Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
broader ideological systems of socioenvironmental hierarchy that give
life and legitimacy to global environmental injustice. Without such criti-
cal guiding frameworks, these movements would be limited in their
political power and vision.
Numerous transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs)
concerned with EJ and human rights issues focus their efforts on a range
of state and industrial sectors. Taken together, these global organizations
and networks constitute a formidable presence at international treaty
negotiations, within corporate shareholder meetings, and in the halls
of congresses and parliaments. Even so, they are only a part of the
broader global movement for environmental justice. Arguably the most
important components of that movement are the domestic local, regional,
and national organizations in the various communities, cities, and nations
in which scores of environmental justice battles occur every day. Those
groups provide the front-line participants in the struggles for local
legitimacy within TSMOs and their networks. Together, the numerous
local grassroots organizations and their collaborating global networks
produce and maintain a critical infrastructure of the transnational public
sphere.
Social movements must mobilize resources—funds, technology, people,
symbols, ideas, and imagination—to achieve their goals. Transnational
social movements are rarely successful if we narrowly defi ne success as
a major change in a specifi c policy within a nation-state (Keck and
Sikkink 1998). But they are increasingly relevant in international policy
debates, because they seek not only to make changes in international
law and multilateral conventions, but also to change the terms and
nature of the discourse within these important debates. These conven-
tions include, for example, the Montreal Protocol (on the production of
ozone-damaging chemicals), the Kyoto Protocol (concerning global
climate change), the Basel Convention (on the international trade in
hazardous wastes), and the Stockholm Convention (on the production
and management of persistent organic pollutants). In each of these
cases, TSMOs are often a critical source of knowledge for governments
seeking information about environmental and social justice concerns,
and their presence raises the costs of failing to act on certain issues, thus
increasing the possibility of government accountability. In a global
society where a nation-state's reputation can be tarnished in international
political and media venues, transnational social movements can have
surprisingly signifi cant impacts. When movements disseminate informa-
tion to the point that it becomes a part of common wisdom, such
