.g., Ahmed, 2022 ) to examine how particular leadership characteristics influence the mobilization and retention of group members over time.

Furthermore, while the focus on committed activists from a range of grassroots and professional groups is a strength of this study, our findings are grounded in a single socio-cultural context. In Australia, environmental activism is largely able to occur freely despite a divisive political atmosphere (Beeson & McDonald, 2013 ; Tranter, 2011 ). Activists therefore experience leadership in very different ways from those operating in more authoritarian or violent contexts, where environmental activists and leaders have been kidnapped and murdered in recent years (Global Witness, 2018 ). Moreover, our study population was ethnically homogenous and predominantly female identifying. Taken together, these limitations imply caution in generalizing the findings reported in this study to a broader population of individuals involved in environmental activism leadership, and a need for cross-cultural and comparative research in future.

Volunteer activist leaders play a critical role in driving the grassroot environmental activism required to address our global environmental crisis. In this study we examined the resources which help or hinder volunteer activist leadership of environmental groups. While financial, human and network connection resources could support volunteer activist leaders to sustain their activities, they were not always prioritized given the additional administrative requirements they generated. Conversely, increased time, community support and positive relationships were the resources most desired by volunteer activist leaders. Participants highlighted the importance of positive social relationships which generated positive, joyful experiences sustaining their volunteer efforts and promoting their sense of purpose. These findings indicate the importance of resources in understanding why some volunteer activist leaders persist over long periods of time despite ongoing declining environmental indicators and a worsening environmental crisis.

Author Contributions

RG: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing, project administration. CP: writing—review & editing. KF: conceptualization, methodology, writing—review & editing, supervision. WL: conceptualization, methodology, writing—review & editing, supervision.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. Charlie Pittaway was supported by Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarships but received no direct financial support for the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Declarations

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

This study was approved by the University of Queensland Humanities and Social Sciences Ethics Sub-committee [2018000963].

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Robyn E. Gulliver, Email: [email protected] .

Charlie Pittaway, Email: [email protected] .

Kelly S. Fielding, Email: [email protected] .

Winnifred R. Louis, Email: [email protected] .

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What motivates student environmental activists on college campuses an in-depth qualitative study.

1. Introduction

Conceptual framework and research questions, 2.1. data collection and research design, 2.2. participant and study site selection, 2.3. data analysis, 3. results and discussion, 3.1. what motivates environmental activists on college campuses, 3.1.1. experience and passion.

…that is the year I started drinking soy milk instead of regular milk. That’s the year I put it together why beef was linked to environmental issues—before, I seriously was really stupid as far as…I was very uninformed…and I blame my undergrad career, really, because I was a journalism major and I think we should have had more requirements like human geography and I knew that there were all of these things out there that were wrong, and I just didn’t understand them. So, that’s really why I sought out the International Studies program to try to understand those things…I had the activist urge in me, but I didn’t have an outlet.

…it is all probably rooted back to how almost every family vacation we went on we would camp…I loved driving up north and seeing like all this—so I’m from [a really urban] area, so you don’t see that many stars, but—you know we’d go to [a very small town] and like, the sky would be lit up and as a child I would stare at it for hours, or you know, swimming in [the lake] and being able to see all the way to the bottom of the lake because they wouldn’t allow any motorized boats. And so, I really loved those vacations where we would just kind of like… we would camp, and would just relax, so I think I wanted to find a way to make sure that that was possible for my future kids to enjoy things like that as well. That’s where it probably started, was when I was a child, and my mom teaching me to clean up the campground so it’s nicer than when we left. But since then…I tried to, you know, how can I work this into my daily life? So, in high school, I started a recycling program at band camp, and you know, all these little things, and then I came to college and I learned that…the real change needs to happen, like in the fossil fuel industry, because we can be doing all these things and we can recycle and we can conserve water in our house. But it’s not going to amount to the amount of carbon like burning coal is putting into our atmosphere, or the billions of gallons of water hydraulic fracturing wastes every day, so it’s just…it’s where the change needs to happen.

3.1.2. Sense of Community

I fell into the coalition’s realm and started helping with community outreach. Coalitions is “targeted grassroots,” so it’s the grassroots realm [that] focuses mostly on educating the students on campus and getting the word out to students about our campaign, and problems with…whether burning fossil fuels or investing in fossil fuels. And then…coalitions kind of does that with community groups, and local businesses on [the main street downtown], other environmental organizations in [the area], or faith groups in the community, faculty members on campus, other student organizations, things like that.

…some people are confused about climate change…what’s happening, and how the university is contributing to that with where their money is. That’s why we’ve brought in somebody to talk about the climate, change as a problem, and we’ve also brought in somebody that can talk about solutions. Like alternatives to investing in the fossil fuel industry. And some people don’t even know what the word “divestment” means, so just like kind of to lay it all out there and explain why this is so important, not only in a worldly context, and how it affects the climate, but also at [the university].

…like, 20 environmentalists on campus yelling at them, but it was something the community as a whole wanted to see. [And to show them] that it wasn’t just, like, me, and being like a dirty hippie telling them to stop burning coal, but it was something that, you know, parents of schoolchildren wanted, and local business owners, and professors, and all this larger community wanted the university to stop burning coal.

3.1.3. Incentives and Self-Satisfaction

but overall, my goal that, when it doesn’t get tampered, or burdened by just being busy and things like that, is to do it not really for myself, but—Well, it is for myself, but I feel like I’m improving myself and also trying to improve the neighborhood and do something that I see as positive.

3.1.4. Engagement in Other Pro-Environmental Behaviors

By eating local, organic food grown by a farmer down the road, you’re supporting that farmer, you are decreasing the miles that your food traveled, and the environmental impacts of the pesticides and oil and everything that was not used in that food’s production, and you’re just, um…it’s kind of like that woman said at [that event] [she’s referring to a talk on food and place-making that occurred at an art gallery in the community] that every time you, you know…you kind of vote with your money.

Just…the feeling that I need to practice what I’m preaching, so if I’m studying something on a daily basis, and I’m, you know, telling people that “You shouldn’t eat that way” or “You should— “not that I’m, you know, demanding people change their habits. But if I’m going to be passionate about these things and want other people to change, then I have to change myself. So it’s like that “be the change you want to see in the world” cliché thing.

