Dr.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL

LAW UNIVERSIY

POLITICAL SCIENCE-II

TITLE: ENVIROMENT AND POLITICS

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Dr. MONIKA SRIVASTAVA KAVERI MISHRA
POLITICAL SCIENCE 230101068
BA.LLB (HONS) 1ST YR
SECTION-A

pg. 1
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This project would not have been possible without the
assistance and kind support of so many people and would not
have reached its current stage. I would like to extend my
sincere gratitude to all of them. Foremost I would like to
thank Dr. Monika Srivastava, my teacher in this subject, for
guiding me through the entire length of this project and giving
her sincere support in the project completion.

I would also like to thank my batchmates and the library staff

for giving their invaluable input and feedback and helping me
find the resources for my research. This project is a result of
the efforts put in by me thanks to the environment provided
by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University for
which I am really grateful.

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 DECLARATION
I, Kaveri Mishra, student of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya
National Law University, Lucknow, do hereby declare that the
project titled “ENVIROMENT AND POLITICS” is a bona fide
project work carried out by me under the guidance of Dr.
Monika Shrivastav.

I further declare that due recognition has been provided,

wherever the scholarly work of any other person is stated or
used. Furthermore, this project was created for the sole
purpose of academic research in the academic session 2023-
24 at my university.

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

1) Introduction………………………………………………...4
2) Environmentalism………………………………………….6
3) Ecologism………………………………………………….7
4) Dobson’s green theory……………………………………...9
5) Environmental Non-Governmental Organisation…………13
6) Environmental organisation citizenship…………………...14
7) Conclusion…………………………………………………16
8) Bibliography……………………………………………….18

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 INTRODUCTION
As the world is growing and developing the environmental issues are also
coming forward. We need to maintain a balance between utilising the
resources and exhausting the resources for our needs. A balance has to be
there between the nature and the society; we need to draw a line between
our needs and luxury. This project deals with the political methods and
strategies and how we have developed and emerged in this field.
Establishment of effective strategies to mediate the relationship between
‘human’ and ‘natural world’ represents one of the most daunting tasks in
the contemporary quest for global environmental sustainability. As we
enter the 21st century, global environmental problems, including climate
change, biodiversity loss, water quality and access problems, soil erosion
and others, call into question the fundamental viability how humans have
organized the relationship between the society and nature over the last
two hundred years. Addressing the change problems effectively will
require a critical reassessment of current models of development. It will
also require new research approaches that address the complexity of
nature-society relations by combining the strength of natural and social
sciences.
It is in this context that traditional political theories are being challenged
by ‘ecology’. The situation calls for an urgent encounter between
‘ecology’ on one hand and ‘empirical’ and ‘normative’ political theory on
the other. Ecology requires that political theories be adapted to take into
account naturals limits and non-humans.”
Green politics (also known as eco-politics), the term indicates that the
politics used to preserve the green, the nature, the environment is called
green politics. It aims to achieve ecologically sustainable society. It took
some space and started getting recognised and noticed during the 1970’s
as there already had been the establishment of many green political
parties who had demonstrated their policies successfully. Due to their
better plans and policies for environment they had won the elections.
In the 1970s there a Green political party ‘die Grünen’, established to
work on environment mainly. The political term “Green” was used
initially in relation to die Grünen (German for "the Greens). The term
"political ecology" is often used as academic term where it refers to the
study in which forms a relation between the ecological social sciences
with political economy. It covers the topics as degradation,
marginalisation, environmental conflict, conservation of resources etc.
The ‘Green ideology’ is a political term for the parties that take initiative
for the environment and the social values of people thus it connects to
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 eco-centric political ideologies, including eco-socialism, eco anarchism
and eco-feminism. As the left-wing Green (i.e. capital 'G') political
philosophy developed, there also came into separate existence unrelated
and polar opposite movements on the right that include ecological
components such as green conservatism and eco-capitalism.

Environmentalism
It centralises at the movements and actions that are led by either the
political parties or political groups and associations to protect the
environment from harmful activities. The main harm caused to the
environment is by human activities itself, and they themselves demand
for a healthy and fir environment thus there are many parties that lead
movements and take actions against such activities which are brutally
harmful for the environment. They come up with different creative ideas
that could protect the environment. They intend to improve the
relationship between use of resources by humans and the environmental
resources. The groups and parties may be political, social or economic
organisation. This whole scenario is termed ‘environmentalism’.
Environmentalism claims that living things other than humans, and the
natural environment as a whole, are deserving of consideration in
reasoning about the morality of political, economic, and social policies.

