Environmentalism and democracy in the age of nationalism and corporate capitalism

Environmental commodification, trading and offsetting are business as usual approaches to environmental policy. There is also consensus across political divides about the need for economic growth. Many environmental NGOs have become apologists for corporate self-regulation, market mechanisms, carbon pricing/trading and biodiversity offsetting/banking, while themselves commercialising species 'protection' as eco-tourism.

In this issue of Environmental Values the state and direction of the environmental movement are at the fore. D'Amato et al. contrast pragmatism with the need for revolutionary change and consider which will achieve social ecological transformation. Parry raises the issue of how animal activists should operate within an idealised deliberative democracy and what they could then legitimately justify doing to further their cause. Quist and Rinne are concerned with the challenges that disenfranchised groups face in building shared agendas and expressing themselves in their struggles to protect the environment and their ways of life. How natural resource extraction issues are framed by the media is the concern of Davies et al. Issues of power, inclusion and representation in the environmental movement are also raised in the paper by Fenney, which addresses the challenges specifically faced by disabled people.

Societal change is an inherently value laden and political issue. Environmental policy is no more a win-win than any other policy; this journal issue shows how different polices change winners and losers.