…A lot of times, we talked about how we ourselves could make a difference, like to be more environmentally-friendly, and I think that’s important for us, as environmental activists, to kind of live in the way we want to see the world, but at the same time, something wasn’t clicking. “Well I can do all I want, like I can use my reusable water bottle, and you know, I can try to eat foods that are less carbon-emitting, but if the university is burning all this coal right down the street—shouldn’t I be focusing on that?” And that’s where we can really make a difference, for people and the environment. So that’s kind of why I decided to switch.

3.2. What Prevents Action?

3.2.1. involvement.

…I saw a bunch of people kind of close to the entrance and they were just gardening, and there was an older woman working there who just was a volunteer, and I said “Hey, I just wanted to see, you know, what are you guys doing in here, what kind of stuff do you have going on,” and then she was like, “I don’t know.” She wasn’t, I don’t think, a very good volunteer because she was just like, “I’ll get someone else to tell you.” So then, [another woman], who’s the main—the gardenhouse manager—she came and talked to me, and it wasn’t until probably another six months at least until I started volunteering there.

…I honestly don’t think [the manager] did a[n] excellent job of explaining [either], because if she had explained it better I probably would have wanted to start volunteering before, but she just kind of said, “You know, we have this gardenhouse,” and she just—maybe I don’t remember but she didn’t make it clear that anyone can volunteer if they want, that they have this CSA, which I now participate in, but it was just sort of a more, like, “this is what we’re doing” but I didn’t get the sense that it was something that people could easily get involved with.

3.2.2. Time

“There was a point where I was trying to do all three [environmental organizations], and it was just too much, so the tactics and strategy in [this group] were the ones that I could relate to the most”. ( Beth 2013 )

3.3. Limitations and Proposals for Future Work

4. conclusions, author contributions, conflicts of interest.

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Click here to enlarge figure

Research Question	Code	Code Definition
What reasons do self-identified environmentalists or activists give for taking action against environmental problems that concern them? That is, what is their motivation?	EXPERIENCE	One’s previous experiences and education (can be formal education, learning on one’s own, learning from others, indirect education) that influence one’s desire (or lack thereof) to participate in activism
	AWARENESS	Being made or making others aware of an issue, idea, concept, problem, etc., by any method (talking to someone, reading, education, etc.)
	SELF-IMPROVEMENT	Doing something because of a desire to improve one’s own life/character or to further one’s self-interest
	PASSION	Doing something because of a connection with that subject and/or because of one’s passion for that subject
	INCENTIVES	Having an external (that is, outwardly-motivated) reason to do something. Usually this involves getting something in return, but that is not a necessary condition to be met
	PWYP	The desire to take action against a concern to “be the change you want to see”
	COMMUNITY	The desire to do something in order to improve or become engaged with a community, or to get the community involved in one’s cause
What prevents or discourages self-identified environmentalists (SIEs) from taking action on their concerns (environmental or otherwise)? That is, what thresholds or barriers, if any, exist for taking action? Why?	INVOLVEMENT	The perception of being easily able to become involved with a group, project, campaign, etc.
	TIME	Having or not having enough time to become involved in something, or to do something, related to one’s activistic concerns

Share and Cite

Fung, C.Y.; Adams, E.A. What Motivates Student Environmental Activists on College Campuses? An In-Depth Qualitative Study. Soc. Sci. 2017 , 6 , 134. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6040134

Fung CY, Adams EA. What Motivates Student Environmental Activists on College Campuses? An In-Depth Qualitative Study. Social Sciences . 2017; 6(4):134. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6040134

Fung, Cadi Y., and Ellis Adjei Adams. 2017. "What Motivates Student Environmental Activists on College Campuses? An In-Depth Qualitative Study" Social Sciences 6, no. 4: 134. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6040134

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Table Of Contents

Concern for the impact on human life of problems such as air and water pollution dates to at least Roman times. Pollution was associated with the spread of epidemic disease in Europe between the late 14th century and the mid-16th century, and soil conservation was practiced in China, India , and Peru as early as 2,000 years ago. In general, however, such concerns did not give rise to public activism.

The contemporary environmental movement arose primarily from concerns in the late 19th century about the protection of the countryside in Europe and the wilderness in the United States and the health consequences of pollution during the Industrial Revolution . In opposition to the dominant political philosophy of the time, liberalism —which held that all social problems, including environmental ones, could and should be solved through the free market—most early environmentalists believed that government rather than the market should be charged with protecting the environment and ensuring the conservation of resources. An early philosophy of resource conservation was developed by Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946), the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, for whom conservation represented the wise and efficient use of resources. Also in the United States at about the same time, a more strongly biocentric approach arose in the preservationist philosophy of John Muir (1838–1914), founder of the Sierra Club , and Aldo Leopold (1887–1948), a professor of wildlife management who was pivotal in the designation of Gila National Forest in New Mexico in 1924 as America’s first national wilderness area. Leopold introduced the concept of a land ethic , arguing that humans should transform themselves from conquerors of nature into citizens of it; his essays, compiled posthumously in A Sand County Almanac (1949), had a significant influence on later biocentric environmentalists.

Environmental organizations established from the late 19th to the mid-20th century were primarily middle-class lobbying groups concerned with nature conservation, wildlife protection, and the pollution that arose from industrial development and urbanization . There were also scientific organizations concerned with natural history and with biological aspects of conservation efforts.

Although the United States led the world in such efforts during this time, notable conservation developments were also occurring in Europe and Oceania . For example, Sweden established nine national parks in 1909, the first in Europe, and Switzerland created a national park of 14,000 hectares (roughly 34,600 acres) in 1914. In New Zealand the Native Bird Protection Society (later the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, or Forest & Bird) arose in 1923 in response to the devastation of Kapiti Island by livestock .

