The Environmentalists Narrative

Like any other social group, environmentalists have a shared story about who they are: how they came to be, what the significant events of the past have been, how they see the world and how they understand challenges for the future. In academic language, these stories are narratives, and narratives are considered central to the identity of a group. Through these narratives we explain who we are, individually (biographies) and collectively (histories). We use narratives to clarify our values and our choices. They address fundamental human questions, “Who am I?” and “What makes my life worthwhile?”[1]

The environmentalists’ narrative is the story that the environmentalist community tells that answers fundamental questions about itself. What is it about our relationship to nature that has evoked a group called “environmentalists?” How did this identity emerge? What have been the central events? To what values and behaviors does this history obligate those who are part of the group? How does this past prepare us for the future?

In order to clarify for my students the most important events in the history of the environmental movement, how they were linked to each other, and how environmentalists see the chain of events from past to present to future, I went to the library and the Internet. I knew I could easily find the stories of particular parts of the environmental movement. Every environmental organization has its story and promotes its own narrative. I needed something else, a narrative that would show how environmentalism emerged as a social movement, how it has changed over time, its vision of the future and the challenges it now faces.

I undertook this task because social movement theorists share a common opinion about the importance of the emergence of a new way of seeing the world. To quote only one among many,[2] Robert Wuthnow concludes his study of movements that transformed society with the following paragraph:

In each historical episode the leading contributors to the new cultural motifs recognized the extent to which the institutional conditions of their day were flawed, constraining, oppressive, arbitrary. Their criticism of these conditions was often extreme and unrelenting. It was sharpened by an alternative vision, a vision constructed discursively, a vision that was pitted authoritatively against the established order, not as its replacement but as a conceptual space in which new modes of behavior could be considered. The strength of their discourse lay in going beyond negative criticism and beyond idealism to identify working models of individual social action for the future. (Wuthnow, 1989: 583)

I expected to find a consensus narrative along these lines among environmentalists. Instead, I found that in the early years of the 21^st century it is not all that easy to tell what the environmentalists’ narrative is.

There are histories of the environment, or more accurately, environmental history. Indeed, this has become a thriving academic specialty. Environmental history has opened a fascinating perspective on the past, a perspective often in conflict with conventional historical narratives. The findings of environmental history do not seem to have made much of an impact on a shared narrative among environmentalists.

The difficulty of using environmental history in the narrative of the history of environmentalism can be seen by considering one of the best selling works in the area, Ponting’s A Green History of the World. This is a remarkably pessimistic volume, not the sort of thing to rally people to a social movement. Its subtitle - the environment and the collapse of great civilizations is a good indication of the tone. The volume says next to nothing about recent and contemporary environmentalism.

The environmental history timeline compiled by William J. Kovarik contains both environmental history and the history of environmentalism. It is an excellent source, even if many readers would want other items included; Kovarik makes no claim to be fully comprehensive. By placing hundreds of events in chronological order the timeline is a valuable resource for building a narrative. Still it is what it is - a timeline and not a narrative. Narratives shape and interpret events so that the reader / listener can draw meaning from them.

Many books and articles on the environment do discuss the history of the environmental movement. There are some common markers in many accounts of environmentalism. Histories of environmentalism were first written for American audiences, reflecting the rise of the environmental movement in the prosperous parts of the world and the specific enthusiasm in the United States. The most common markers are John Muir and the conservation movement, the shift from nature protection to man-made threats with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the neo-Malthusian arguments of “limits to growth,” “the tragedy of the commons,” and the “population bomb” (all titles in the environmental literature of the 1960s and 1970s), and finally the first Earth Day.

These common markers are mentioned so frequently, that it does seem reasonable to conclude that they are elements of a narrative widely shared among environmentalists. These markers share a number of traits. They are all American. They stop in the 1970s. They are more about ideas than about events, more about problems than proposed solutions.

It is possible to find on the internet, for example, a reprint from the March/April 1995 issue of E/The Environmental Magazine of an article by George Schindler, Jr., “The History of Environmentalism: It didn’t begin with Earth Day: the Green Momentum was building long before 1970”. I do not mean to criticize Schindler. His explicit aim was to deal with the period before 1970. The themes of conservation, population, resource depletion, pollution and earth day are all in his short narrative, as are Carson, Hardin and others. This article is recognizable as a variant of a common shared narrative of the history of environmentalism. Yet it is noteworthy that I could find no readily accessible clear narrative of environmentalism after 1970. Not even for American environmentalism.

Nor did I find much evidence of a shared global narrative. Chico Mendes, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, Chernobyl, burning Indonesian forests, the disappearing Aral Sea, the UN conferences on the environment and concepts like sustainable development, environmental justice, and ecofeminism are familiar parts of environmental discourse. What seems to be missing is a widely shared narrative framework in which these personalities, organizations, events and ideas are integrated into one story.

