Defensive Environmentalists and the Dynamics of Global Reform

When a land trust “saves” a farm from being developed is this action selfish or altruistic? Does it matter? Under what conditions can small-scope environmental projects be transformed into globally significant agents of systematic change? Can successful but vernacular local methodologies help change the world?

Human ecologist and sociologist Thomas Rudel is deeply concerned with these difficult questions because they might improve our understanding of local-to-global dynamics. In Defensive Environmentalists, Rudel's goal is to “provide a preliminary accounting of the historical circumstances” (p. 4) of how various environmental programs function, are scaled up, and the motivations of those called to action. Regarding coupled human–natural systems, Rudel warns us not to be too easily swayed by sustainable localities or practices set in an unsustainable global structure. This seems to fly in the face of David Brower's famous admonition to “think globally, but act locally.”

To this end, Rudel recasts local and global scales as “modular” and “systematic” intentions having both a different shape and functionality. Modular projects, in this scheme, include insular efforts to conserve open space, recycle waste, or prevent fracking that exhibit only marginal reference to ecosystems and economics further up the spatial and political hierarchy. Rudel refers to such programs as a “drop-in-the bucket” (p. 173) relative to the massive challenges we face. In contrast, systematic environmental work is framed as that which results in structurally and globally transformative shifts in consciousness, law, and practice. Such projects include population control in India, tree planting in Vietnam, more sustainable energy systems in Europe, and international treaties on endangered mammals such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Yet, he wonders, when and how do local events such as Hurricane Katrina serve as a focusing event for societal change? Increasing our understanding of local–global links in environmental protection forms the core goal of this well-written and timely volume.

The theoretical weight lifted here comes from the author's classification of environmental actions as either “defensive” or “altruistic.” Defensive environmentalism occurs when someone “engages in environmental protection that benefits him or her personally,” often close to their home (p. 12). Altruistic environmentalism exists when someone “works to restore or preserve an environmental resource or service that benefits all of us without deriving any personal benefit” (p. 12). This appears to be a simple dichotomous key with considerable room for debate. In Rudel's experienced hands, however, the scheme emerges as a dialectic where local actions drive national and global solutions and local people become informed and motivated by larger events.

Local and modular initiatives are discussed as “defensive” reactions to protect a person's immediate quality of life. It is inferred that such people act mostly because of what is in it for them, such as higher real estate values, open space, reduced crowding, hiking opportunities, and improved quality of life. Rudel portrays defensive actions as self-serving unless they morph into broader collective actions.

The creation of the New Jersey Pinelands and other nature preserves receive coverage as defensive outcomes with modest altruistic merit, mostly in carbon sequestration and reducing sprawl. A populist streak emerges here that implies that wealthy privileged people save places mostly to keep out the riff-raff and achieve gentrification through larger lot-size regulations (p. 64). To Rudel, “smart growth” is tainted by race and class elitism because urban residents (often the poor) do not significantly benefit from the outcomes. Access to affordable housing outside cities is a serious concern, but saving open space is generally not the primary barrier; instead it is the availability of capital. He contrasts this kind of defensive conservation in the United States with the early altruistic acts of elites in sub-Saharan Africa to establish wildlife preserves. The larger story of how 47 million acres in the United States have been conserved by a diverse array of local, state, and national land trusts was insufficiently covered. The ecological and economic benefits of protecting an area twenty-one times the size of Yellowstone Park are vast, including habitat for threatened and endangered species, migratory safe havens, archeological resources, clean air and water, local food production, and public trail systems. These widely shared benefits transcend jurisdiction, race, and class. Rudel misses an opportunity here given the scalar nature of how land trusts and other nongovernmental organizations are created, interact, compete, share information, develop personnel, and evolve. Hawken's (2007) Blessed Unrest is a more accessible account of this “network of organizations that offer solutions to disentangle what appear to be insoluble dilemmas: poverty, global climate change, terrorism, ecological degradation … and many more (Hawken 2007, p. 20). Rudel provides more theoretical gravity than Hawken, however, and is less interested in providing hope than in analyzing the mechanics of the work at hand.