Beginning in the 1960s, the various philosophical strands of environmentalism were given political expression through the establishment of “green” political movements in the form of activist nongovernmental organizations and environmentalist political parties. Despite the diversity of the environmental movement, four pillars provided a unifying theme to the broad goals of political ecology: protection of the environment , grassroots democracy , social justice , and nonviolence. However, for a small number of environmental groups and individual activists who engaged in ecoterrorism , violence was viewed as a justified response to what they considered the violent treatment of nature by some interests, particularly the logging and mining industries. The political goals of the contemporary green movement in the industrialized West focused on changing government policy and promoting environmental social values. Examples include the campaigns in Tasmania in the 1970s and ’80s to block the flooding of Lake Pedder and the damming of the Franklin River; protests in the United States and western Europe against nuclear power development, especially following the catastrophic accidents at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986); the related decades-long controversy surrounding uranium mining in Australia’s Northern Territory , including at the Jabiluka mine; protests against deforestation in Indonesia and the Amazon basin ; and campaigns in several countries to limit the volume of greenhouse gases released through human activities. In the less-industrialized or developing world, environmentalism has been more closely involved in “emancipatory” politics and grassroots activism on issues such as poverty , democratization, and political and human rights , including the rights of women and indigenous peoples. Examples include the Chipko movement in India, which linked forest protection with the rights of women, and the Assembly of the Poor in Thailand, a coalition of movements fighting for the right to participate in environmental and development policies.

The early strategies of the contemporary environmental movement were self-consciously activist and unconventional, involving direct-protest actions designed to obstruct and to draw attention to environmentally harmful policies and projects. Other strategies included public-education and media campaigns, community-directed activities, and conventional lobbying of policy makers and political representatives. The movement also attempted to set public examples in order to increase awareness of and sensitivity to environmental issues. Such projects included recycling , green consumerism (also known as “buying green”), and the establishment of alternative communities , including self-sufficient farms, workers’ cooperatives, and cooperative-housing projects.

The electoral strategies of the environmental movement included the nomination of environmental candidates and the registration of green political parties . These parties were conceived of as a new kind of political organization that would bring the influence of the grassroots environmental movement directly to bear on the machinery of government, make the environment a central concern of public policy, and render the institutions of the state more democratic, transparent, and accountable. The world’s first green parties —the Values Party, a nationally based party in New Zealand, and the United Tasmania Group , organized in the Australian state of Tasmania—were founded in the early 1970s. The first explicitly green member of a national legislature was elected in Switzerland in 1979; later, in 1981, four greens won legislative seats in Belgium . Green parties also have been formed in the former Soviet bloc , where they were instrumental in the collapse of some communist regimes , and in some developing countries in Asia , South America , and Africa , though they have achieved little electoral success there.

The most successful environmental party has been the German Green Party (die Grünen), founded in 1980. Although it failed to win representation in federal elections that year, it entered the Bundestag (parliament) in both 1983 and 1987, winning 5.6 percent and 8.4 percent of the national vote, respectively. The party did not win representation in 1990, but in 1998 it formed a governing coalition with the Social Democratic Party , and the party’s leader, Joschka Fischer , was appointed as the country’s foreign minister.

Throughout the last two decades of the 20th century, green parties won national representation in a number of countries and even claimed the office of mayor in European capital cities such as Dublin and Rome in the mid-1990s. Outside Europe, New Zealand’s Green Party , which was reconstituted from the former Values Party in 1990, won 7 percent of the vote in the 1990 general election; its influence had grown to 9 of the country’s 121 parliamentary seats by 2002 and to 14 parliamentary seats by 2014.

By this time green parties had become broad political vehicles, though they continued to focus on the environment. In developing party policy, they attempted to apply the values of environmental philosophy to all issues facing their countries, including foreign policy , defense, and social and economic policies.

Despite the success of some environmental parties, environmentalists remained divided over the ultimate value of electoral politics. For some, participation in elections is essential because it increases the public’s awareness of environmental issues and encourages traditional political parties to address them. Others, however, have argued that the compromises necessary for electoral success invariably undermine the ethos of grassroots democracy and direct action. This tension was perhaps most pronounced in the German Green Party. The party’s Realos (realists) accepted the need for coalitions and compromise with other political parties, including traditional parties with views sometimes contrary to that of the Green Party. By contrast, the Fundis (fundamentalists) maintained that direct action should remain the major form of political action and that no pacts or alliances should be formed with other parties. Likewise, in Britain, where the Green Party achieved success in some local elections but failed to win representation at the national level (though it did win 15 percent of the vote in the 1989 European Parliament elections), this tension was evidenced in disputes between so-called “electoralists” and “radicals.”

The implementation of internal party democracy also caused fissures within environmental parties. In particular, earlier strategies such as continuous policy involvement by party members, grassroots control over all party institutions and decisions, and the legislative rotation of elected members to prevent the creation of career politicians were sometimes perceived as unhelpful and disruptive when green parties won representation to local, national, or regional assemblies.

By the late 1980s environmentalism had become a global as well as a national political force. Some environmental nongovernmental organizations (e.g., Greenpeace , Friends of the Earth , and the World Wildlife Fund ) established a significant international presence, with offices throughout the world and centralized international headquarters to coordinate lobbying campaigns and to serve as campaign centres and information clearinghouses for their national affiliate organizations. Transnational coalition building was and remains another important strategy for environmental organizations and for grassroots movements in developing countries, primarily because it facilitates the exchange of information and expertise but also because it strengthens lobbying and direct-action campaigns at the international level.

Through its international activism, the environmental movement has influenced the agenda of international politics. Although a small number of bilateral and multilateral international environmental agreements were in force before the 1960s, since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the variety of multilateral environmental agreements has increased to cover most aspects of environmental protection as well as many practices with environmental consequences, such as the burning of fossil fuels , the trade in endangered species , the management of hazardous waste , especially nuclear waste, and armed conflict. The changing nature of public debate on the environment was reflected also in the organization of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which was attended by some 180 countries and various business groups, nongovernmental organizations, and the media. In the 21st century the environmental movement has combined the traditional concerns of conservation , preservation, and pollution with more contemporary concerns with the environmental consequences of economic practices as diverse as tourism , trade, financial investment, and the conduct of war . Environmentalists are likely to intensify the trends of the late 20th century, during which some environmental groups increasingly worked in coalition not just with other emancipatory organizations, such as human rights and indigenous-peoples groups, but also with corporations and other businesses.

Environmentalism Was Once a Social-Justice Movement

It can be again.

