(Dis)Enfranchising People

Unit 3 of this course focused on recognising underrepresented stakeholders, an aspect of procedural justice. The course’s fourth unit builds on that to address Public Participation, scrutinising mechanisms and identifying strategies for civic engagement in environmental policymaking. By the end of Unit 4, you will have achieved Learning Objective 5: you will be able to apply problem-solving techniques and collective action theories in order to design effective community campaigns that redress environmental racism.

This week’s Learning Log asks you to consider why participation is an important aspect of environmental justice as you explore some formal mechanisms for public participation in environmental decision-making. 

The Escazú Agreement is one of the world’s leading pieces of environmental legislation. It is the first legally binding treaty requiring states to actively respond to attacks on environmental defenders through investigation and sanction. If truly implemented, the treaty will go a long way in promoting the rights of Nature and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America...but that’s a big ‘if’.

During this week in Climates of Resistance, we’re going to play a ‘whodunit’ game. You will take on the role of journalist, government official, environmental defender, corporate lawyer, and other community members to explore a mystery around environmental abuses. As we play, we’ll discover why legal protections are so important – and encounter some of their limitations.

Lina Álvarez is a researcher at the Centre de Philosophie du Droit, Université Catholique de Louvain. Lina’s scholarship examines economic history and its relationship with (de)coloniality. Her doctoral work explores physiocracy, an economic theory from the Enlightenment that emphasises agriculture, land, and development – a view which heavily influenced French and wider European colonialism.

Brendan Coolsaet is an Associate Professor at the European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL) in France, where he teaches courses on environmental politics, food studies, and agrobiodiversity governance. He is also a member of the Global Environmental Justice Group at the University of East Anglia, an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in the linkages between social justice and environmental change. 

Brendan holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the Centre for Philosophy of Law (UCLouvain) on environmental justice and biodiversity conservation. 

Leire Urkidi is a Basque researcher, journalist, and professor. Leire’s work explores ecology and economics, with a focus on the capitalistic exploitation of the environment.

For Leire, the conflict around the Pascua-Lama mining project in Chile is a strong example of the conflicts that arise from corporate action against the environment. Urkidi is interested in how the movement – which began with the defence of endangered glaciers – has become ‘glocal’, with both international attention and locally-led action.

Mariana Walter is a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). She is an environmental scientist working on ecological economics and political ecology. Mariana is interested in social metabolism, resource extraction conflicts, environmental justice, knowledge co-production and institutional change. 

Welter is part of ENVJUST, a project mapping environmental conflicts around the world. She has also served as Scientific Coordinator of the ACKnowl-EJ Project: Academic and Activist Co-production of Knowledge for Environmental Justice.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was born as Beverly to a Plains Cree mother in Canada. She was orphaned as an infant by a car crash, and was adopted by an American couple of Mi’kmaq ancestry. Sainte-Marie studied Asian philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, graduating in 1962. She played in coffeehouses during her university years before moving to Greenwich Village for the Bohemian arts scene.

Sainte-Marie actively supported the anti-Vietnam War movement as well as the American Indian Movement, a civil rights organisation that took over Alcatraz Island in 1969-71. She was blacklisted by the Johnson and Nixon administrations, limiting her ability to perform and receive payment for her work. But she kept writing, and won an Oscar in 1982. Her 2017 album Medicine Songs includes protest and environmental reflections.

Now an octagenarian, she’s recently released her first children’s book, and is still writing and performing.

Nemonte Nenquimo is a Waorani activist from the Amazonian Region of Ecuador. Raised on the Curary River, Nemonte left her traditional community to study at a missionary school, but left the school after realising the missionaries were forcing her to leave behind her cultural identity and her history. That experience, and the ongoing environmental violence carried out against her people, motivated Nemonte to help found the Indigenous organisation Ceibo Alliance, a campaign highlighting the role played by Indigenous and local peoples in protecting our planet.

Nemonte is the first female president of the Waorani of Pastaza. She was the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Ecuadorian government that succeeded in protecting half a million acres of Waorani ancestral land in the Amazon rainforest from oil drilling. In 2020, she was named in the Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, the only Indigenous woman on the list and the second Ecuadorian to ever be named in its history.