Environmental movement are classified into two intellectual camps:

1.Anthropocentric1 (human-centred)
2.Bio - centric (life-centred).

This kind of division is also described and ‘Shallow vs. Deep ecology’
and as “techno-centrism” versus “ecocentrism”.
Anthropocentric approaches towards the human and the impact of
environmental degradation on their health and lifestyle. The scientific
approaches can only tell what it is but the human values sow what should
be done. So this anthropocentric approach focuses on how and what type
of treatment should be given to the environment by the humans. Humans
are said to be the species that have emotional sensitivity, so they can
better understand how the environment should be treated. The defining
feature of anthropocentrism is that it considers the moral obligations
humans have to the environment to derive from obligations that humans
have to each other—and, less crucially, to future generations of humans—

1
Placing Mitigation in Contemporary Environmental Anthropology

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rather than from any obligation to other living things or to the
environment as a whole. Human obligations to the environment are thus
indirect.
Critics of anthropocentrism have charged that it amounts to a variety of
‘human chauvinism’. The anthropocentric approach claims that the
human existence is the most important thing but on the other hand the
biocentrism views all the living and non-ling on par. Thus by comparing
the conclusion of both the approaches we can further conclude that
human is put the liability and responsibility, morally and ethically, on his
shoulders to protect the environment.
By the 1960s and 1970s the scientists became much advanced and their
knowledge in the environmental studies became vast and sophisticated.
They were able to grasp the causes and consequences of the
environmental degradation. Thus Appling their advanced knowledge they
made ‘environmental degradation issues’ to become a major concern.
They were mainly concerned on the capacity of the earth to take huge
amount of harm caused by human developmental activities. This concern
contributed to the growth of grassroots environmental activism in a
number of countries, the establishment of new environmental non-
governmental organizations, and the formation of environmental
(“green”) political parties in a number of Western democracies. As a
result, many political agreements were signed regarding environment
protection.

Ecologism (Dobson)
Ecologism is green political theory; it is the most recent of schools of
political thinking. It focuses on issues related with the relationship
between the human and non-human world, the moral status of animals,
what is the ‘good life’, and the ethical and political regulation of
technological innovation. It also concerns about the contemporary issues
such as economic and political implications of changes in climate,
overconsumption of resources, resource competition and conflicts. This
probably results into global and national inequalities. It is also an
extremely broad school of political thought casing a wide variety of
concerns contains a number of distinct sub-schools of green thought.

Normative and empirical scientific elements are unexpectedly combined

here which makes it unique and distinctive from other political
approaches. There are many green schools of thoughts that are different
from each other but all of them have the same objective that is to secure
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the green, to protect the environment by taking certain reasonable
measures.
There are a number of terms used to describe green political theory
ranging from ‘ecologism’, to ‘environmentalism’ or ecological political
theory or environmental political theory (Barry and Dobson, 2003).
The theories focus on both the material/metabolic dimensions of human-
nonhuman relations as well as the ethical and political status of the
nonhuman world – can propose a rather narrow understanding of green
politics.
The terms describing the green policies make people believe that it only
concerns about the nature and ecological developmental, but it is slightly
different. It gives proper space to the non-ecological and non-natural
activities as well. The terms indicate that Ecologism and
Environmentalism both are meant to magnify their focus on nature only.
But both share some difference regarding their area of coverage.
‘Ecologism’ is a far broader concept that environmentalism.
‘Environmentalism’ covers about the nature and ecology aspects only but
on the other hand ecology enlarges its hand and cases non-environmental
and non-resource concerns as well.
Ecologism conveys a definite and broad sense hence the philosophers use
green political theory as a more appropriate, which fully acknowledges
the uniqueness of its focus on nature while also stressing its radical
approach to the organisation of human social, economic and political
relations, consistent, but not exclusively tied to or derived from its focus
on the metabolism between humans and nature.

Early thoughts on Green Political Theory –

Some of the early thoughts in green theory can be identified and
summarised as:
i) The people responded with ‘romantic’ and ‘negative’ reactions to
the ‘Industrial Revolution’. Whereas there was appositive reaction
to the incompletion of French(democratic) Revolution.
ii) People gave a negative reaction to ‘colonialism’ and ‘imperialism’
during 19th and 20th century.
iii) There was an integration of science ethics and politics to resolve
the socio-ecological related issues.
iv) Issues such as overconsumption of the resource and pollution etc
made people rethink over the concept of ‘good society’ and ‘good
life’.