The incoming Trump administration is likely to see the greatest revival of environmentalism as a confrontational, grassroots, sometimes radical movement since at least 1970, when more than a million people took part in the first Earth Day.

The vigil at Standing Rock, which surprised nearly everyone by blocking the proposed route of the Dakota Access Pipeline through traditional Sioux lands, was a far cry from the litigation and high-level lobbying that are so much of the environmental movement’s work these days. As courts and lawmakers continue to falter in addressing climate change, with professional climate-change denier Myron Ebell heading the Environmental Protection Agency’s transition team, and Scott Pruitt tapped to lead it (Pruitt is an ally of the fossil fuel industry and key architect of the legal strategy against President Obama's climate policy) and the prospect of public lands opening to expanded mining and drilling, ever more people who believe that environmental responsibility has become a life-or-death issue are going to start acting like it.

A more confrontational environmentalism will find new allies, like the Native American activists of Standing Rock and the military veterans who showed up there just before the Army Corps of Engineers announced it would not approve the controversial pipeline route. It may also strain some of the relationships with wealthy funders and corporate partners that have become central to mainstream environmentalism. Activists will have to decide whether to cultivate alliances with other movements that have sprung up in recent years: the Movement for Black Lives , which has called for divestment from fossil fuels and pointed out that incinerators, waste facilities, and other pollution sources are often concentrated in poor and heavily non-white neighborhoods, or whatever comes after Bernie Sanders’s campaign , which blamed the fossil-fuel industry for blocking climate progress and promised to “keep it in the ground” in a rapid transition to renewable energy.

Joining environmentalism to movements for economic and racial justice wouldn’t be new. It would shift the movement toward what you might think of as its left wing, often called the environmental-justice movement, which emerged in the 1980s as an internal criticism of “mainstream environmentalism” for being too elite, too white, and too focused on beautiful scenery and charismatic species. But it would also point toward a longer history, now mostly forgotten. For decades, environmentalism and what we now call environmental justice were deeply intertwined. Care for the earth and for vulnerable human communities belonged together. Empowering workers, protecting public health, and preserving landscapes were part of a single effort. Maybe it’s time to reclaim that older environmental movement, and see that it was an environmental-justice movement all along.

Modern environmental law is defined by a set of statutes that were adopted in a burst of legislation in the 1970s: the NEPA on New Year’s Day, 1970; the Clean Air Act later in 1970; the Clean Water Act in 1972; the Endangered Species Act in 1973; laws governing waste disposal and reworking the management of federal public lands in 1976.

Environmentalism is also defined by a set of advocacy organizations that grew up in the same years: the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Club (which later became Earthjustice, the major environmental litigation group), and the Environmental Law Institute either appeared or took their current form in these years. The advocacy groups are an important part of the story because they help to define the field.

Environmental law has always been susceptible to identity crisis. It doesn’t have the unifying textual basis of constitutional law, the doctrinal coherence of tort or contract, or the straightforward topical boundaries of antitrust or tax. Instead, it has an organizing principle that might be thought of as “everything is connected.” What counts as environmentalism has always been partly a matter of the priorities of movements and advocates.

Environmentalism has faced existential challenges before Trump. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration appointed anti-environmentalists to run the EPA and the Department of the Interior, and only litigation and political pressure kept them from gutting the environmental agenda of the 1970s. There have always been pockets of resistance to the legitimacy of environmental law, sometimes quite radical: There are plenty of Westerners who deny that the federal government has constitutional power to manage federal lands or to regulate private activity through laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. Some of those radicals were involved in the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon at the beginning of this year.

Donald Trump will challenge environmental law in new ways, but there is another challenge to modern environmentalism that has come from within the movement, or from nearby it. This is the challenge that comes from the modern environmental-justice movement, a network of activists and scholars that has arisen since the 1980s to make fundamental objections to what its advocates call “mainstream environmentalism,” the version of environmentalism that came to be in the 1970s.

Environmental justice scholars and advocates and have made three big criticisms of what they call mainstream environmental law:

First, that it doesn’t speak to how environmental harms and benefits are distributed, which is especially important when distribution follows the lines of poverty and race. This criticism comes from the grassroots fights that produced the environmental-justice movement: fights about decisions to place garbage dumps, toxic waste sites, incinerators, and power plants in neighborhoods where disproportionately poor and non-white people lived. The environmental statutes of the 1970s accomplish many things, but they did not prohibit these disproportionate impacts.

Second, environmental justice critics challenge the mainstream environmental idea of what environmental problems are in the first place. They say it’s focused on the beautiful outdoors, it has an anti-urban bias, it isn’t engaged enough with artificial human environments like neighborhoods and workplaces. As one important pair of environmental justice scholar-activists wrote, the environments we most care about should be “the places where we live, work, learn, and play,” whether they are natural or built. And while more prosperous people tend to take clean and safe living spaces for granted and be able to escape to wild places that feel “ecological” or “natural,” poor people often have very little choice but to spend their lives in compromised artificial environments.

Third, critics say mainstream environmentalism over-values elite forms of advocacy, like litigation and high-level lobbying, and doesn’t make enough room for popular engagement. It creates a movement of professionals and experts: lawyers, economists, and ecologists who have limited interaction with, and do relatively little to empower, the people who live with the most severe environmental problems.

These criticisms have a historical and institutional context. When environmental justice scholars and activists take aim at what they call mainstream environmental law, they are addressing the statutes, agencies, and professional and advocacy organizations that were built into their more or less current form in the 1970s and early 1980s. The environmental-justice criticisms are very important, but they often forget that the mainstream environmentalism whose narrowness they criticize was a recent development, and maybe one that could have turned out very differently. If we draw back the historical lens, a “long environmental-justice movement” comes into view. In this movement, for more than a century, activists and scholars have been engaging the themes of fairness, inequality, and political and economic power in the human environment.

What was this movement? Here are some key examples. Two iconic environmental developments of the 1960s were the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring between 1960 and 1962. The Wilderness Act has protected more than 100 million acres of public land for hiking, camping, and solitude. It was a great victory for a long political drive to preserve public land that went back to the first national park, Yellowstone, which was created in 1872. But its central value—wilderness, untouched land, set aside from all human contamination—seemed to prove that the movement that loved wild nature didn’t care much about the places where people lived, worked, played, and learned.

