This piece aims to consider the current picture of environmental policymaking, the stakeholders involved, the manner and extent of their participation and the ways in which their discourse and language of engagement with environmental issues shapes policies. It considers challenges that the current environmental discourse faces and postulates that environmental activism, inter alia, can (and does) use the insights from such discursive analysis to inform their activism to create an interplay of narratives based on the interests of all stakeholders in order to push for policies and laws which are more consonant with the salience, urgency, and severity of environmental issues.
Public Participation in Environmental Policymaking
A starting note pursuant to the aforementioned would be to analyze public participation in environmental policymaking. Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his account titled “Skin in the Game” theorized that policymaking can often suffer from the issue of “missing incentives” - wherein, in situations of participation asymmetry, policy actors may suffer from a lack of incentive to create policies with high obligations - thus reaping rewards of a diluted policy without accepting many of the risks. This is especially relevant in the context of environmental issues where environmental risks can fall disproportionately on certain vulnerable populations which are likely to not affect major policy actors.
The point one can draw here is that effective environmental law-making needs the participation of all stakeholders. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration was the first to bring into Law the need for participation by all concerned citizens with sufficient access to information, opportunity to contribute to decision making, and access to judicial redress and remedy with respect to environmental harms. International Conferences such as the Conference of Parties as envisioned by the UNFCCC which have been essential for international policymaking have, on a similar note, seen more and more participation from various players - citizen organizations, NGOs, and Corporations alongside state actors. Even at the national level, public consultations on environmental issues and other institutional arrangements for public participation are indeed present. Further, as environmental issues are growing, one observes the same becoming increasingly political issues, and naturally, citizens hold power through their vote on future decision-making on these issues. This allows scope for citizen activism and lobbying.
Key Considerations vis a vis the Common Man’s Participation
The conclusion that the common public does hold a stake in environmental policymaking brings us to two key considerations (a) Even through these mechanisms, are all groups of the population indeed being represented? (b) What does the common citizen think of environmental issues?
While the first consideration is not neatly in the scope of this paper, it is a hot issue in environmental scholarship - with the broad consensus being that environmental inclusiveness is a long journey away. This is unfortunately especially true for the case of the exact populations for whom environmental matters are of higher importance - forest dwellers, fishermen communities, populations in coastal areas, and other vulnerable populations - for most of whom national institutions of policy-making are inaccessible. With environmental risk being an intersectional issue, it is the poorer, lower caste, more marginalized sections of society that are more likely to be affected.
Moreover, vulnerable communities may not themselves feel the need to access institutional mechanisms as they do not feel threatened - not because they are not under environmental harm but instead because they are not adequately aware regarding the same. This brings us to the second consideration, which forms a major part of the analysis herein. What is the current broad public view and awareness on environmental issues? Further, how are these views represented in colloquial discourse? This is a question essential to informing whether public participation is leading to better environmental policymaking.
For considering this aspect, we can take the case of Climate Change. In UNDP’s “People’s Climate Vote” report, the United States only saw 60% of people believing in Climate Change. This number was lower in middle-income countries like India and Sri Lanka which polled at only 55%. It can be assumed that the persons who would be ready and willing to participate in lobbying for these issues - foregoing considerations including infrastructure development or economic progress for the climate emergency - would be far fewer.
The Common Man’s discourse around Environmental Concerns
In the University of Adelaide’s research titled “Speaking of Climate Change” - it was analyzed how lay people make sense of the phenomenon in discourse in Australia. The article adopted a discursive model which went beyond the divergence of public opinion from scientific consensus but analyzed the public’s sense of urgency, veracity, and salience given to the matter and whether or not they believed it to be a matter close to their own interests.
On examination of public opinion, media representations were found to consistently be in accordance with the political affiliations of the media house which had led to a culture of “interpretation of facts” based on ideology on an issue like Climate Change. While media representations have been found to be molded by personal experiences and beliefs - the ontological status attributed to Climate Change was still bound to mercurial sociopolitical contexts rather than scientific consensus. Further, a common trope found in their study was that some participants' who were concerned about the issue still regarded it as (A) lacking immediacy (B) temporally distal or (c) not salient in light of other social, financial or political contingencies.