An essential riddle here is the nature of altruism. The Brazilian rubber tappers, the Great Green Wall aforestation program in the Sahel, and the coalitions that pushed for U.S. CAFE gas mileage standards are discussed as examples of altruistic environmentalism. Those involved are said to act for the greater good and not their own aggrandizement. Although such saints might exist, is there really no personal benefit gained? It could be argued that the life of each rubber tapper, Sahelian herder, and energy conservation advocate is personally and materially improved by the projects they “selflessly” advance. It is widely known that many devoted, global environmentalists struggle and sacrifice, but don't at least some also receive ego gratification, career advancement, money, fame, and willing companionship? How many of the Greenpeace activists jailed in Russia, when released, will get book contracts for their trouble? People are motivated by diverse drivers. As Whitman said, we contain multitudes. Rudel is a wise person and knows this. He describes the legitimately heroic efforts of the staff of Virunga Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to protect mountain gorillas during the 1994 genocide. Then, with typical clarity he concludes, “They did so no doubt out of a larger sense of obligation … but also out of recognition that the death of the primates would eliminate the tourist trade that had provided them with their livelihoods” (p. 68). As sociobiologists remind us, altruism often brings compensation. And what is wrong with that?

Rudel's binary and dichotomous cleaving of defensive from altruistic actions is a device and not a divide. In seven empirical chapters at the center of the book, Rudel explores, questions, tests, and refines his scheme.

There is a fine examination of how changes in cultural practices can stimulate chain reactions in social and ecological systems. For example, he traces how two biofuel initiatives trended as influenced by soy and corn prices, competing costs for palm oil, stresses on food budgets, fires, drought, air pollution, and the politics of climate change. Resource partitioning—land tenure—is then analyzed as both a solvent of cultures and ecosystems but also a reagent stimulating social justice and conservation. The turbulent relationship between conservation and collective political economy is featured. Those who destroy are deemed to be “stragglers” with little social capital who “cannot be mobilized in the service of a larger cause such as conservation” (p. 58). Rudel's sociology background clearly claims the stage. Perhaps that is why when taking on land fragmentation the vast literature on landscape ecology such as the theory of island biogeography, patch dynamics, edge effects, and measures of biodiversity is noticeably underutilized. Land-use land-cover change, a powerful geospatial method of analysis, also merited some mention given the stated focus on shifting land tenure patterns.

Demography and falling fertility rates are treated with skill and nuance. The costs of children are shown to be a driver of reduced family size. This defensive action benefits the child and her family and the global environment is served (altruistically) “by reducing the numbers of greenhouse gas emitting humans in the next generation” (p. 77). Rudel bravely links r and K selection theory to styles of parenting, not because we are a game species, but for the heuristic value of the exercise. Chapters follow on soils and food, recycling, and energy conservation; each is well used to both inform us and wrestle with the defensive–altruistic paradigm.

“Focusing events” are discussed to good effect. These are times of disaster, upheaval, and change such as the Dust Bowl, fires on the Cuyahoga River, Love Canal, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Such catalysts have utility but it can be brief. Rudel proposes an “issue attention cycle” lasting twenty years composed of stages: pre-problem, alarmed discovery, realizing the cost, declining interest, and post-problem (p. 167). He stresses that focusing events arise within an accumulated narrative of defensive environmentalism but they sometimes help elevate issues to a national or global scale of concern. For example, the creation of the Superfund law is shown to be an exemplar of how defensive actions to clean up a toxic neighborhood led to a bruised but still vital U.S. policy. The story of Wal-Mart's shift to more sustainable practices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is both surprising and well told. This kind of transformative change lies at the heart of an ambitious chapter on the creation of a sustainable development state. Here Rudel explores China and revisits his fine body of work on tropical deforestation in Latin America.

Defensive Environmentalism is a well-realized and helpful synthesis of ideas about local–global interactions. While presenting a binary model of defensive and altruistic actions, the author understands that exclusively choosing either path is folly. He believes that “questions about the relative efficacy of local environmental actions compared to national policies present us with a false choice. We need both” (p. 199). In that is the wisdom and challenge of this important volume. At times, you can watch the author struggle with the slipperiness of the topic. Yet, Rudel expresses his intention with unusual humility: “I hope that, at a minimum, this analysis will be ‘usefully wrong’” (p. 9). He achieves much more than that. There is ample reason to praise this book for its intelligence, scope, and ambition. It would make a thought-provoking addition to the library of researchers working these same veins as well as a stimulating book for more advanced students.