Carson’s book described a poisoned world, where pesticides passed through the air, water, and soil, to enter the flesh of animals and people, and spread sickness and death everywhere. She helped to create a widespread ecological consciousness, and also to connect that consciousness with a sense of fear and crisis that helped to spur the 1970s anti-pollution statutes. But her great book, which followed pesticides through almost their whole cycle of destruction, ignored the mainly Latino farm workers of California and Florida, who were directly exposed to pesticides in their work the fields. The human victims of pesticides, in Carson’s telling, lived in iconic small-town and suburban America. They were implicitly white and Anglo. They were not workers. So Carson, like the Wilderness Movement, can seem to prove that the narrowness as well as the power of mainstream environmentalism are there at the beginning.

But Silent Spring and the Wilderness Act were late chapters in earlier movements that made them possible. Those precursors were at the heart of the long environmental-justice movement at work. The movement for wilderness was centered on the Wilderness Society, which was founded in 1935. A typical founder was Benton MacKaye, a planner and interdisciplinary intellectual who is also credited with the idea behind the Appalachian Trail. MacKaye defined “environment” as the built and industrial environment, just as much as the wild and natural one. His great example of ecological thinking was an image of New York City as composed of what he called “flows”: the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, the prevailing winds out of the west, but also barges of steel from the Great Lakes, ships full of grain steaming off to Europe, and the highways and railroads that brought workers pulsing into the city every day and exhaled them again at night. He saw the struggles of factory workers and wilderness advocates as two parts of a movement with very large goals: to make the whole human environment, from the workplace to the untouched woods, welcoming and stimulating, a good place to be alive. He thought this required extensive and intensive public planning of cities, transport networks, and regions. For him, wilderness was one essential note in a larger composition of landscapes and living-places.

You could draw similar portraits of the broad concerns of other wilderness activists. MacKaye’s co-founder and the president of the Wilderness Society was Robert Marshall, a forester who was also head of the Washington, D.C., branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, an avowed socialist, and a major player in reforms that increased that sovereignty and cultural autonomy of Native Americans. Marshall’s devotion to preserving wilderness was part of a broader vision of a just society. He believed that mental and spiritual freedom required the chance to escape to a place radically separate from everyday life, but there was nothing escapist in his politics. The Wilderness movement that Marshall and MacKaye built was intensely concerned with the whole human environment, the condition of factory workers and people living in cities, and the role of the state in the economy and social life.

And what about Carson? Well, the scholar whose previous research runs all through Silent Spring is Wilhelm Heuper, an industrial toxicologist who devoted his career to understanding the effects of workplace exposure to what he called “the new artificial environment” of synthetic chemicals. His goal in understanding what the new poisons were doing to people was to secure “a healthful living, not merely for a small, select, and socially privileged class,” but for everyone. He was working in a tradition of industrial toxicology that was pioneered a generation earlier by Alice Hamilton, the first woman faculty member at Harvard, a public-health scholar who went into factories and worked with workers to understand what lead, phosphorous, and other chemicals were doing to their bodies. Also in the background were movements like the Workers’ Health Bureau, which was a joint creation of women public-health activists and independent unions, which researched workplace hazards, as they put it, “from the point of view of the worker.” Carson’s work was rooted in industrial toxicology, and that, in turn, was rooted in movements for social reform and effort to build both workers’ power and systems of industrial governance in the early 20th century.

Why did these broader concerns not come into the environmentalism that took shape in the burst of statutes and institution-building in the 1970s? It is not that the architects of the modern environmental laws and institutions didn’t care about these questions of equity and the total human environment. It is that they thought they were addressing them. As Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, who was a primary drafter of those laws, explained at Earth Day 1970, “Man’s environment includes more than natural resources. It includes the shape of the communities in which he lives: his home, his schools, his places of work.” Muskie went on to argue that, “the only kind of society that has a chance” is “a society that will not tolerate slums for some and decent houses for others, rats for some and playgrounds for others, clean air for some and filth for others.” And he insisted that, “Those who believe that we are talking about the Grand Canyon and the Catskills, but not Harlem and Watts are wrong.”

The environmental statutes were passed in a world where, from the point of view of their architects, they were environmental justice statutes. But that world was disappearing as soon as the new environmental laws were written. They were written in a time that was more economically equal than the US had ever been, and they believed that trend was going to continue, and that therefore economic inequality was a problem that had been solved. We now know, thanks to the work of economist Thomas Piketty and others, that they were living at the end of an anomalous period of widely shared growth that lasted across the North Atlantic between the end of World War Two and the beginning of the 1970s. Inequality was about to reassert itself, and it has been growing more or less ever since.

Just as today’s environmental-justice critics say, the laws that govern pollution and dumps for hazardous materials don’t address how those get distributed. Leaving out distribution was a mistake that was much easier to make if you believed that the country was steadily getting more equal. The more recent environmental-justice movement arose in response to the fact that environmental harms are distributed along very familiar lines of race and poverty. Those lines were expected to become less important in the years ahead. Legislators like Muskie also said that they expected the environmental laws to be supported by other reform legislation to overcome poverty and isolation, foster public health, and make workplaces safer and communities more livable. Instead, the 1970s brought the return of inequality and the end of political support for bold social reforms.

Then it got worse. The Supreme Court removed an essential protection against disparate environmental impacts in the form of constitutional Equal Protection challenges. Between 1976 and 1979, after the major environmental statutes were largely written, the Court adopted the current constitutional standard, which requires plaintiffs claiming they have been treated unequally to show that the government action they object to was affirmatively motivated by discriminatory purpose. It isn’t enough to show that, in fact, burdens are distributed in a grossly unequal way. So unequal harms that would once have been open to constitutional challenge are now legally clear unless they violate environmental statutes—which were not written with this kind of inequality in mind.

