Environmental politics is about how humanity organizes itself to the nature that sustains it. Thus it compasses matters of how people deal with the Earth and its life, and how they, relate to each other through the medium of the environment. Also it impinges on other areas of political concern such as those related to poverty, education, race, the economy and international relations…etc.
The “environment” as a collective term for all these concerns arrived in the 1960s, which dates the beginning of environmental politics as such. Since then, the growth of environmental literature has matched the growth of environmental concern, which has spread to the Third World and the global system itself. In the last four decades, the politics of the Earth has featured a large and growing range of issues. The initial concerns were with pollution, wilderness preservation, population growth, and depletion of natural resources. These concerns have been supplemented by worries about energy supply, animal rights, species extinction, global climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, toxic wastes, the protection of whole ecosystems and environmental justice. All these issues are interlaced with a whole range of moral and ethical questions about human livelihood, human attitudes and our proper relations to other entities on the planet.
Environmental politics today covers discussions of the various political, social and economic causes of ecological problems; the ethics of our relationship with the natural systems that sustain us; our environmental relationships with our fellow-humans; environmental movements and designs for alternative; political organizations.
Environmental crisis arrived in the last 1960s, along with dire warnings about global shortages and ecological collapse. Since then, the global populations have increased by over 50percent. There has been mighty nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, industrial accident at Bhopal and Prince William Sound in Alaska. Green parties have emerged as a significant electoral force in many countries. Mainstream environmental groups have acquired massive memberships. Populist backlashes against environmentalism have flared. Global environmental issues relating to climate change and ozone layer depletion have come to the fore. We have had Earth Summits; Earth Days, environmental legislation and regulation.
Environmental movements, originated in the 1960s with the emergence of the German idea of “conservation biology” and the American concept of “doctrine of resources conservation”, adopted a very different tradition of “reverence for wilderness” in the 1980s. With the new trends in global politics, like the gap between rich and the poor, the North and South, the increasing illiteracy rate and etc has led to the conclusion that the kind of development that we follow today is not in harmony with nature.
The present development model, like modern science, consider human to be supreme, over and above nature and not as a part of nature. This has not only led to marginalization of and alienation from nature, but also marginalization of principles of nature, leading to ecological disasters and environmental destructions. Nature is considered as objects, a non-living thing, a resource, a constant supplier of raw materials and an absorber of wastes, not as a living system. That is why nature is plundered, forests are destroyed, and land, water and air are poisoned by excessive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.
However, we cannot ignore that the fact that our ancestor were wiser than us in the regard. It is well known that environmental conservation often found in ancient cultures around the world. Many indigenous people’s value and belief system have evolved to respect nature, and live in harmony with it and it assert that land and people are one and inseparable. An environmental ethics based on equity, fairness and respect for nature can be traced to ancient thinking, particularly to the various religious schools.
The “environment” as a collective term for all these concerns arrived in the 1960s, which dates the beginning of environmental politics as such. Since then, the growth of environmental literature has matched the growth of environmental concern, which has spread to the Third World and the global system itself. In the last four decades, the politics of the Earth has featured a large and growing range of issues. The initial concerns were with pollution, wilderness preservation, population growth, and depletion of natural resources. These concerns have been supplemented by worries about energy supply, animal rights, species extinction, global climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, toxic wastes, the protection of whole ecosystems and environmental justice. All these issues are interlaced with a whole range of moral and ethical questions about human livelihood, human attitudes and our proper relations to other entities on the planet.
Environmental politics today covers discussions of the various political, social and economic causes of ecological problems; the ethics of our relationship with the natural systems that sustain us; our environmental relationships with our fellow-humans; environmental movements and designs for alternative; political organizations.
Environmental crisis arrived in the last 1960s, along with dire warnings about global shortages and ecological collapse. Since then, the global populations have increased by over 50percent. There has been mighty nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, industrial accident at Bhopal and Prince William Sound in Alaska. Green parties have emerged as a significant electoral force in many countries. Mainstream environmental groups have acquired massive memberships. Populist backlashes against environmentalism have flared. Global environmental issues relating to climate change and ozone layer depletion have come to the fore. We have had Earth Summits; Earth Days, environmental legislation and regulation.
Environmental movements, originated in the 1960s with the emergence of the German idea of “conservation biology” and the American concept of “doctrine of resources conservation”, adopted a very different tradition of “reverence for wilderness” in the 1980s. With the new trends in global politics, like the gap between rich and the poor, the North and South, the increasing illiteracy rate and etc has led to the conclusion that the kind of development that we follow today is not in harmony with nature.
The present development model, like modern science, consider human to be supreme, over and above nature and not as a part of nature. This has not only led to marginalization of and alienation from nature, but also marginalization of principles of nature, leading to ecological disasters and environmental destructions. Nature is considered as objects, a non-living thing, a resource, a constant supplier of raw materials and an absorber of wastes, not as a living system. That is why nature is plundered, forests are destroyed, and land, water and air are poisoned by excessive use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.
However, we cannot ignore that the fact that our ancestor were wiser than us in the regard. It is well known that environmental conservation often found in ancient cultures around the world. Many indigenous people’s value and belief system have evolved to respect nature, and live in harmony with it and it assert that land and people are one and inseparable. An environmental ethics based on equity, fairness and respect for nature can be traced to ancient thinking, particularly to the various religious schools.
