Environmental Politics and Human Rights
- Environmentalism: concepts and Perspectives-
- The idea of environmentalism ;
Environment means the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (such as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, environmentalism is "politico-ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities; through the adoption of forms of political, economic, and social organization that are thought to be necessary for, or at least conducive to, the benign treatment of the environment by humans; and through a reassessment of humanity’s relationship with nature".
Inferences: the environmentalism has political and ethical dimensions. it wants to protect and preserve the quality of natural environment; for that the movement want to see restrictions in the use of harmful chemicals like pesticides or the like. Environmentalism is looking for a political, economic and social system where the earth is used judiciously and sustainably.
Environmentalism is a movement to address the need of other life forms too. The significance of this movement is that the target group of it is all life forms on the earth including human beings. It is a holistic approach to life and an inclusive strategy to make the world more pristine and life supportive. As an ideology, environmentalism seeks to maintain welfare of the environment.
Milestones in the evolution of Environmentalism:
From 7th to 13th centuries concept of environmentalism had been appeared in the writing of Caliph Abu Bakr (“Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food.") and in various Arabic treatise were included environmental problems like water and soil pollution, solid waste management etc. William the conqueror established first system of forest law.
In 1609 Hugo Grotius published Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) arguing freedom of high seas. He considered sea as an international territory and every nations were free to use it The Bishnois’ movement in India in 1720, concept of ‘public right’ by Benjamin Franklin. In the year 1845, the US Secretary of State to the Senate used the term "carrying capacity"(the number of people, animals, or crops which a region can support without environmental degradation) for the first time.
In 1859 Henry David Thoreau wrote “The hen-hawk (red-tailed hawk) and the pine are friends. What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.” In his classic book Walden, Thoreau he elaborated ties between people and nature.
“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.” And he adds, “We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen [American coot] lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.” - The term ecology (1866) is coined in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834–1919) in his Generelle Morphologie der Organismen.
- The term acid rain was coined by Reobert Angus Smith in his book Air and Rain (1872). The same year witnessed foundation of world's first national park- the Yellowstone National Park.
- The year 1968, Apollo 8 photographed the earth (Earthrise is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell declared it "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken") from the surface of moon.
- (https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/environmentalism) the note is taken from this website
It is a social movement or represents an ideology focused on the welfare of the environment. It seeks to protect and conserve the elements of earth's ecosystem, including water, air, land, animals, and plants, along with entire habitats such as rainforests, deserts and oceans. Concepts dealing with environmental issues include the management of natural resources, overpopulation, commercial logging, urbanization and global state. Environmentalism works to correct the damage as well as prevent future destruction.
Environmentalism began as a movement in the 1960s and 1970s. But it was an established fact that Humanity’s existence is increasingly depending on his relationship with the natural environment.
However, humanity's relationship and dependence on the earth for survival has existed since the beginning of time. There is a constant interaction between man and nature and it is often described as a cultural exchange; especially among Native Americans, aborigines, Africans and so on. But the materialistic dominance of the western cultures did give less importance to this cultural synchronisation between man and nature. In consequent with the industrialisation, environment started deteriorating, coal burning factories polluted the air and water, need for lumber led to mass deforestation and subsequent destruction of ecosystem.
In the words of Dana M. Lovelady, “Scientists studied ecological systems while others formed clubs and initiated protests. These concerned people became known as conservationists, a predecessor to the modern environmentalist”. Earth-friendly groups, such as the Sierra Club established in 1892 under the inspiration of President Theodore Roosevelt's innovative conservation programs. The movement no longer gained continuity due to two world wars.
Scholars and environmentalists believe the beginning of the modern environmental movement can be attributed to the 1962 publication of Silent Spring , a book by Rachel Carson. Carson wrote a stunning cautionary book about pesticides and the consequences to animal and human life. Other books, such as Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb published in 1968, built momentum for the movement. In 1972, the first major worldwide discussion on environmental issues was held at a United Nations conference in Stockholm, Sweden, and attended by 114 nations (Encyclopedia.com). The Stockholm conference was followed by The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit, where discussions revolved around the global conflict between economic development and environmental protection. - Relationship between political science and environmental studies:
The two terms ‘natural environment’ and ‘human environment’ signify two orders that represents bio-world and human centric world. Political Science is a branch of social science which deals with relationship between people and government. Merriam Webster dictionary gives a simple definition of political science as “the study of governments and how they work”. Political Thought constitute a collection of ideas which have erected the base structure of Political Science. Frederic A. Ogg gives the role political science in maintaining public service than any other subjects (Ogg 1941). Ogg is an optimist in saying that a good public service represents good political system. Dustin Tingley explains the biological adaption of political science as it deals with behaviour of people. (Tingley 2006). Peter A. Corning explains the holistic Darwinian model of political science rather than purely idealistic or realistic approaches as conceived by Aristotle and Machiavelli respectively. He is of the opinion that political science has “ethological” space by which the subject takes more integrative approach towards governance (Corning 2008).