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 v) Public showed concern about ‘ecological crisis’ during the 1960s,
‘Limits to Growth’ from the 1970s onwards, and ‘global
environmental problems’ in the1980s and also focused on global
environmental issues.
vi) Growth in the politics of ‘industrialism’ (organized on a left-right
continuum) by a politics of ‘post-industrialism’ (beyond left and
right);
vii) People tended to be more sensitive about their relation with the
non-human world. And got more aware about their human values2.
viii) The social, political and economic policies got combined to aim at
sustainable development of the society and to promote human
rights and socio-economic equality universally3.

DOBSON’s GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT

Andrew Dobson’s4 “Green Political Thought” (1995) and other writings
on environmental politics form today the staple of basic readings on the
politics of the environment. Dobson draws attention to the essential
divide that separates political ecologists from practical environmentalists.
He strongly re-affirms the classic nature of ecological understanding
which can neither be subsumed by nor assimilated into current dominant
political style. The issue is not one of patching up industrial civilization.
It calls for a complete revaluation of the priorities and methods of
technological civilization. Primary among these are the wanton
squandering of the earth’s resources and the deadly consequences of
consumerist automatism.
In Dobson’s view, Environmentalism and Ecologism are so different so
as to make their confusion a serious intellectual mistake partly in the
context of thinking about Ecologism as a political ideology and partly in
the context of an accurate representation of the radical green challenge to
the political, economic and social consensus that dominates
contemporary life.
As far as the outcome is concerned, the following can be taken as a rough
and ready distinction between Environmentalism and Ecologism.
To explain, environmentalism argues for professional approach to
environmental problem secure in the belief that they can be solved
without basic changes in present values or pattern of production and
consumption, and the concept of Ecologism holds that sustainable and

2
Robinson, E.E(2008) Competing Frames of Environmental Contamination
3
Barry J(2007) Environment and Social Theory (2nd ed.)
4
Book (georgetown.edu)

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 fulfilling existence presupposes major changes in our relationship with
non-human natural world, and in our mode of social and political life.
A belief in eco-centrism serves to distinguish Ecologism from other
political ideologies, and as environmentalism does not pledge to it either,
it can only hybridize Ecologism at the cost of radically altering it.

“Dobson’s green theory5” centralises on Ecologism rather than on

environmentalism. Because he thinks that people take environmentalism
as an approach to manage Ecologism. The environmentalists make
policies and strategies keeping the focus on the environmental
degradation they observe. They do not restrict or limit the growth but
argue to hold the intrinsic value of the human.”

Effect on State, Market & Economy

Green political theory can be taken as a form of applied political theory,
which shares different ideologies to seek to make a difference and change
the world or society according to their particular political principles. The
applied approach to political theory studies critically some basic political
or ethical principles such as democracy, justice, and citizenship. These
principles allow us to study the current scenario of the society in the
sector that studies environment and sustainable development.
The identification of these three institutions is important in that by
employing them one can get a good, if basic and rough, idea of different
political ideologies as far as the relative weight and role accorded to state,
market and community in both the approaches to analyse the current
political situation and their suggestion for how it should be improved and
what their ideal society would look like.
For example, most right-wing’ political ideologies, such as conservatism
or liberalism, tend to favour the free and self-regulating market i.e.
capitalism, as the best institutional form for governing the human
economy. What this means is that they favour the free market for ordering
and governing the human metabolism with the non-human world,
including resources, energy sources, waste sinks. On the other hand, some
‘left-wing’ political ideologies, such as Marxist forms of socialism, would
tend to favour state-based forms of economic organization and regulation.
Here greens, in keeping with dominant strains of anarchism, differ in
favouring the community as a preferred locus of economic (and political)
organization.

