世界范围内的环境保护主义:在市民运动和政府决策之间

本文通过概述西方环境保护主义在市民与政府之间的发展历程,认识到环境保护主义在不同的时代有不同的讨论议题与内容,而不同的人群对于谁才是环境保护主义者的精英分子也有不同的看法。1970年前后是环境保护主义的转折点,从那时起,环境保护主义关注的议题由单一的要素转向一个综合的网络,并形成了全球范围的广泛联系,在大众运动和广泛的社会关注之下,环境保护主义的政治力量越来越多地显示出来。

Environmentalism Worldwide: Between Civic Movements and Bureaucratic Strategies

There are different environmentalism in different country. The models and ideals of them are often contradictory. In my opinion, one of the practical tasks of environmental history is the mediation between these conflicting tendencies. In the same time, diverse scientific disciplines generate diverse conceptions of environmentalism. All these conceptions of environmentalism, however, have some truth. History has the chance to combine and to integrate these conceptions. In the course of history, environmentalism was in one period more a strategy of state administration, but in another period more a popular movement opposing state politics. We should not be deceived by the term “environment” and by an all too much “global” outlook: Seen from the near, there exist many different environmentalism all over the world; and it is important to realize this diversity. In one region, water protection is on the top of the agenda; in the other, soil protection; in the third, bird protection, and in other cases, the fight against air pollution. Pay special attention to the elites of environmentalism everywhere - whether within the bureaucracy or within the civic movements - ; pay attention to the strong passions, to the Charisma of the leaders, to the characteristic human types and to their lifestyle, to spiritual and religious elements, but at the same time to processes of rationalization and to coincidence with economic trends。Environmentalism is on the whole and from a worldwide perspective not a “movement” in the classic sense, but rather a network of networks. Again the question: What was really new with the new environmentalism? There are three answers: (1) the big network between all these until than single and isolated initiatives; (2) the new worldwide context with a global outlook upon the earth, partly influenced by the space-travel and the space-photographs of the 1960ies and promoted by the UNESCO; (3) the mass movement and widespread public interest which gave environmental issues a political power unknown until to that time.