Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. Ecologism is a term more commonly used in continental European languages, while environmentalism is more commonly used in English, but the words have slightly different connotations.
Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and improvement of the natural environment and critical earth system elements or processes such as the climate, and may be referred to as a movement to control pollution or protect plant and animal diversity. For this reason, concepts such as a land ethics, environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology, and the biophilia hypothesis figure predominantly. The environmentalist movement encompasses various approaches to addressing environmental issues, including free market environmentalism, evangelical environmentalism, and the environmental conservation movement.
At its crux, environmentalism is an attempt to balance relations between humans and the various natural systems on which they depend in such a way that all the components are accorded a proper degree of sustainability. The exact measures and outcomes of this balance is controversial and there are many different ways for environmental concerns to be expressed in practice. Environmentalism and environmental concerns are often represented by the colour green, but this association has been appropriated by the marketing industries for the tactic known as greenwashing.
Environmentalism is opposed by anti-environmentalism, which says that the Earth is less fragile than some environmentalists maintain, and portrays environmentalism as overreacting to the human contribution to climate change or opposing human advancement.
Definitions
Environmentalism denotes a social movement that seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism, and education in order to protect natural resources and ecosystems. Environmentalism as a movement covers broad areas of institutional oppression, including for example: consumption of ecosystems and natural resources into waste, dumping waste into disadvantaged communities, air pollution, water pollution, weak infrastructure, exposure of organic life to toxins. Because of these divisions, the environmental movement can be categorized into these primary focuses: environmental science, environmental activism, environmental advocacy, and environmental justice.
An environmentalist is a someone who fights to protect the natural environment. This may include supporting practices such as informed consumption, conservation initiatives, investment in renewable resources, improved efficiencies in the materials economy, transitioning to new accounting paradigms such as ecological economics, renewing and revitalizing our connections with non-human life or even opting to have one less child to reduce consumption and pressure on resources.
In various ways (for example, grassroots activism and protests), environmentalists and environmental organizations seek to give the natural world a stronger voice in human affairs.Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (2005)
In general terms, environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources, and the protection (and restoration, when necessary) of the natural environment through changes in public policy and individual behaviour. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered around ecology, health, and human rights.
The environmental movement (a term that sometimes includes the conservation and green movements) is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement. Though the movement is represented by a range of organizations, because of the inclusion of environmentalism in the classroom curriculum, the environmental movement has a younger demographic than is common in other social movements (see green seniors).
History
Ancient history and middle ages A concern for environmental protection has recurred in diverse forms, in different parts of the world, throughout history. The earliest ideas of environmental protectionism can be found in Jainism, a religion from ancient India revived by Mahavira in the 6th century BC. Jainism offers a view that is in many ways compatible with core values associated with environmental activism, such as the protection of life by nonviolence, which could form a strong ecological ethos for global protection of the environment. Mahavira's teachings on the symbiosis between all living beings—as well as the five elements of earth, water, air, fire, and space—are core to environmental thought today.
In West Asia, the Caliph Abu Bakr in the 630s AD commanded his army to "Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire," and to "Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food." Various Islamic medical treatises during the 9th to 13th centuries dealt with environmentalism and environmental science, including the issue of pollution. The authors of such treatises included Al-Kindi, Qusta ibn Luqa, Al-Razi, Ibn Al-Jazzar, al-Tamimi, al-Masihi, Avicenna, Ali ibn Ridwan, Ibn Jumay, Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, Abd-el-latif, Ibn al-Quff, and Ibn al-Nafis. Their works covered a number of subjects related to pollution, such as air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination, and the mishandling of municipal solid waste. They also included assessments of certain localities' environmental impact.