The other charge that today’s environmental-justice movement makes is that mainstream environmentalism overemphasizes elite advocacy. This, too, is not a perennial feature of environmental law, but developed in the 1970s because of specific institutional decisions. A key part of the story is that the Ford Foundation made critical investments to shape the new groups that helped to make the field of environmental law: the Environmental Law Institute, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, and others. Ford picked and cultivated its grantees to advance a vision of lawyers’ role in advocacy and social reform that historians call “legal liberalism.” Legal liberalism saw lawyers as channels for marginal voices that otherwise wouldn’t be heard in pluralist democracy. The ideal was that, if you could just get these marginalized voices their day in court, in front of an impartial decision-maker, you could ensure that their interests were respected in the decision process. In this respect, the institutions of environmental law were shaped by a conception of the legal profession that Ford was also helping to spread at the same time through law-school clinics, ABA pro-bono guidelines, and poverty-law services.

The reformist goals of legal liberalism could be quite robust, but as a model of social change, it had some defining limitations. It was elite-driven and relied on expertise. Its advocates were inclined to imagine they spoke for a consensual “public interest” that responsible decision-makers, like judges and agencies, could pursue. And, in the end, it tied its reformist goals to the courts—at the same time that judges were retreating from their role in the 1960s as drivers of structural change. These institutions helped to make environmentalism intensely a movement of lawyers and experts, funded by middle-class mass-membership groups and wealthy donors, and not driven by large-scale mobilization or engagement. It took much of the fire out of a movement that had begun, in Earth Day 1970, with the largest mass mobilization in American history.

In the 1970s, as in the 1930s, there were versions of environmentalism that were less expert-driven and more confrontational than the versions that won out. In the early 1970s, an insurgent labor organization called the Miners for Democracy briefly took over the United Mine Workers of America. They were fighting a corrupt union leadership that had literally murdered one of their leaders and his family in their home. They were pressing for safety regulations in mines that killed hundreds of people every year in disasters and thousands more slowly through black-lung disease and other industrial illnesses.

And—although this is usually forgotten even by the few people who remember them at all—they argued that if mining could not be done in an environmentally responsible way, without destroying mountains or killing streams, then miners should refuse to do it. They proposed that both safety regulations and environmental principles should be directly enforced in the workplace by strikes. They showed how this could work when 90 percent of the miners in West Virginia walked out of the mines in an unauthorized strike that shut down the coal industry for months, until they won serious medical benefits for retirees and disabled miners who were dying from black-lung disease. For them, just like for the 1930s activists who stood in back of Rachel Carson, the workplace and the woods and waters were all part of the environment, and working people should defend both to defend themselves.

They were not as unusual as you might think. One of the major funders of the first Earth Day was the United Auto Workers, whose president, Walter Reuther, was a strong environmentalist who believed in using the union to advance a progressive social agenda that built on but went well beyond his members’ interests. (Reuther also helped to fund the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, among other causes.) When he died in a plane crash in the early 1970s, he was preparing a proposal to the union leadership to include environmental issues in the union’s collective-bargaining agenda with management, so that organized labor would have been an anti-pollution force within the industry.

All of this is so far gone now that it is hard to recover the sense of possibility of that time. There were later tactical alliances between the new environmental groups and organized labor, especially over workplace chemical exposure, but labor never went green, and environmentalism never became a working people’s movement. By 1977, the UAW opposed amendments that strengthened the Clean Air Act. On November 8, the coalfields came out strongly for Donald Trump’s climate-denialist campaign, as they did in 2000 to help defeat Al Gore’s environmentalist presidential candidacy.

By the early 1980s, the major environmental groups were coordinating their efforts around an agenda that put little emphasis on social and economic inequality, the disparate environmental vulnerability of marginal populations, or the special environmental threats to working people. This was the “mainstream environmentalism” that the environmental-justice movement arose by attacking. In many ways, the environmental-justice advocates were right to attack it. But no one seemed to realize what a recent development it was. Mainstream environmentalism, with the limitations that environmental justice advocates pointed to, was not much older than the environmental-justice movement that criticized it. Ironically, the critics tended to imagine mainstream environmentalism as a perennial thing, a movement that had always been narrow in its concerns, its constituency, and its tactics. In the later 1980s and 1990s, this view was replicated in advocacy and politics, from seminal and attention-getting reports on the unequal distribution of environmental hazards to touchstone scholarship like environmental historian Bill Cronon’s watershed essay, The Trouble with Wilderness , which diagnosed environmentalism as the product of a narrow woods-and-waters agenda and narrowly elite constituency going all the way back to the country’s origins. And so the long environmental-justice movement was lost from view.

What difference does remembering it make today?

Well, first, could things have gone differently? Maybe if supporters like Reuther, or even the Ford Foundation, had built stronger connections, say, between early environmentalism and the civil-rights movement, then a greater emphasis on structural inequality, and some healthy doubts about liberal optimism, might have gone into the design of both the statutes and the institutions that came to define environmental law. If some parts of organized labor had taken militant and socially-minded environmentalism into its agenda in the early 1970s, and funded and supported new environmental groups alongside the liberal organizations like Ford and the wealthy donors that became the groups’ lifeblood, mainstream environmentalism might have been something more like an environmental-justice movement all along.

Then again, maybe not. The narrowing of the environmental agenda during the 1960s, and the Ford Foundation’s legal-liberal vision for advocacy, were connected with the whole political economy and political culture of the US during the Cold War. Labor’s retreat into economic self-defense and zero-sum contests with environmentalists was part of a general return of inequality and scarcity in the 1970s, which affected the whole North Atlantic. The loss of the broad reform agenda that senators like Muskie expected to buttress the new environmental laws was part of general political revolt against the 20th-century welfare state. The structural inequality that guides environmental harms along familiar racial and class lines runs very deep.

But there are ways to retrieve the spirit of the long environmental-justice movement in this time of fresh mobilization and new alliance. Environmental activists and progressive state and local governments can press for enforcement of environmental laws like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act in ways that are consistent with the broadly egalitarian vision that informed their creation. To give just one example, lax regulation of industrial agriculture, especially animal-feeding operations where thousands or tens of thousands of livestock are jammed together in factory-like conditions, exposes people living nearby to a bunch of hazardous pollutants. These are concentrated in pervasively poor and significantly non-white areas of the country. Aggressive enforcement of anti-pollution laws against facilities like these would simply make these statutes do the environmental justice work they were originally intended to do.

