Introduction to Science Policy HPSC 1004

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Introduction to Science PolicyHPSC 1004

• Environmental Movements and Science Policy
• Tom Roberts
• PhD Researcher
• Department of Geography
• t.roberts_at_ucl.ac.uk

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Defining Environmental Movements

• Consist of a wide range of phenomenon so
  therefore difficult to define.
• As a result have often been overlooked in the
  literature despite their significant political
  impact.
• Roots 1999 provides a broad definition
• broad networks of people and organisations
  engaged in collective action in the pursuit of
  environmental benefit.
• Environmental movements are understood to be very
  diverse and complex, their organisational forms
  ranging from the highly organised and formally
  institutionalised to the radically informal the
  spatial scope of their concerns ranging from
  single issues to full global concerns.

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Early Environmentalism

• During the 19th Century we see the emergence of
  the first environmental movements
• 1860 (UK) Royal Society for the Protection of
  Birds (RSPB) formed
• 1864 (US) Creation of the first National Park
  (Yosemite)

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Early Environmentalism

• But by the late 19th and early 20th century the
  UK was experiencing many of the urban
  environmental problems associated with rapid
  industrial growth.

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The Beginning of the Modern Environmental Movement

• As man proceeds towards his announced goal of
  the conquest of nature, he has written a
  depressing record of destruction, directed not
  only against the earth he inhabits but against
  life that shares it with him. The question is
  whether any civilization can wage such
  relentless war on life without destroying itself,
  and without the right to be called civilized.
• (Carson, R 1962)

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Changing Perspectives on the EnvironmentFirst
Wave Environmentalism 1968-1976

• Spaceship Earth (Buckminster Fuller, 1963)
• Emphasises concern over limited resources
  available to humanity and the unequal way in
  which they are being consumed and shared among
  the existing population.
• Gaia Hypothesis (James Lovelock, 1972)
• The theory that the earth is in itself a
  self-regulating living system or organism which
  he named Gaia after a Greek Godess.

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World Earth Day 22nd April 1970

• Before I flew I was already aware of how small
  and vulnerable our planet is but only when I saw
  it from space, in all its ineffable beauty and
  fragility, did I realize that human kind's most
  urgent task is to cherish and preserve it for
  future generations.
• Sigmund Jähn, Astronaut, German Democratic
  Republic

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Club of Rome (1972) Limits to Growth
(1)If the present growth trends in world
population, industrialization, pollution, food
production, and resource depletion continue
unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet
will be reached sometime within the next one
hundred years. The most probable result will be a
rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both
population and industrial capacity. (Meadows et
al. 1972, Limits to Growth London Earth Island).
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Club of Rome (1972) Limits to Growth
(2) It is possible to alter these growth trends
and to establish a condition of ecological and
economic stability that is sustainable far into
the future. The state of global equilibrium could
be designed so that the basic material needs of
each person on earth are satisfied and each
person has an equal opportunity to realize his
individual human potential. (Meadows et al.
1972, Limits to Growth London Earth Island).
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The Doomsday Decade1970-1980
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Global Environmental Organisations

• The late 1960s and early 1970s also saw the birth
  of a number of environmental organisations which
  would have a massive impact on policy over the
  coming decades.
• The most prominent of which was Greenpeace which
  was formed by a group of anti-Vietnam campaigners
  to campaign against the USs testing of nuclear
  bombs.

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Growth of Environmental Organisations
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International Conferences and Treaties

• Biosphere conference in Paris 1968
• UN conference on the Human Environment Stockholm
  1972
• In the forty years between 1930 and 1970, 48
  international environmental conventions or
  treaties were signed
• In the years from 1971-1980 47 were agreed to.

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1980s - The New Right and Environmental Ignorance

• Activities during the 1970s had succeeded in
  raising awareness and a number of laws and
  treaties had been passed.
• However, in 1980 a report, The Globe 2000, was
  presented to Jimmy Carter which suggested that
  the world was still in terminal decline.
• This was shelved by Ronald Regan who embarked on
  a decade of growth and destruction at a time when
  restraint was desperately needed.

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1980s- Institutionalisation of the Environmental
Movement and the Birth of Radical
Environmentalism

• Despite the anti-environment rhetoric of the
  Regan and Thatcher Governments the membership of
  environmental movements continued to grow.
• As they became more established grass roots
  activists became increasingly alienated, as one
  American activist commented
• The older national environmental organisations
  in their Washington offices have taken the soft
  political road of negotiation, compromising with
  the corporations on the amount of pollution that
  is acceptable. The people living in the polluted
  communities have taken the hard political road of
  confrontation, demanding not that the dumping of
  hazardous waste be slowed down but that it is
  stopped.

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1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development
in Rio

• 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development
  in Rio (Earth Summit) which recognised of the
  need for a globally co-ordinated approach to
  environmental problems.
• Emergence of several interdisciplinary,
  international, scientific research programmes to
  study global environmental change including the
  International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, the
  World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) the
  International Human Dimensions Programme on
  Global Environmental Change (IHDP looks at land
  use, urban environments etc) and DIVERSITAS
  (biodiversity).

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The role of Popular TV
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1990s Environmental Consciousness and Ethical
Consumption
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Anti-globalisation
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Kyoto Protocol

• The Kyoto Protocol, which was agreed upon on
  December 11, 1997, at a meeting of the UNFCCC in
  Kyoto, Japan, was created as an effort to force
  action on the international community

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Climate change