Within the religious tradition of the Catholic church, the friar Francis of Assisi gave expression to a profound mystical reverence for the natural environment as early as 1224. In his lyrical poem Canticle of the Sun Francis offered both an ethical and spiritual context for the practice of environmentalism.The Holy See- Francis - Encyclicals. Pope Franics I "ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS - ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME" Rome, 2015 on vatican.vaUnderstanding the Consecrated Life In Canada. Zuidema, Jason Ed. Wilfred Lauier University Press, December 2015, Chapter 18 "Standing on Holy Ground: Benedict, Francis and Monastic Environmentalism" by Cory Andrew Labrecque ISBN 9781771121392 on Google.com He extolled mankind to affirm a divine presence within the natural realm while calling into question mankind's dominance of the environment, personifying God's living presence in his creation and urging humanity to offer thanksgiving for that presence by extending praise through "...Sister Mother Earth, who sustains us and governs us and who produces varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.. Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind, and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to Your creatures."The Holy See- Francis|Encyclicals. Pope Franics I "ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS - ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME" Rome, 2015 on vatican.vaNational Catholic Reporter. Joanne M. Pierce - Professor Emerita Religious Studies College of the Holy Cross. "Catholic Tradition of Care for Environment Dates Back Centuries Before Pope Francis - The Franciscan Tradition" on ncronline.orgToward A Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism" Fox, Warwick. Shambhaha, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1990 Context p. 6 ISBN 9780877735335 on Google books
In Europe, King Edward I of England banned the burning and sale of "sea-coal" in 1272 by proclamation in London, after its smoke had become a prevalent annoyance throughout the city. This fuel, common in London due to the local scarcity of wood, was given this early name because it could be found washed up on some shores, from where it was carted away on a wheelbarrow. King Philip II of Spain was noted by his love of nature, which according to historian Henry Kamen, turned him into one of the first ecologist rulers in European history. He issued orders to conserve the Spanish forests, noting in 1582 the great disservice they would do to future generations by depleting them.
Industrial Revolution
The origins of the environmental movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. The emergence of great factories and the concomitant immense growth in coal consumption gave rise to an unprecedented level of air pollution in industrial centers; after 1900 the large volume of industrial chemical discharges added to the growing load of untreated human waste. The first large-scale, modern environmental laws came in the form of Britain's Alkali Acts, passed in 1863, to regulate the deleterious air pollution (gaseous hydrochloric acid) given off by the Leblanc process, used to produce soda ash.
In industrial cities, local experts and reformers, especially after 1890, took the lead in identifying environmental degradation and pollution, and initiating grass-roots movements to demand and achieve reforms.Harold L. Platt, Shock cities: the environmental transformation and reform of Manchester and Chicago (2005) excerpt. Typically the highest priority went to water and air pollution.
19th century
The late 19th century saw the passage of the first wildlife conservation laws. The zoologist Alfred Newton published a series of investigations into the Desirability of establishing a 'Close-time' for the preservation of indigenous animals between 1872 and 1903. His advocacy for legislation to protect animals from hunting during the mating season led to the formation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and influenced the passage of the Sea Birds Preservation Act in 1869 as the first nature protection law in the world.
The movement in the United States began in the late 19th century, out of concerns for protecting the natural resources of the West, with individuals such as John Muir and Henry David Thoreau making key philosophical contributions. Thoreau was interested in peoples' relationship with nature and studied this by living close to nature in a simple life. He published his experiences in the book Walden, which argues that people should become intimately close with nature. Muir came to believe in nature's inherent right, especially after spending time hiking in Yosemite Valley and studying both the ecology and geology. He successfully lobbied congress to form Yosemite National Park and went on to set up the Sierra Club in 1892. The conservationist principles as well as the belief in an inherent right of nature were to become the bedrock of modern environmentalism.
The prevailing belief regarding the origins of early environmentalism suggests that it emerged as a local response to the adverse impacts of industrialization in Western nations and communities. In terms of conservation efforts, there is a widespread view that the conservation movement began as a predominantly elite concern in North America, focusing on the preservation of local natural areas. A less prevailing view, however, attributes the roots of early environmentalism to a growing public concern about the influence of Western economic forces, particularly in connection with colonization, on tropical environments. Richard Grove, in a 1990 publication, points out that little attention has been given to the significance of the colonial experience, particularly the European colonial experience, in shaping early European environmentalism.
20th century