Activists and administrators should also look for problems of inequality that are not conventionally treated as environmental. Consider the way that that the Farm Bill, which is currently pumping more than $65 billion dollars in subsidies into the farm economy over five years, makes calories from corn syrup and soybean oil relatively cheap and healthy calories more expensive. This price skew has controversial but plausible effects on obesity and related diseases like diabetes, which are all tied to poverty and race. Environmentalists should see the food system as a medium of risk exposure, like air and water. The fact that food intake always involves a personal choice doesn’t wash out the question of justice. Like deciding where to work, deciding what to eat is a choice made under constraint, and the background of law and economic inequality does a lot to define the constraints. The members of the long environmental-justice movement, who believed the fact that your job could make sick or kill you was no less an environmental issue because you had chosen your job, would say the same thing today about your meal.

Activists and scholars should also look at cases where environmental policy is making explicitly distributional decisions and ask what standards of justice and political accountability should guide those. California’s recent climate-change legislation produces a large pool of revenue that is meant to be spent in ways that address communities’ environmental challenges. Who will decide what that means, and what will the criteria be? Will one goal be to go beyond preventing new pollution and climate-change hazards, to address different places’ and communities’ different baseline levels of contamination and vulnerability, to remediate their inherited inequality? The same questions attach to spending the remediation fund from the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and would attach to the revenue from many kinds of national or trans-national carbon tax or cap-and-trade schemes.

These are just some starting points. Other priorities may come from new allies. Maybe even the labor movement, now both battling for its life and being reborn in grass-roots efforts like Fight for Fifteen, will find new points of commonality. There’s no need for environmentalists to stop being experts, or to abandon the institutions and establishment alliances they have painstakingly built up over decades. But they should be clear that their mission is more than technical. They are working to defend a living world that is under assault at every point, from the global climate to the most vulnerable communities. Economic power, racial inequality, and the struggles of indigenous peoples are not optional or supplemental. They are at the heart of the work.

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The Environmental Movement in the US

Social change, the movement’s impact on social institutions.

This paper is concerned with analyzing the environmental movement in the US as a potential engine for social change. The movement’s ideology, membership, and leadership are investigated, with the contrast between the past and present iterations. Several contradictions and issues within the movement that may hinder its goal fulfillment are also highlighted, and it is determined that a slow shift is happening. Afterward, the movement’s impact on such social institutions as education, politics, economics, and religion is discussed, which, in turn, raises the population’s awareness of environmental issues. However, it is emphasized that the change is not significant enough, manifesting in some new social practices. The conclusion reflects the ambiguity of the movement’s role in changing society but expresses its potential that can be expanded by political activities and the population’s acknowledgment of environmental issues.

Humanity and nature have always had a complicated relationship ever since the former began its conscious activities. At first, people feared and revered their natural surroundings, exemplified by ancient myths and gods. However, humans were gradually gaining the upper hand, and it reached the point when their actions were destructive for the planet and themselves, although not everyone can realize that. The environmental (Green) movement acknowledges the issue and attempts to prevent further damage. Although it has a global reach, the paper will focus on the US due to the country’s impact on the environment and understanding of the repercussions. The movement’s ideology, membership, leadership, and subsequent social change will be considered, offering the historical perspective and various examples.

The environmental movement has a complicated history in the US, reflected in the shifts in its ideology. Before the 20th century, it was indistinguishable from the conservation movement, which aimed to protect wilderness against urbanization and industrialization (Spears, 2020). The ideas were rooted in science and transcendentalism, and the movement was divided into two camps where either of those prevailed (Spears, 2020). However, their understanding of the environment was strictly non-human, which could be responsible for people still misunderstanding the movement and believing that humanity is unaffected by the harm caused to nature (Spears, 2020). Other movements emerged in the 20th century, such as anti-pollution regulation and energy conservation, which formed the crux of the modern-day environmental movement (Spears, 2020). Its current ideology is concerned with how people can live to sustain their surroundings, although that idea has different interpretations (Schreurs & Papadakis, 2020). However, all those who share the ideology wish to somehow improve the world for nature and humanity.

As mentioned, the environmental movement is not a monolith, hosting varying points of view and interest. For instance, the movement’s radical version wishes to dismantle capitalism, as they hold the system accountable for environmental issues (Woodhouse, 2018). Others may disagree that the capitalist system is the problem’s root and aim to promote the gradual implementation of socio-political policies (Woodhouse, 2018). Only time will tell which attitude will ultimately benefit the movement and its values.

The environmental movement’s composition is varied, reflecting that the primary issue concerns the whole population regardless of a person’s background, although it has been a long way until this point. Initially, only educated white men expressed worry regarding the environment, which was evident due to their status (Spears, 2020). As more demographic groups began acquiring rights, they also expressed interest in some of the environmentalist issues. For example, both as health care workers and patients, women were concerned with improving public health, which inevitably made them consider the environment’s state as a factor affecting it (McCammoon et al., 2018). The African-American population also started engaging with the movement’s ideas, as environmental justice, which views the issue from the point of its impact on the race, became prominent (Pellow, 2016). Eventually, the Green movement lost its elitist nuance and became accessible to everyone (Spears, 2020). Altogether, the Green movement is all-encompassing, attracting members regardless of their race, gender, income, and other factors, as everyone is affected.

Despite the movement’s supposedly universal nature, it is more likely to draw people with certain socio-political views and income levels. Right-wing authoritarians are not inclined toward pro-environmental attitudes and may not believe in climate change, which precludes them from joining the movement (Stanley et al., 2017). Meanwhile, fear exists that the environmental movement is dominated by the affluent, addressing their needs most of all (Dauvergne, 2017). While those tendencies do not negate the existing diversity, they reveal the contradictions that will have to be addressed.

As the environmental movement has many branches, defining a single leader is a challenge because most prominent figures are involved with their field of interest. Historically, such scientists as John Muir and Rachel Carson are considered some of the first leaders, and the latter is attributed with establishing the movement’s modern form (Montrie, 2018). Nowadays, the leading figures happen to be in charge of a particular organization, political, profit, or non-profit, and they attempt to improve the environmental situation with the available tools. For instance, Ralph Nader and Jill Stein would be considered leaders due to their affiliation with the Green Party and participating in presidential elections (Schreurs & Papadakis, 2020). Priscilla Oliver, a former president of the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), also used to be a leader through the organization’s influence and her encouragement of environmental leadership (Oliver, 2019). Company CEOs also contribute to the movement by following the principles of sustainability and pushing their enterprises to develop ecologically viable solutions for production and final products, which others will adopt (Hoffman, 2018). Thus, the movement is abundant in leaders who implement and advance its ideology.

