ENVIRONMENTALISM
by Antonio C. Antonio
August 30, 2014
What is “environmentalism”?
“Environmentalism” was first coined in 1922 although
research materials are not too certain who coined it. Environmentalism is characterized as a social
movement aimed at influencing the public policies on environmental matters and
concerns. Environmentalism is a
political process that involves education and research, lobbying and activism.
“Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social
movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the
health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to
incorporate the concerns of non-human elements.
Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and/or improvement
of the natural environment, and may be referred to as a movement to control
pollution or protect plant and animal diversity. For this reason, concepts such as land ethic,
environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology and the biophilia hypothesis figure
predominantly.
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 color green but this association has been
appropriated by the marketing industries and is a key tactic of
greenwashing. Environmentalism is
opposed by anti-environmentalism which takes a sceptical stance against many
environmentalist perspectives.”
(Wikipedia)
A practitioner of environmentalism is an
environmentalist. “An environmentalist
is a person who may speak out about our natural environment and the sustainable
management of its resources through changes in public policy or individual
behaviour. This may include supporting
practices such as informed consumption, conservation initiatives, investment in
renewable resources, improves efficiencies in materials economy, transitioning
to new accounting paradigms such as Ecological economics and renewing and
revitalizing our connection with non-human life.” (Wikipedia) Environmentalism involves deeper education
and knowledge of the many factors involved in the field of environmental
science.
I earlier wrote a blog entitled “A Consequence of Illegal
Logging” (http://antonantonio.blogspot.com?). In my research for materials in this article,
I found it a bit disturbing to discover that an indigenous tribe living in the
Amazon basin were referred to as “environmentalists” simply because they came
up with a novel, yet savage, way of protecting the forest. There is more to being an environmentalist
than this… and environmentalism, with all the many allied disciplines involved,
cannot be had and/or made with one single motion of protecting the forest from
illegal loggers. Besides, forest
protection, just one of the many facets of the broad concept of environmental
protection; it doesn’t necessarily translate to environmentalism.
I am also saying this so we don’t entertain the illusions
that picking up a candy wrapper and throwing it in a trash bin automatically
makes us environmentalists. We may fit
to be proverbial advocates, as opposed to being genuine environmentalist,
because (again) there really is more depth and quality to
environmentalism.
Just my little thoughts…
REFERENCES: (Keywords: Environment / Environmental Advocacy
/ Environmentalism)
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