One aspect of the challenge of creating a common narrative of more recent environmentalism is found in a publication of the RAND Corporation (Robert Taylor, “New World, Old Order” in Our Future, Our Environment, Rand Corp. ). The RAND document adapts part of a 1998 OECD report - Globalization and the Environment: Perspectives from OECD and Dynamic Non-Member Countries, which compares global environmental governance issues in two periods. The first is the 1960’s to mid-1980s. The second is the mid-1980s to today. The RAND publication gives a chart comparing the two periods.

In the earlier period, RAND tells us, the framework for environmental action was national. Issues were point-source pollution and species protection. Environmental politics were based on issues whose impacts were generally “apparent, immediate and measurable.” Confrontational styles were driven by threats to public health. Confrontations were resolved through governmental use of laws and regulations.

The clarity and emotional resonance of this kind of environmentalism lends itself readily to a narrative. The producers of A Civil Action and Erin Brockovich recognized this, even though the storytellers within the American environmental movement have reservations about how central courtroom dramas are to the narrative of the movement.

In this period, organizations like Greenpeace could rally environmentalists to save the whales and the victims of Love Canal could go on to create the Citizens Clearing House for Toxic Waste. It is possible to identify in this period the general structure of the environmentalists’ narrative; idealists and grassroots activists raise the alarm, document “apparent, immediate and measurable” dangers, and demand corrective action. There is, however, in this structure no longer a common narrative, but multiple parallel narratives of distinct organizations: the Greenpeace story, the Love Canal story and so forth. The multiple narratives continue to be told today, through direct mail fund raising (cf. Herndl and Brown, 1996: 9), Internet sites and other public relations activities.

The RAND chart shows the second period, from the mid-1980s, to be much less clear and simple than the first. The awareness that much pollution has a transboundary dimension, requiring international attention, supplements local and national concerns about clean air and water. Climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, and sustainable development emerge as issues. These issues are more removed from daily life experience. Their impacts are long-term, diffuse and less perceptible. These issues involve networks of affected parties in difficult, technical negotiations instead of confrontations between victims and polluters.

Governments, multinational corporations, civil society groups and trade organizations are all involved. Established regulatory agencies, such as those responsible for water, forests and fisheries, have been challenged and often reinvigorated. Governments at all levels have established environmental bodies and have adopted the rhetoric of environmental responsibility. In the developed world, significant legislation has been enacted, creating new environmental protections standards and agencies. Many international agreements are signed. In response to the critical voices raising the alarm and pressing for action, numerous bodies - mostly in the public sector, but including some in the private sector - take on or refocused on environmental protection.

This process of institutionalization establishes social structures where those involved tell the story of environmentalism from the particular point of view of the situation in which they participate. These narratives of environmentalism are often not directed at the public at large, as are the narratives of the social movement of environmentalism, but at the other specialists who are involved with particular types of environmental issues.

The RAND comparison of the two periods 1960S to mid-198s and the mid-1980s to the present shows a shift not only towards greater distance from everyday life and institutionalization but also to greater complexity. The issues and the ways in which they are handled become more economically, culturally and politically complex. So too does the narrative. The grassroots activists, the transnational NGOs, the environmental lawyers and the ideological movements are still active, joined by the environmentalists within the “antiglobalization” movement and the multiple institutional participants. Each continues to tell its own narrative. Yet it would be hard to claim that their stories, even if taken together, would tell the story of recent environmentalism.

The close interconnection of environmental issues and economic ones is now widely recognized, so the environmentalists’ narrative somehow has to include the story of the economy too. This presents a significant challenge to a consensus environmental narrative. On the one hand, established businesses and trade organizations are grappling with this challenge, often in controversial ways, and new green business initiatives are developing. On the other hand is the critical position that environmental survival depends upon altering fundamental economic and cultural practices. Both positions might agree that the wide acceptance of the idea of “sustainable development” is important in the environmentalists’ narrative. Yet they would hardly tell the stories around that concept in the same way.

In addition, the environment is recognized as a central topic in the conversation of the North and the South. While the dominance of the Northern voice in environmentalism is historically understandable, a current global environmental narrative that does not integrate the Southern voice is simply inadequate. The critique of consumer society takes on special poignancy when placed in the context of dramatic imbalances in regional consumption patterns.

Sources may be there for a reconstructed environmentalists’ narrative, but the narrative itself is not yet there. Perhaps Guha’s recent book, Environmentalism: a Global History, which takes on the challenge of all this complexity, will help. It is too early to gage its place on the reading lists of university courses on the environment or to know whether it will be widely used as a reference point within the culture of environmentalism. Or perhaps the RAND document, with its detailed discussion of increasing complexity, is a good starting point.

The concept of sustainable development, which gained currency after it was highlighted in the 1987 Report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, has become very widely used. Perhaps the attention given to this concept, even though its implications are controversial,[3] will provide the theme around which the story of environmentalism can be told.