In various extracts posited in the study, it was found that climate change was considered in light of self-interest and considerations such as the "Carbon Tax" or "Gas Tax" which were not amenable to the interviewees. A similar case was found in the study of Kurz Augoustinos where environmental issues at large, including pollution and climate change, were not considered as interests that could adequately compete with maintaining the status-quo lifestyle. Further, the timelines or future projections of the immediacy of the issue were largely inaccurate for most participants. Many considered it an ethical responsibility to their great-grandchildren rather than a personalized issue. As has been suggested by various works, the issue was indeed considered intangible and slightly esoteric. In addition, the “psychological distance” - in terms of space and time - felt from the issue was what led to a lack of proactive action, a lack of urgency, and inaccuracies in understanding the direct effect Climate Change would be having on the world at large a lot sooner.
Adopting Insights to Shape Effective Activism
It is in this context that Environmental Activism can play a major role by remedying the discourse surrounding the issue of Climate Change. In countries like India, environmental campaigners sometimes find themselves being considered as a fringe interest group which in turn leads to smaller lobbies for environmental groups in public and political matters. These often find themselves at the receiving end of heavy dissent - even extending to clampdown on freedoms. However, a confluence of the narratives brought in by environmental activism and movements has the potential to create a synergic attitude change - especially for those already on the spectrum of believing in the climate emergency.
Environmental Activism can actively borrow from the insights of such discursive analysis of colloquial understandings of issues. This can largely inform the kinds of activistic actions taken and movements can largely benefit in terms of effectiveness if they attempt to directly address the aforementioned challenges being faced. This is broadly including (A) challenges of inclusivity as mentioned under the first consideration and (B) challenges of detachment of stakeholders due to reasons of self-interest and feelings of “distance” from the issue. Attacking these key challenges would be grounds for environmental activists to gain more traction. Activism herein is not to be understood in terms of youth protests and movements alone but also by scientists, NGOs, International Organizations and the law itself. This paper will cover accordingly, in future chapters - legal activism, activism by state actors and non-state actors like NGOs and activism in the corporate sector.
Just Stop Oil and the Changing Face of Environmental Activism
Accordingly, it has been seen that the face of activism has indeed been responsive to the issues that can be derived. On the front of environmental inclusion, one can see that instead of adopting a top-down approach, many environmental organizations are moving towards a grassroots approach - in identified susceptible areas - to educate the public and assist in steps to make institutional mechanisms of redressal more accessible to them. The same includes large NGOs like WWF and Greenpeace. In many regions, motivated citizens have set up support mechanisms pertaining to local issues such as sustainable agriculture and forest protection.
One such Indian organization is the Pan Himalayan Grassroots Development Foundation. Many youth movements on the lines of delivering environmental justice saw a spike in the case of India too in the period of the recent EIA dilution - with a focus on increasing the accessibility of local communities to platforms such as the public consultation processes as part of EIA assessment and policy consultations. Such steps are necessary to maintain the sanctity of representation of multiplicity of interests as mentioned in Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration. A measure that is to be further lobbied for in this regard would be state action pursuant to improving the implementation and accessibility of such mechanisms.
With regard to insights from environmental discourse - particularly the temporal and salience dilemma causing a detachment from urgent issues in the minds of the public are also being attempted to be addressed by recent movements. A key role has been played by movements such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion- with Civil Disobedience being used as a tool to reach larger media representation and the global public informing truths regarding environmental matters.
While there are arguments against the sensationalization of environmental activism, the same has shown to play a role in the spike in awareness and salience of the issues and the timelines by which they need to be addressed. These movements have played a role in bringing the public out of a “boiling frog” scenario of ignorance by making their mark in large demonstrations or civil disobedience. These measures are helpful in resolving the temporal and salience dilemma, bringing environment issues in the limelight through media representations and informing the larger public about how they can affect each individual soon and not just islands far off in the generations to come.
This activism also holds the target of personalizing urgent matters like Climate Change and Ozone Protection by restructuring the language used in conferences, media descriptions and even international conventions - as a larger issue which affects every being on the planet. Accordingly, highlighting the role of citizens, corporations and state actors in the language of long term self-interests in the matter - as opposed to a “moral” responsibility - is an aim of environmental activism that is also soon starting to see traction.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Environmental activism is no longer sustainable as simply a fringe movement which is lobbied for only narrowly which is why targeted engagement with colloquial masses is important for enlarging their influence - socially and politically. The participation of key stakeholders - on the public level, corporate level and individual level can be furthered and made larger through environmental activism - especially if the narratives of such movements are restructured to be more inclusive and disallow these stakeholders from remaining comfortably “detached” from the environmental issues that affect everyone in the world at large.
