Are the movements really about the environment?

Environmental Movements in Asia

In October 1994 IIAS in co-operation with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) organized an international workshop on Environmental Movements in Asia in Leiden. The aim of this workshop was to bring together a number of scholars from Asia, Europe, Australia and the United States to discuss the variety of environmental movements in Asia, the kind of environmental issues they address, to compare the larger socio-cultural context of the movements and to identify main research topics in this field. Key note speeches were delivered by Dr. S. Edwards (IUCN, Washington DC), Dr. M. Dove (East- West Center, Hawai'i), Dr. B. Malayang (Undersecretary, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Manila), Dr. M. Guha (Delhi), and Dr. D. Ganapin (Foundation for the Philippine Environment, Manila). An additional fourteen papers were presented and discussed. The papers þ all presented in plenary sessions þ covered a wide range of environmental issues, regions and approaches and they sparked off lively discussions among the fifty participants in the workshop.

Environmentalisms
One of the striking elements in some of the papers and in the discussions was whether environmental movements are really aimed at the environment or whether the environment is largely a surrogate for something else. This point was brought out explicitly in the key note address by Dr. M. Dove who argued that environmental debates are mainly efforts to recontextualise the problem at stake by relating it to different contexts and causes. In a number of papers it was made clear that environmentalism should not be taken at face value. Often environmentalism is a mode of expressing a kind of resistance to the authorities that is more acceptable than others. At other times, with the worldwide spread of environmentalism, there seems to be a tendency to employ environmental discourse in all kinds of debates, with ecological reasoning and issues being read into traditional worldviews. The analysis of environmental movements should therefore partly be focused in part at least on the nature of the discourse that is being employed.
It also became clear that behind the unifying label of environmental movements shelters a large variety of NGOs, actions and approaches. At times this may lead to opposing views and interests with regard to the environment. National and international NGOs may find themselves in direct confrontation with local people when working for the protection of certain areas or species of plants and animals.
Attention was also paid to the socio-cultural context from which environmental movements originate and in which they have to operate. Prof. Guha pointed out that the influence of Ghandi is still evident in the kinds of subjects addressed preventing the Indian movements from taking up issues like urban pollution and wilderness protection in their agendas. It is also evident that their mode of operation is based on an attitude of non-violence. All this provides a in rather sharp contrast to the movements and NGOs in the Philippines. Without a charismatic source of
inspiration, the Filipinos have read ecological ideas into their ancestral beliefs and ways of life. Hence the movements fiercely protect their autonomy, which at times even involves violence.
In the closing session a number of topics for further research was identified, such as the life history of environmental movements, how environmentalism may express socio-political resistance, the internal differentiation within Asia's environmental movements and the comparison between the movements in various countries.