It is no wonder then that I did not find what I set out for, a simple, clear widely shared narrative of the development, achievements, and challenges of the environmental movement. So much has happened that it is difficult to keep track. So many voices are competing for attention, and most of them understandably shape the story of environmentalism so that their own stories are central. Nevertheless, I still want a common narrative.

Day after day our newspapers, and sometimes even television, report environmental news. But, they never deliver an environmental narrative. An information service that is financed by promotion of consumption will have real difficulty getting across the story. Environmental news, in the absence of an environmental narrative, can easily lead to finger pointing. One example is reports of population growth in the South or politicians trying to spin reality to avoid responsibility for doing something about hard to solve problems. Greenwash appears in the ads, if not in the stories. Reports of environmental problems and strategies are juxtaposed with real estate sections advocating urban sprawl, automobile sections hawking size and power, fashion sections telling us to replace perfectly good clothes, and business sections which measure the consumption of depleting resources as a sign of health and well-being. Consequently, reconstructing the environmentalists’ narrative will have to continue to be an oppositional activity, straining against the mass media.

Many of us think that the public, and even our decision makers, know in some diffuse way how serious the environmental crisis is. What we think they want is a narrative that makes sense out of what they know, so they can think clearly about what they want to do. Narratives give shape and meaning to events. They are indispensable tools for judging our present situations and planning ahead.

Brulle, in his review of social movement discourse within environmental organizations, observes, “social movements are creative activities of society remaking itself” which contain “a new narrative of society.” Social movement discourse identifies problems, articulates alternative visions, presents compelling rationales for participation, and delineates goals and means (2000 [1996]: 220). Alternative visions, strategic goals and tactical decisions develop discursively from the interaction of many voices. But they do develop into a common perspective widely shared in the movement. As critique, vision, strategy and tactics develop, the likelihood of the social movement being effective increases.

In contrast, the environmentalists’ narrative has become fragmented and complex. The fragmentation of the narrative is based on real diversity of interests and outlook among environmentalists. It is not difficult to understand the development of multiple environmental narratives in a movement that is diverse in its origins, current social locations and approaches. The reality appears to have become so complex that it is comprehensible only to trained specialists. This is appearance rather than reality. The difficulty lies not in the complexity of reality, although that is clearly a challenge. The difficulty lies in the challenge to the imagination of bringing the complexity into focus as a basis for more effective action.

Perhaps in its fragmentation, institutionalization and complexity environmentalism has become a failed social movement - capable only of bringing about limited changes institutionalized into the continuing social and cultural structures of contemporary society. The failure of environmentalism to fashion a compelling core narrative of contemporary society, with a critique of the present, a vision of the future and a map for getting there, may have a very high cost. We have to ask, can a diverse, fragmented, often technical narrative stand a chance of being persuasive against mass media promotion of mass consumption? Should we not try to locate the particular and specialized narratives of a diverse movement in the context of a larger narrative which is simple, clear and widely shared?

* Stuart Schoenfeld is chair, department of sociology at Glendon College, York University and a member of the academic advisory board of the York Centre for Applied Sustainability.

Brulle, Robert J. 2000 [1996]. “Environmental Discourse and Social Movement Organizations: a historical and rhetorical perspective on the development of U. S. environmental organizations.” Pp. 217 - 237 in R. Scott Frey, ed., The Environment and Society Reader. Toronto: Allyn and Bacon. Reprinted from Sociological Inquiry 66(1): 58-83.

Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Volume II of The Information Society.

Conca, Ken and Geoffrey D. Dabelko. 1998. Eds, Green Planet Blues, 2^nd edition. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Eyerman, Ron and Andrew Jamison. 199. Social Movements: a cognitive approach. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Herndl, Carl C. and Stuart C. Brown. 1996. Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. Madison: University of Wisconsin.

Ponting, Clive. 1993 [1991] A Green History of the World: the environment and the collapse of great civilizations. New York: Penguin Books.

Schindler, George Jr., “The History of Environmentalism: It didn’t begin with Earth Day: the Green Momentum was building long before 1970.” http://library.thinkquest.org/2610/history.htm

Touraine, Alain. 1981. The Voce and the Eye: an analysis of social movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wuthnow, Robert. 1989. Communities of Discourse: Ideology and social structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment and European socialism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

This is a paper for the 2002 meetings of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada.

[1] While attention to narratives is currently fashionable, the perspective has a long pedigree in the social sciences. Anthropologists have given us the images of elders of the tribe, sitting in the communal circle, in initiation ceremonies, or in the course of daily activity, communicating the stories of the group from one generation to another. Communications theorists tell us that later, priests and then historians, and eventually a wide range of communicators took over the responsibility to pass on the stories of groups and subgroups.

[2] See also Eyerman and Jamison, 1991, or Castells, 1997, chs. 2 and 3. Touraine, 1981, is frequently cited along these lines.

[3] Conca and Dabelko (1998) contains a section on sustainable development with excerpts from the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development followed by several divergent responses to the concept.