Robert O. Keohane finds role of politics in determining rules and organising people is very important and its role is priori to every form of governance (Keohane 2009, Bronowski 1985,261).Writers like Andrew Jordan, Rudinger K.W. Wurzel and Anthony R.Zito had an opinion that there is a difference between government and “governance” (Jordan, Wurzel and Zito 2005). The Governance needs more ‘administrative rationalism’ by using existing bureaucratic expertise and mechanisms, and viewing environmental issues as ‘minor, technical, soluble and politically uncontentious’ (Papadakis and Grant 2005, 26). Governance is not a single process as the resposibility of the government. Rise of NGOs, multinational corporations, New Social Movements, etc. have been contributing to the process of environmental governance. Presence of environmental movements, rise of new organised protest movements for conservation and protection of water, protest aganst water polution, etc. represent different phases of environmental govenance (Winchester 2009) . It is a new way of ‘doing politics’ and a form of ‘third sector model of govenance’ (Tahkokallio and Nygren 2008, 346; Paterson 1999). Five principles of Enviromental Governance have been put forward by Daniel C Esty (Esty 2009). The principles of environmental governance are Sustainable Development; Polluter pays principle; Common but differentiated responsibility; Subsidiarity and Good Governance (Esty 2009, 428).
Tun Myint quotes Robert A Dahl in his article and as he addresses the “democraticness” of global political regimes to expand the scope of environmental governance. ‘Regime design has become the current focus of debate on environmental governance across the field’ (Myint 2003). - Frank Biermann, Bernd Siebenhuner and Anna Scheyog pointed out that there are two transformations, ‘global environmental governance a; the general shift from intergovernmental politics to global governance, and b; the increasing functional differentiation of international decision-making, including the emergence of environmental policy as a distinct field of international politics’ (Biermann, Siebenhuner, & Scheyog, 2008).
Political Theory and Approach towards Natural Environment:
Plato is an idealist and demands harmony of soul with the nature. Plato says in his book, the Republic
‘And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and constructive art are full of them,–weaving, embroidery, architecture, and every kind of manufacture; also nature, animal and vegetable,–in all of them there is grace or the absence of grace. And ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill words and ill nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness’. (Plato 2001,255-Book III)
Plato has designed his ideal state on the qualities of virtue that is based on justice. The idea of justice is based on the idea of good which is the harmony of the world. The harmony of the soul and body, and of the parts of the soul with one another, a harmony ’fairer than that of musical notes,’ is the right method of conceiving the perfection of human nature. Plato has expressed the unity of living world in his work The Timaeus.
‘All things that live are manifestations of the same eternal essence: only as this evolved itself through countless gradations of existence, the lower ranks of organisms possess less and less of the pure activity of soul operating by herself, until in plants and the lowest forms of animal life the vital force only manifests itself in the power of sensation and growth’ (Plato, The Timaeus 1888, 286) - Scholars like Timothy A Mhoney and Val Plumwood accused of Plato for aggravating exploitative tendencies among human being (Mahoney 1997).Thimothy criticised Plato for comparing nature with chaos and for demanding people to use their rational designs over nature.
