Effective Advocacy

Asian Journal of Political Science, 2017

Environmental advocacy in East Asia takes place in a context where there are few well-funded professional advocacy organisations, no viable green parties, and governments that are highly pro-business. In this advocacy-hostile environment, what strategies are environmental organizations using to promote better environmental outcomes? Using an original database of environmental organizations and interviews with activists and officials throughout the region, this paper investigates which strategies are most common and compares them to the advocacy strategies found in the United States. It finds, perhaps surprisingly, that (a) environmental organizations across East Asia employ similar advocacy strategies even though they are operating in very different political conditions, and (b) the strategies most favoured in East Asia are also the strategies most often utilized in the United States. It then argues that new theories of advocacy should be developed to pay closer attention to certain actors (academics and artists), and particular processes (organizational networking, government collaboration, and culturemaking), that appear to play important roles in advocacy in countries around the world, irrespective of political context.

Himalaya: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2014

Although public awareness of environmental issues in Southeast Asian countries has increased dramatically during the nineties, there has not been a corresponding rise in the level of participation in environmental decision-making. Public participation often takes places at the end of a decision-making process when citizens can only accept final decisions or protest against them. For environmental policies to be successful, this ‘outsider participation’ will have to be accompanied by more ‘insider participation’ in which citizens can participate throughout the decision-making process. Conditions for insider participation are improving in Southeast Asian countries: there are more legal provisions for participation, and cases of citizen and community involvement in pollution control are emerging. This chapter reviews some of the experiences with participation in environmental issues in Southeast Asia, and a number of cases of participation in pollution control are discussed. The results suggest that participation can improve the performance of pollution control policies. This is promising because traditional pollution control strategies in Southeast Asia are not very effective. However, too much reliance on participation can also encourage highly polluting firms to concentrate in areas where the participatory skills of individuals and communities are less developed.

2001

A number of observers have pointed out that environmental movements have, at best, met with mixed success. Our paper develops a theoretical framework for why this has been the case. The work draws on a number of intellectual traditions, including theories of rational choice, human ecology, rhetoric, resource mobilization, social movements, criticism and conflict. We examine ways in which environmental issues are framed and prioritized in the collective decision process, both within environmental movements, and for the overall polity. Environmental issues often are used to energize a constituency to support a given political regime; yet unless the environment is one of the regime's top priorities, it is typically abandoned in favor of other issues. In a related vein, we consider how other social movements can effectively co-opt environmental concerns, thereby diverting significant amounts of collective energy to other ends. The theory adduced is fractal, or recursive, applying on a number of levels of analysis. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which environmental movements can become more effective.

Global Environmental Politics, 2001

Despite the book's high level of philosophical abstraction, the authors' point of departure "is not the big picture of 'our common future', but examples of actual and public conºicts over the environment" (p. 3). Their theoretical claims are strongly grounded in real-world events. Throughout the book, they continually refer to three global environmental conºicts that occurred in 1995: the unsuccessful attempt by the Anglo-Dutch corporation, Shell, to sink one of its obsolete oil rigs in the North Atlantic; French underground nuclear testing in the Paciªc atolls; and the mining of metallic ores in Papua New Guinea by an Australian transnational mining ªrm. These three cases demonstrate a number of important factors: the truly global nature of many environmental conºicts; the interplay of governments, corporations, NGOs, and indigenous communities; and the persistent impact of inequity on outcomes. Perhaps the boldest and most controversial claim of the book is that real progress towards environmental and ecological justice will require some form of world government, not merely global governance. Given their clearly articulated concern for local communities throughout the book, the authors do not appear to be over-eager globalists. The primary justiªcation for their position is that "as long as there is global capitalism-and a global market-there must be a countervailing power of similar scale to provide the aegis under which an environmentally and ecologically just society of societies. .. may gradually take shape" (p. 175). In other words, global governance already exists, but its effects are neither environmentally or ecologically just. While the authors are careful to address a range of potential criticisms, readers will need to assess for themselves the soundness of the defense. Whatever one's conclusion might be, one must admire both the willingness of Low and Gleeson to put forward such a visionary proposal as well as the intellectual appeal of their arguments. Though the level of philosophical discourse is fairly sophisticated, the book is remarkably accessible even for those without a ªrm foundation in ethical philosophy. Having used the book successfully in two upper-level undergraduate courses, I have found that students can grasp the ideas with just a bit of explication. Indeed, they have been grateful for the opportunity to join Low and Gleeson in thinking big about big problems.

Comparative Political Studies, 2003

There have been widely differing claims about how environmental groups attempt to reform environmental policy-from those who see the movement as challenging the prevailing social paradigm through confrontation and violence, to those who lament the movements reliance on conventional styles of political persuasion. This article uses data from the 1998 Global Environmental Organizations Survey (GEOS) to map the political activities used by environmental groups across the globe and to determine what best accounts for these patterns of action. The authors examine the responses of 248 environmental groups in the GEOS; these data allow the authors to compare environmental group behaviors across 59 nations and 5 continents. They find that most environmental groups engage in a mixture of political methods and activities. Although there is little evidence that institutional structures influence participation, the mix of organizational resources and ideology are potent influences on participation patterns. The results help to explain the role that environmental groups play in contemporary politics and the factors that affect this role.

Sage Handbook of Nature, 2018

Social Science Japan Journal, 2004

Studies of global environmental politics consistently point out differences in policy and practice between developed and developing nation-states. The former acknowledge both domestic and global problems of the environment and in recent decades have moved environmental issues toward the center of national action agendas. Changes in public attitudes on the environment constrain leaders, as grass roots organizations and in many states green parties and movements pressure governments. New political institutions, particularly environmental ministries, focus state attention on issues, and because these nations have high levels of economic development, they possess the means to mitigate environmental degradation and take steps toward a sustainable future. In contrast, developing nations tend to lack resources, capable institutions, and civic associations motivated by environmental goals. Notwithstanding the signiªcance of the economic development variable in explaining variations of national environmental policies, other factors have impacts as well-for example, the degree of decentralization in administrative functions, electoral and political party institutions, amount of concentration in environmental agency functions, and character of business-government relations, among others. To the present, the role of these factors has been examined primarily in single or two-country studies, for example Broadbent's treatise on

2020

The central inquiry of this chapter is the relationship between political liberalization and the rise and development of environmental movements. The selection of the eight cases (China, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam) is guided by both the call for broad coverage of Asia and the logic of comparative politics so that this research will be able to generate a level of theoretical discussion, in addition to empirically mapping out environmental movements in Asia. In addition to outlining the main patterns of the environmental-political dual transformation, this research also discusses possible reasons for the initial synergy between political liberalization and environmental movement to fade away and the challenges of environmental protection for both young democracies and authoritarian regimes

ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts

While China's environmental problems have been well publicized to a global audience, its citizens' environmental activism is lesser known. This paper assesses the major environmental activism that Chinese environmental nongovernmental organizations and Chinese citizens have engaged in since the mid-1990s to date, focusing in particular on the unique nature of such activism in an authoritarian context. I argue that environmental activism in China has garnered legitimacy and provided citizens with opportunities to become agents of social change. Chinese citizens have become adept: at taking advantage of the state's wish to enforce environmental regulations at the local level; developing alliances with Chinese officials as well as with, in some cases, transnational actors; and using communicative technology to demonstrate and to organize their environmental discontent. Chinese environmental activism has also helped environmentally affected victims to learn of, and to exercise, their rights as citizens.