Environmental conflicts and defenders - Scheidel 2020

22 important questions on Environmental conflicts and defenders - Scheidel 2020

What are environmental defenders?

Environmental defenders are individuals and collectives who protect the environment and protest unjust and unsustainable resource uses because of social and environmental reasons.

Who are included in environmental defenders?

They may include Indigenous (inheems) people, peasants (boeren) or fisherfolks whose lives and livelihoods may be threatened by environmental change or dispossession, as well as environmental activists, social movements, journalists, or any others who actively defend the environment because degradation has reached for them unacceptable levels.

What is the downside of activism?

Activism is a good resource for global sustainability but comes at a high cost of lives.
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What can be improved regarding environmental conflicts?

Better framework needed to assess the underlying environmental conflicts. Most environmental conflict studies are local or national. Global analyses have not been done yet.

What does the environmental Justice Atlas maps research?

Environmental Justice Atlas database maps research on environmental conflicts. It is the largest global inventory.

How was the Environmental Justice Atlas database created?

It was created in 2011 through a collaborative process between academics and civil society groups. Among the aims was to advance and expand political ecology by going beyond case study research and moving towards large comparative and statistical analyses. EJAtlas does not conduct original research but uses external sources that they review.

Are environmental conflicts induced (afgeleid) by poverty or resource scarcity?

There are dominant assumption that environmental conflicts are induced by poverty or resource scarcity. The truth is more nuanced. Kallis (2019) argues that scarcity and abundance of resources are social constructs. Environmental conflicts are driven by a range of economic activities related to resource extraction, processing, and waste disposal.

What is an environmental human rights defender?

Environmental human rights defenders are anyone who is defending environmental rights, including constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment, when the exercise of those rights is being threatened whether or not they self-identify as human rights defenders. Many environmental defenders engage in their activities through sheer necessity. Environmental defenders are not always framed as protectors. The UN argues that recognition and respect for them is needed.

Where did environmental defenders came from?

Environmental defenders were previously introduced as (poor) people who depend on the environment for their livelihoods. Another name is ecosystem people (Indian scholars, 1995). A US example is the umping in North Carolina in 1982, where environmental impacts was associated with people of colour. Thus often environmental movements are linked with social movements.

Expressions of direct violence against environmental defenders include:

· Assassination
· Structural violence (violence that is ingrained in the social, political and economic structures)
· Cultural violence (when cultural elements are used to legitimize violence)
· Slow violence (daily exposure to contamination from for example mining)
· Physical violence against activists
· Criminalization of environmental defenders

What is the result of limited coverage of areas by EJAtlas?

Some regions such as parts of Asia have limited coverage. This may result in underrepresentation of actors. Some countries are mapped in more detail than others because of better data availability. This makes it hard to compare countries and continents.

Most frequently reported sectors for environmental conflicts:

1. Mining (21%)
2. Energy (17%)
3. Biomass and land use (15%)
4. Water management (14%)

Which sector is mostly associated with assassinations (moorden)?

Agrarian sector

How many percent of environmental conflicts involve assassinations?

13% of environmental conflicts in the EJAtlas involve assassinations.

Which type of conflicts are mostly dominant in low-income countries?

Conflicts over conservation, bio-mass and land, and water management , low income countries also have more rural conflicts, than high income countries.

Which conflicts are mostly dominant in high income countries?

Conflicts over waste management, tourism, nuclear power, industial

What is the type of environmental conflict correlated with?

Patterns of industrialization.

Groups involved with environmental conflict are:

- Environmental defenders (belong frequently to vulnerable segments of society that are disproportionately threatened by development projects and resource exploitation)
- Political parties
- Trade unions (working class environmentalism)
- Religious groups (Christians groups, Buddhist monks)
- NGOs
- Local scientists (may help to legitimize local claims in the media)
- Women’s rights groups (ecofeminism)
- Indigenous groups
- Discriminated groups
- Farmers/fishers/peasants/pastoralists/etc.
- Industrial workers

When is it easiest to stop a protest?

It is easier to stop a project during the planning phase because more leverage points exist for groups to intervene, fewer resources have been invested so that the cancellation costs are lower, and a longer timeframe for negotiating and creating alternatives is available.

What is tactical diversity?

Using different mobilization forms is also more effective. This is called tactical diversity It reflects a range of skills available in the movement, allows more people to participate in a diverse range of protest activities, and it may turn mobilizations more resilient as claimants can move between protest forms in case of repression of a particular one.

What is a trade-off in case of renewables and conservation areas?

there are social and ecological trade-offs. Example given: wind parks.

What is the reason that the corporate pressure to exploit (uitbuiten) indigenous (inheems) territories is high?

They are some of the remaining frontiers of resource extraction.

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