Aristotle’s naturalism has been questioned by many citing his conception of natural slavery (Ambler 1987, Mackay 2005,Heath 2008). John S Marshall finds ecological precepts in Aristotle as it is evident that Aristotle demands sustainability in the utilisation of natural resources
“True wealth does not arise from the coercion of nature; it arises from the bounty of nature producing a surplus which man can use for his support. As the hen lays more eggs than are necessary to continue the race of chickens, as the tree produces fruit that is not necessary to continue the successive generations of fruit trees, as the wild grape produces a surplus of grapes, as there are more fish in the sea than are necessary to keep up the stock of fish there, as there are more wild animals than are necessary to continue their existence, so there is a bounty in nature, a surplus on which man can live.” (Marshall 1947, 351)
Aristotle in his work the Phyiscs, explains different manifestations of natural world. Trish Glazebrook thinks that in ‘the Physics’ Aristotle is attempting to restore the ecological aspects of human life. For Aristotle, nature and natural phenomenon are ideological. (Glazebrook 2003,27) Aristotle was of the opinion that there is hierarchy of value in the environment and this is linked to the rationale of humans, animals and plants. ‘All living things can grow and reproduce, but only animals and humans are conscious. As such, plants serve the needs of sentient creatures. Similarly, only humans can reason, whilst animals rely on instinct. As such, non-human animals serve the needs of humans, and have merely instrumental value. Plants are created for the sake of animals and animals for the sake of men’ (Jowett 1885).
Gilbert F. LaFreniere, in his study on Rousseau, substantiates that Rousseau is an arch supporter of green thoughts. Gibert says that since 1978, Rousseau was considered as the spiritual father of the Green Movement. Rousseau is considered as ‘a model of a complete, holistic outlook toward nature and humanity's relationship to nature’ and ‘as a seminal interpreter of humanity's relationship to nature, particularly concerning the impact of the scientific revolution and the modern idea of progress upon our perception of nature. (LaFreniere 1990)’. But Joseph Featherstone criticised Rousseau as an environmentalist and called him as a follower of “maturationalism” rather than environmentalism. - Phil Gasper called Karl Marx as a radical environmentalist.
It is not the unity of living and active humanity with the natural, inorganic conditions of their metabolic exchange with nature, and hence their appropriation of nature, which requires explanation or is the result of a historic process, but rather the separation between these inorganic conditions of human existence and this active existence, a separation which is completely posited only in the relation of wage labour and capital. (Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy 1973,427)
Karl Marx wrote in his Economic and Political Manuscripts:
“The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity, estranged labor estranges the species from man. It changes for him the life of the species into a means of individual life. First it estranges the life of the species and individual life, and secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its abstract and estranged form.” (Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 2009,31)
J.B Foster reiterates that the fundamental nature of Marxian approach to labour is ecological. In the theory of labour process Karl Marx needs sustainable attitude to nature. The peculiarity of political science (and in a less degree of economics and law) is that the great body of its subject-matter has to do with the public service as a whole-not only administrative, but legislative, judicial, and other-and that therefore the teacher of the subject is specially obligated to know the service, even as a teacher of any subject is obligated to know the thing he professes to teach (Ogg 1941, 516).
In sum, a more sophisticated ethological cum anthropological model implies that both the holistic (idealist) model of politics and the egoistic (realist)model have some validity; they are not mutually exclusive (Corning 2008, 22-54).
Environment means the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors (such as climate, soil, and living things) that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, environmentalism is "politico-ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities; through the adoption of forms of political, economic, and social organization that are thought to be necessary for, or at least conducive to, the benign treatment of the environment by humans; and through a reassessment of humanity’s relationship with nature".
Inferences: the environmentalism has political and ethical dimensions. it wants to protect and preserve the quality of natural environment; for that the movement want to see restrictions in the use of harmful chemicals like pesticides or the like. Environmentalism is looking for a political, economic and social system where the earth is used judiciously and sustainably.
Environmentalism is a movement to address the need of other life forms too. The significance of this movement is that the target group of it is all life forms on the earth including human beings. It is a holistic approach to life and an inclusive strategy to make the world more pristine and life supportive. As an ideology, environmentalism seeks to maintain welfare of the environment.
Milestones in the evolution of Environmentalism:
From 7th to 13th centuries concept of environmentalism had been appeared in the writing of Caliph Abu Bakr (“Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food.") and in various Arabic treatise were included environmental problems like water and soil pollution, solid waste management etc. William the conqueror established first system of forest law.
In 1609 Hugo Grotius published Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) arguing freedom of high seas. He considered sea as an international territory and every nations were free to use it The Bishnois’ movement in India in 1720, concept of ‘public right’ by Benjamin Franklin. In the year 1845, the US Secretary of State to the Senate used the term "carrying capacity"(the number of people, animals, or crops which a region can support without environmental degradation) for the first time.
In 1859 Henry David Thoreau wrote “The hen-hawk (red-tailed hawk) and the pine are friends. What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.” In his classic book Walden, Thoreau he elaborated ties between people and nature.
