Political Science · Ch 6 — Environment and Natural Resources
Environmental Movements: One or Many?
Environmental Movements: One or Many?
Environmental movements are not a single, unified phenomenon. They are among the most vibrant, diverse, and powerful social movements in the world today. While governments have responded to environmental degradation through international agreements, many of the most significant responses have come from groups of environmentally conscious volunteers working at various levels — some internationally, but most at the local level.
It is within these social movements that new forms of political action are born or reinvented. They raise new ideas and long-term visions about what we should and should not do in our individual and collective lives. The diversity of these movements is an important trait of contemporary environmentalism.
Forest Movements of the Global South
Forest movements in countries like Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, continental Africa, and India face enormous pressures. Despite three decades of environmental activism, forest clearing in the Third World continues at an alarming rate — in fact, the destruction of the world's last remaining grand forests has increased in the last decade.
Resistance to the Minerals Industry
The minerals industry is one of the most powerful industries on the planet. Through the liberalisation of the global economy, many economies of the South are being re-opened to multinational corporations (MNCs). The industry's extraction of earth, use of chemicals, pollution of waterways and land, clearance of native vegetation, and displacement of communities continue to invite criticism and resistance worldwide.
A good example is the Philippines, where a vast network of groups and organisations campaigned against the Western Mining Corporation (WMC), an Australia-based multinational company. Much of the opposition to WMC in its own country, Australia, is based on anti-nuclear sentiments and advocacy for the basic rights of Australian indigenous peoples.
Struggles Against Mega-Dams
In every country where a mega-dam is being built, one is likely to find an environmental movement opposing it. Increasingly, anti-dam movements are becoming pro-river movements — they advocate for more sustainable and equitable management of river systems and valleys. …
The figure shows a stylised map of the northern polar region, centred on the Arctic Circle. It is not a political map but a thematic one, designed to illustrate how the Arctic is imagined as a “wild place” — remote, pristine, and largely uninhabited by humans. The map likely uses a circular projection, with the North Pole at the centre and the continents of North America, Europe, and Asia radiating outward.
The key visual element is the labelling of specific “wild” sites or features in the Arctic: for example, the text might point to the vast ice sheets of Greenland, the tundra of northern Canada and Siberia, and the frozen ocean itself. These are marked as places where “people” are absent or scarce — the wilderness is defined by the lack of permanent human settlement. The figure probably uses arrows or lines to connect these sites to the central idea of the Arctic as a “wild place,” contrasting it with the populated, industrialised regions to the south. …