5
Andrew Dobson, Green Political Thought, Routledge, London, 1995

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 Green political theory favours, and prioritizes, the community and
communal forms of economic, cultural and political organization and
regulation. This can be seen in the long-standing green interest and
support for initiatives based on the principle of ‘small is
beautiful’(Schumacher, 1973) where appropriate; ‘human scale’
technology and less centralised forms of political democratic institutions
(Sale, 1980); a suspicion of bureaucratised and professionalised/elite
modes of meeting human needs (Illich, 1971); more local, grass roots
forms of economic and political initiatives such as Transition Towns
(Hopkins, 2008); and support for more localised and cooperative forms of
economic activity (Cato, 2008). Perhaps the clearest instance of this
privileging of the community is the strong preference for the ‘social
economy’ over and above either market/private or state/public forms of
economic life and associated notions of the economy being embedded in,
rather than completely divorced from, human social life and social
norms6(Barry, 2012).
Following the perspective of green political theory, the state and market
are therefore best considered as instrumental as they support community-
based forms of political and economic organization and ways of life.
Taking green political point of view, we should analyse the details about
the state and the market (and linked principles and ideas such as private
property, modes of economic organisation and the democratic regulation
of the state and its people) in relation to their contribution in assuring that
political, economic and cultural life is organised by and at the community
level. Thus, while most greens (with the exception of eco-anarchists) do
not reject the state, and while they are profoundly suspicious of the
concentration and centralisation of power within and by the state, they do
see a role for amore democratised and decentralised state in regulating the
market to prevent the latter from undermining key green values such as
social harmony, high levels of lifestyle, human scale integrity and the
intrinsic values of work (and here greens do not conflate work with
formally paid employment). The most concerned area is that there is a
responsibility for the state that it has to regulate any market-based
organisation of human economic relations to prevent the emergence and
maintenance of high levels of socio-economic inequality, since the latter
is not only corrosive of key green values-which are constitutive of
community itself but which, as Wilkinson and Pickett demonstrate
(2008), inequalities undermine key aspects of the transition from un-
sustainability.
6
Barry, J. (2012). Environment and Social Theory

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Western Approach
In Europe, many of the established political party originated from the
social movements of the nineteenth century such as Labour or Worker’s
Movement, Farmer’s Movement and etc. With the institutionalization of
these movements during the twentieth century, what happened was that
national level political parties have taken over many of their original
function.
From the 1960’s onwards many western countries experienced the
emergence of the so-called ‘new social movements’ such as Women
Movement, Environmental Movement and etc. the other important
development in this context is the emergence of the new category of
actors called environmental NGO’s (ENGO’s). In global environmental
politics, the ENGO’s seem to figure more prominently than political
parties. From the late 1970’s onward, Green Parties were founded in most
of the West European countries. Some of them for instance, the British
Ecology Party, had a radical, “deep ecology” orientation and pleaded for
de-industrialization, a “no-growth” or (even a negative growth) and
conserve rather a consumer society. Others, for instance, the German
Green Party were more pragmatic, although the conflict between the
realists (realos) and fundamentalists dominated the scene for many years.

From the second half of the 1980’s onwards it became more and more
common to frame the issues of environmental degradation as a global
problem. “Our Common Future” the 1987report of the Brundtland
Commission, can be seen as a turning point, and a high point came at the
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED) in 1992 in Rio De Janeiro. Both in the Brundtland report and
Rio conference, global degradation was defined as one of the unintended
consequences of globalisation.

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 ENVIRONMENTAL NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION –
An ENGO (Environmental Non-Governmental Organisation) is a non-
governmental organization in the field of environmentalism. A few of them
includes WWF, Greenpeace, Conservation International, The Nature
Conservancy and others. The goals of environmental NGOs include but are not
limited to creating relationships with the government and other organizations,
offering training and assistance in agricultural conservation to maximize the use
of local resources, establishing environmental solutions, and managing project
implemented to address issues affecting a particular area. Environmental NGOs
are organizations that are not run by federal or state governments but rather
have funds issued to them by governments, private donors, corporations, and
other institutions. In order to fully understand the social, economic, and
environmental effects an organization can have on a region, it is important to
note that the organization can act outside the formal processes that state
governments and other government institutions must comply with.
The new transnational environmental organization belong to six major type as
follows:-
1. Global Environmental Mass Organisation—
This organization is mass constituency based environmental groups with
national branches all over the world. The three most important are Greenpeace,
WWF, and Friends of Earth.
2. National Environmental Mass Organisation—
Most of the organization under this category are US-based, mass membership
environmental organizations which have developed international programs,
such as Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, and others.
3. Environmental Think Tank –
A characteristic example is the Ocean-Institute in Germany, the International
Institute for Environment and Development in Britain, World watch Institute in
USA and others.
4. International Umbrella Organisation –
The ENGO’s which falls under this head is the European Environmental Bureau
and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
5. National Level NGO’s Coalition

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These ENGO’s are most predominant in developing countries, such as The
Brazilian NGO Forum with over 1000 organization affiliated, the Indonesian
Environmental Forum (WALHI) which unites more than 450 ENGO’s country-
wide and others.
6. Broad International Coalition –
This particular type of coalition ENGO’s works on specific environmental
issues, such as the Climate Action Network, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean
Coalition, the Rainforest Action Network and others.

ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP

The concept of ‘Environmental Governance’ encompasses the relationship and
interactions among government and non-government structure, procedures and
conventions. Under this notion, power and responsibility are judiciously
exercised in making an appropriate community-friendly environmental decision.
It deals with how the decisions are made, with particular stress on the need for
citizens, interest groups and communities generally to participate and have their
needs and demands fulfilled. Alongside governmental approach to
environmental problems, it is equally essential for the citizens to take their own
responsibilities and develop environmental initiatives.
The other idea of ‘Environmental Citizenship’ which is a recent derivation
includes a keen sense of environmental responsibility implying improvement of
democratic practices, transparency and accountability of government
institutions along with the civil society participation in decision making. This
has a strong correlation with the protection of the environment and the securing
of social and economic justice. Good environmental governance, in this context,
is measured by the effectiveness of strategies and initiatives and to achieve
environmental goals.
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development is an idea that works for meeting human development
goals and mean while sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the
natural resources and environmental services on which the economic and
societal development depends. The demanded result is a state of society where
living conditions and resource use continue to meet human needs without
undermining the integrity and stability of the natural system.
Sustainable development can be called as development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations.
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The other of-citied concept of ‘sustainable development’ the La Brundtland
Report on ‘Our Common Future’ has been the guiding objective of global and
national policymakers. Two basic principles guiding the work and vision of the
commission are:-
a) Sustainable Development
b) Inter-disciplinary nature of world’s environmental and development problems
and their solutions.

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 CONCLUSION
The main issue in the encounter of ecology with the political theory is whether ecology
does undermine traditional political theories and constitutes a new theory itself.

Just as there are conservative, liberal and socialist political theories and forums,
so there area green political theory and green forms of social and political
organization. However ecology cannot provide a new paradigm through which a
political theory can be constructed on green grounds. Dealing with
environmental issues involve, drawing old theoretical perspectives such as
conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and feminism.
Also, there are non-environmental issues, not quite amenable to green criteria
that have to be answered by the old traditions. Ecology to get meaningful has to
combine with another perspective to put together a theory politics on desirable
regimes of the economic, social and political organization.
Ecologists do, bring new insights to political theory. First, they show that there
are natural limits to social and political life. The later has to be evaluated in
terms of natural limits and not just only social desirability. Second, they argue
that there is an intrinsic value in non-humans that need to be accounted for in
socially relevant moral evaluations.
These points require political theory to include factors and forces such as
natural limits and the value of non-humans. In many ways, these are
revolutionary ideas for political theory in the same way that the feminist
insistence on including the ‘personal’ in political thinking has been.
The second issue is the type of international diplomacy between and among
the states considering the Green Treaties signed.
During the last two decades, the international community has called into being
into being a number of global environmental regimes, that is, a system of norms
and rules that are specified by a multilateral agreement among the relevant
states to regulate national actions on an environmental issue or a set of issues.
Most regimes take the form of a convention (a binding agreement or a legal
contract) such as the conventions on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) and on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (Porter and Brown
1996:16).
Unfortunately, most international regimes have not been very effective in
bringing environmental degradation to a halt. Many of the most important
decision is not being taken up by states but results from technology and trade
strategies of a small number of powerful transitional corporations. Secondly

pg. 16
then in-capability of under-developed states to implement the regime decision is
very poor.”
The third issue in concern is the impact of ENGO’s
The global ENGO’s are able to perform the functions which until recently held
by political parties. With their development into a cartel, political parties have
lost many of their original functions. Besides, political parties are closely
connected to individual nation-states, while many environmental problems
require transitional or global solution strategies.
Global ENGO's now often performed at least four of the six original functions
of the political parties:
i)Articulation of interest and demand
ii)Socialization
iii)Mobilization of constituency
iv)Communication with constituency

pg. 17
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. (PDF) Environment and Social Theory, 2nd edition | John Barry -
Academia.edu
2. Book (georgetown.edu)
3. Barry, J. (2012). Environment and Social Theory
4. Andrew Dobson, Green Political Thought, Routledge, London,
1995
5. Placing Mitigation in Contemporary Environmental Anthropology
6. Robinson, E.E(2008) Competing Frames of Environmental
Contamination
7. Barry J(2007) Environment and Social Theory (2nd ed.)

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