“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.” And he adds, “We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen [American coot] lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”
It is a social movement or represents an ideology focused on the welfare of the environment. It seeks to protect and conserve the elements of earth's ecosystem, including water, air, land, animals, and plants, along with entire habitats such as rainforests, deserts and oceans. Concepts dealing with environmental issues include the management of natural resources, overpopulation, commercial logging, urbanization and global state. Environmentalism works to correct the damage as well as prevent future destruction.
Environmentalism began as a movement in the 1960s and 1970s. But it was an established fact that Humanity’s existence is increasingly depending on his relationship with the natural environment.
However, humanity's relationship and dependence on the earth for survival has existed since the beginning of time. There is a constant interaction between man and nature and it is often described as a cultural exchange; especially among Native Americans, aborigines, Africans and so on. But the materialistic dominance of the western cultures did give less importance to this cultural synchronisation between man and nature. In consequent with the industrialisation, environment started deteriorating, coal burning factories polluted the air and water, need for lumber led to mass deforestation and subsequent destruction of ecosystem.
In the words of Dana M. Lovelady, “Scientists studied ecological systems while others formed clubs and initiated protests. These concerned people became known as conservationists, a predecessor to the modern environmentalist”. Earth-friendly groups, such as the Sierra Club established in 1892 under the inspiration of President Theodore Roosevelt's innovative conservation programs. The movement no longer gained continuity due to two world wars.
Scholars and environmentalists believe the beginning of the modern environmental movement can be attributed to the 1962 publication of Silent Spring , a book by Rachel Carson. Carson wrote a stunning cautionary book about pesticides and the consequences to animal and human life. Other books, such as Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb published in 1968, built momentum for the movement. In 1972, the first major worldwide discussion on environmental issues was held at a United Nations conference in Stockholm, Sweden, and attended by 114 nations (Encyclopedia.com). The Stockholm conference was followed by The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit, where discussions revolved around the global conflict between economic development and environmental protection.
The two terms ‘natural environment’ and ‘human environment’ signify two orders that represents bio-world and human centric world. Political Science is a branch of social science which deals with relationship between people and government. Merriam Webster dictionary gives a simple definition of political science as “the study of governments and how they work”. Political Thought constitute a collection of ideas which have erected the base structure of Political Science. Frederic A. Ogg gives the role political science in maintaining public service than any other subjects (Ogg 1941). Ogg is an optimist in saying that a good public service represents good political system. Dustin Tingley explains the biological adaption of political science as it deals with behaviour of people. (Tingley 2006). Peter A. Corning explains the holistic Darwinian model of political science rather than purely idealistic or realistic approaches as conceived by Aristotle and Machiavelli respectively. He is of the opinion that political science has “ethological” space by which the subject takes more integrative approach towards governance (Corning 2008).
Robert O. Keohane finds role of politics in determining rules and organising people is very important and its role is priori to every form of governance (Keohane 2009, Bronowski 1985,261).Writers like Andrew Jordan, Rudinger K.W. Wurzel and Anthony R.Zito had an opinion that there is a difference between government and “governance” (Jordan, Wurzel and Zito 2005). The Governance needs more ‘administrative rationalism’ by using existing bureaucratic expertise and mechanisms, and viewing environmental issues as ‘minor, technical, soluble and politically uncontentious’ (Papadakis and Grant 2005, 26). Governance is not a single process as the resposibility of the government. Rise of NGOs, multinational corporations, New Social Movements, etc. have been contributing to the process of environmental governance. Presence of environmental movements, rise of new organised protest movements for conservation and protection of water, protest aganst water polution, etc. represent different phases of environmental govenance (Winchester 2009) . It is a new way of ‘doing politics’ and a form of ‘third sector model of govenance’ (Tahkokallio and Nygren 2008, 346; Paterson 1999). Five principles of Enviromental Governance have been put forward by Daniel C Esty (Esty 2009). The principles of environmental governance are Sustainable Development; Polluter pays principle; Common but differentiated responsibility; Subsidiarity and Good Governance (Esty 2009, 428).
Tun Myint quotes Robert A Dahl in his article and as he addresses the “democraticness” of global political regimes to expand the scope of environmental governance. ‘Regime design has become the current focus of debate on environmental governance across the field’ (Myint 2003).
