The transnationalization of environmental movements

This paper explores the factors and processes that contribute to the transnationalization of environmental movements from their origins in the global North to their increasing prevalence in the countries of the global South. It also considers the obstacles that confront transnationalization and their consequences.

Its empirical starting point is a critical examination of the development of transantional environmentalism in the European Union, based upon surveys of organizations, interviews with activists, and scrutiny of newspaper reports. Developments in several key British environmental organizations are considered more closely as exemplars of processes and influences that are of wider significance.

The character of transnational movement networks is considered, as is their relationship with environmental campaigns in both post-communist and newly industrializing countries in Europe and south-east Asia.

Among the factors contributing to the transnationalizatin of environmental movements are changing patterns of opportunity associated with the development of international and transnational political institutions, and social changes of which the expansion of higher education and mass media, and increased ease of communication, are the most important.

Nevertheless, the chief drivers to transnationalization of environmentalism, and to the expansion of its agenda to embrace global social justice, are developments substantially endogenous to the knowledge, belief and value systems of environmental movement organizations themselves.