Another point worth considering while discussing the environmental movement’s leadership is its diversity. As previously established, people of various backgrounds join the movement due to the universal issues it is trying to address. Therefore, its leadership should be reflective of the overall composition. While it is already true for smaller organizations and the NEHA, the said companies and bigger non-governmental bodies still lack diversity (McCammon et al., 2018). It may not be critical but could impact those newcomers who join a movement because of its leaders or notable representatives.

The environmental movement is ambiguous regarding producing any social change as it does not affect interpersonal relationships as much as those between society and nature. However, it may still be seen in the way people treat the environment. Previously, environmental concerns allowed women and people of color to establish and strengthen their positions in society, which was a part of social change caused by the feminist and the Civil Rights movements (Spears, 2020). Currently, the environmental movement wishes to achieve sustainability, potentially leading to a new perception of certain practices (Harper & Snowden, 2017). People will assess their actions (consumptions) and those of manufacturers or politicians (production) from the point of being sustainable, which will eventually lead to changes (Harper & Snowden, 2017). While the shift to sustainability is already happening, it may be hindered by politicians refusing to acknowledge environmental issues or companies only claiming to adhere to the principle (Fredrickson et al., 2018). However, that does not imply that the movement has gone unnoticed in various social institutions.

Due to the elements discussed previously, the environmental movement has managed to raise awareness of the issues on a national level. It has led to the incorporation of environment-related topics into the curriculum, both in social studies and natural sciences, which promotes environmental literacy among students (Hollstein & Smith, 2020). As far as politics is concerned, the environmental movement is responsible for the creation of the Green Party and the Green New Deal, although both are subject to controversy (Galvin & Healy, 2020). Regardless, many laws targeting environmental protection have been passed since the 1960s, including the Clean Air and Water Acts (Schreurs & Papadakis, 2020). Economics-wise, the movement has caused a shift toward sustainable production and made being environmentally friendly an important part of a company’s strategy (Hoffman, 2018). Religion has also been impacted by the movement, as evident from the emergence of religious environmentalism organizations (Ellingson, 2016). The environmental movement’s ideology is consistent with most teachings, so the trend does not appear surprising (Ellingson, 2016). Overall, the environmental movement has brought certain changes to such social institutions as education, politics, economics, and religion, facilitating sustainability.

As previously stated, the environmental movement has impacted social institutions, but the change may seem subtle and not palpable by the majority. For example, a person not involved in mass production, education, or politics might not be aware of the planet’s issues. However, such events as Earth Day and National CleanUp Day exist, along with local initiatives, and many people tend to participate in them (Dietz, 2020). While those are not staggering changes influencing the American society at large and transforming its values, they demonstrate some established practices that may draw people not deeply interested in environmental issues.

In conclusion, the debate whether the environmental movement can be considered a genuine engine of social change remains open. On the one hand, it has impacted many social institutions and introduced several practices, and its ideology can resonate with anyone, which is evident from the varied membership. On the other hand, the movement remains controversial, and the shift is toward sustainability is ongoing, but it is not clear whether it will achieve the goal in a timely manner. The environmental movement has a great potential to reform society and ensure its sustainable existence with nature, although the feat will require more political actions and the universal acceptance. While the latter is impossible for other movements, such as feminism and anti-racism, environmental issues affect everyone, so the realization will probably make social change more pronounced.

Dauvergne, P. (2016). Environmentalism of the rich . The MIT Press.

Dietz, T. (2020). Earth Day: 50 years of continuity and change in environmentalism. One Earth, 2 (4), 306-308. Web.

Ellington, S. (2016). To care for creation: The emergence of the religious environmental movement . The University of Chicago Press.

Fredrickson, L., Sellers, C., Dillon, L., Ohayon, J. L., Shapiro, N., Sullivan, M., Bocking, S., Brown, P., de la Rosa, V., Harrison, J., Johns, S., Kulik, K., Lave, R., Murphy, M., Piper, L., Richter, L., & Wylie, S. (2018). History of US presidential assaults on modern environmental health protection. American Journal of Public Health, 108 (S2), S95–S103. Web.

Galvin, R., & Healy, N. (2020). The Green New Deal in the United States: What it is and how to pay for it. Energy Research & Social Science, 67 , 101529. Web.

Harper, C., & Snowden, M. (2017). Environment and society: Human perspective on environmental issues (6 th ed.). Taylor & Francis.

Hoffman, A. J. (2018) The next phase of business sustainability. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 16 (2), 34-39. Web.

Hollstein, M. S., & Smith, G. A. (2020). Civic environmentalism: Integrating social studies and environmental education through curricular models. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 11 (2), 223-250. Web.

McCammon, H. J., McGrath, E., Hess, D. J., & Moon, M. (2018). Women, leadership, and the U.S. Environmental movement. In H. J. McCammon & L. A. Banaszak (Eds.), 100 years of the Nineteenth Amendment: An appraisal of women’s political activism (pp. 312-333). Oxford University Press.

Montrie, C. (2018). The myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the origins of American environmentalism . University of California Press.

Oliver, P. (2019). Environmental health leadership: Where do we go from here? Journal of Environmental Health, 82 (3), 6-7. Web.

Pellow, D. N. (2016). Toward a critical environmental justice studies. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 13 (2), 221–236. Web.

Schreurs, M., & Papadakis, E. (2020). Historical dictionary of the Green movement (3 rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.

Spears, E. G. (2020). Rethinking the American environmental movement post-1945 . Taylor & Francis.

Stanley, S. K., Wilson, M. S., & Milfont, T. L. (2017). Exploring short-term longitudinal effects of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation on environmentalism. Personality and Individual Differences, 108 , 174–177. Web.

Woodhouse, K. M. (2018). The ecocentrists: A history of radical environmentalism . Columbia University Press.

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