Political Theory and Approach towards Natural Environment:
Plato is an idealist and demands harmony of soul with the nature. Plato says in his book, the Republic
‘And surely the art of the painter and every other creative and constructive art are full of them,–weaving, embroidery, architecture, and every kind of manufacture; also nature, animal and vegetable,–in all of them there is grace or the absence of grace. And ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill words and ill nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness’. (Plato 2001,255-Book III)
Plato has designed his ideal state on the qualities of virtue that is based on justice. The idea of justice is based on the idea of good which is the harmony of the world. The harmony of the soul and body, and of the parts of the soul with one another, a harmony ’fairer than that of musical notes,’ is the right method of conceiving the perfection of human nature. Plato has expressed the unity of living world in his work The Timaeus.
‘All things that live are manifestations of the same eternal essence: only as this evolved itself through countless gradations of existence, the lower ranks of organisms possess less and less of the pure activity of soul operating by herself, until in plants and the lowest forms of animal life the vital force only manifests itself in the power of sensation and growth’ (Plato, The Timaeus 1888, 286)
Aristotle’s naturalism has been questioned by many citing his conception of natural slavery (Ambler 1987, Mackay 2005,Heath 2008). John S Marshall finds ecological precepts in Aristotle as it is evident that Aristotle demands sustainability in the utilisation of natural resources
“True wealth does not arise from the coercion of nature; it arises from the bounty of nature producing a surplus which man can use for his support. As the hen lays more eggs than are necessary to continue the race of chickens, as the tree produces fruit that is not necessary to continue the successive generations of fruit trees, as the wild grape produces a surplus of grapes, as there are more fish in the sea than are necessary to keep up the stock of fish there, as there are more wild animals than are necessary to continue their existence, so there is a bounty in nature, a surplus on which man can live.” (Marshall 1947, 351)
Aristotle in his work the Phyiscs, explains different manifestations of natural world. Trish Glazebrook thinks that in ‘the Physics’ Aristotle is attempting to restore the ecological aspects of human life. For Aristotle, nature and natural phenomenon are ideological. (Glazebrook 2003,27) Aristotle was of the opinion that there is hierarchy of value in the environment and this is linked to the rationale of humans, animals and plants. ‘All living things can grow and reproduce, but only animals and humans are conscious. As such, plants serve the needs of sentient creatures. Similarly, only humans can reason, whilst animals rely on instinct. As such, non-human animals serve the needs of humans, and have merely instrumental value. Plants are created for the sake of animals and animals for the sake of men’ (Jowett 1885).
Gilbert F. LaFreniere, in his study on Rousseau, substantiates that Rousseau is an arch supporter of green thoughts. Gibert says that since 1978, Rousseau was considered as the spiritual father of the Green Movement. Rousseau is considered as ‘a model of a complete, holistic outlook toward nature and humanity's relationship to nature’ and ‘as a seminal interpreter of humanity's relationship to nature, particularly concerning the impact of the scientific revolution and the modern idea of progress upon our perception of nature. (LaFreniere 1990)’. But Joseph Featherstone criticised Rousseau as an environmentalist and called him as a follower of “maturationalism” rather than environmentalism.
It is not the unity of living and active humanity with the natural, inorganic conditions of their metabolic exchange with nature, and hence their appropriation of nature, which requires explanation or is the result of a historic process, but rather the separation between these inorganic conditions of human existence and this active existence, a separation which is completely posited only in the relation of wage labour and capital. (Marx, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy 1973,427)
Karl Marx wrote in his Economic and Political Manuscripts:
“The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity, estranged labor estranges the species from man. It changes for him the life of the species into a means of individual life. First it estranges the life of the species and individual life, and secondly it makes individual life in its abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its abstract and estranged form.” (Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 2009,31)
J.B Foster reiterates that the fundamental nature of Marxian approach to labour is ecological. In the theory of labour process Karl Marx needs sustainable attitude to nature. The peculiarity of political science (and in a less degree of economics and law) is that the great body of its subject-matter has to do with the public service as a whole-not only administrative, but legislative, judicial, and other-and that therefore the teacher of the subject is specially obligated to know the service, even as a teacher of any subject is obligated to know the thing he professes to teach (Ogg 1941, 516).
In sum, a more sophisticated ethological cum anthropological model implies that both the holistic (idealist) model of politics and the egoistic (realist)model have some validity; they are not mutually exclusive (Corning 2008, 22-54).