defend the environment essay

Writing an Essay on the Environment

Our living conditions have an impact on how we behave and interact with other people. The effects of changing weather patterns and temperatures on living things have come under increasing scrutiny over time.

Although pollution and biodiversity are two additional topics worth writing about, climate change is undoubtedly one of the most dangerous and prevalent issues. Making a solid essay on the environment involves several steps beyond simply deciding what to write about.

There are a few things to consider when writing a paper on the environment. Of course, the format and citation style required for academic writing vary depending on the instructor. Remember to follow these and limit your answers to the question as stated in the assignment prompt. Here are some more pointers for writing an essay well.

Pick a good topic to begin with

Choosing a relevant topic is the most crucial step in producing excellent academic writing. There are numerous environmental factors on which you might base your paper. However, you must ensure that your chosen subject aligns with the assignment’s question, which is stated in the prompt. Of course, there are occasions when professors give their pupils a set of issues to choose from, negating the necessity for topic selection.

In other cases, teachers allow pupils to choose their own themes. With such flexibility comes the obligation to make sure your topic is current and pertinent to your project. Additionally, you must ensure that your topic is narrow enough to fit within the confines of your essay. People who struggle to come up with good ideas might google “ pay someone to write my paper ” to order custom writing from experts online.

Any of the following topics may be covered in your essay on the environment: biodiversity; climate change or global warming and its effects; environmental degradation and how it affects living things.

You must do some research to choose a current and relevant topic because the environment is such a vast subject. Additionally, be sure to focus on your theme.

Think of ideas and make a plan

The next step is brainstorming after you have chosen a topic for your essay. Thinking about the subject and writing down everything you know is what this procedure entails. The notes you’ve made here can be incorporated into your outline.

Having a solid approach when it comes to outlining will help you save time when you are doing your research and writing. The development of a working thesis statement and some preliminary investigation may be necessary at this stage.

Construct a compelling thesis statement

It’s time to develop a workable thesis now that you have a topic and an outline. Please be aware that while you conduct research and write your statement, it may change multiple times. You might come across new concepts as you work and alter your viewpoint on significant subjects. Any writer from the best writing services would say that your thesis should be concise, clear, debatable, and intriguing. It should make clear the stance you aim to defend in your argument.

Conduct analysis and gather sources

If you don’t collect adequate information and supporting facts, composing a solid essay on the environment is impossible. Academic papers of top quality make clear arguments and back up their claims with reliable evidence. Perform research using primary sources, credible websites, online journals, and books. To assist with citations and references, make sure to list the information’s sources. Most importantly, keep thorough notes to make arranging your article simpler.

Get to writing as soon as you can

Do not let the planning consume all of your time and leave no time for writing. Freewriting is allegedly the most straightforward method for overcoming writer’s block. Although there is a better technique, it involves creating an outline and researching each area of your article. Just make sure to give each critical point a paragraph and back it up with examples and proof from reliable sources.

Grammar and syntax shouldn’t be your main focus as you compose your article. Just focus on developing your ideas and points at this time. Finish by proofreading your work for grammar, content, and formatting consistency.

Please keep in mind that the advice given in this article is intended to help you as you write an academic essay. You must still ensure that your writing follows the guidelines for your assignment. The most crucial thing is to make sure you proofread and edit your work. You can do it yourself or hire the best college essay writing service to have it done professionally. This will save you from the mistakes and typos, and your essay on the environment will be of an outstanding quality!

Following these tips it will be easier to understand the steps of writing a perfectly done essay without messing it up the night before the deadline. Remember of your main goal – highlight the importance of a particular environmental issue and persuade the readers to do their contribution into its solving.

Environmental Protection Essay

The environmental protection essay is a great way to assist the little ones in understanding how to protect the environment. Environmental protection has emerged as one of the major challenges in the world for centuries and has always been important to humans. As of late, it has seen a dramatic change in environmental policy, primarily through the use of the law. One way that law is used to protect the environment is by enacting government regulations on pollution and preventing environmental degradation.

Environmental protection is an integral part of today’s society, but many people lack even basic knowledge on what they can do to help protect our environment. The destruction of the environment and the depletion of natural resources are significant issues that are ever-present. In this essay, there will be a list of ideas for participating in the fight against these problems. This essay on environmental protection describes the meaning and importance of environmental protection and also teaches the right method to preserve the environment.

How to Protect the Environment Essay

Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment against various human activities that degrade, destroy, or otherwise reduce its quality for future generations. Environmental protection has become a widespread issue in recent decades as human pressures on the environment have increased exponentially.

There are many ways to protect the environment. One way to protect the environment is by recycling – a way to reduce the carbon footprint and conserve natural resources. It also decreases the amount of waste that goes into landfills, which causes less pollution to water bodies. Another way is to use eco-friendly products in your life. This can contribute to a healthier environment by reducing the number of harmful chemicals and toxins in the air, ground, and water.

To protect the environment, we should be conscious of what we consume and how we consume it. Many factors affect the quality of our air, water, and land, but it is best to start small by always considering its impact on the environment.

Afforestation and tree plantation help protect our environment by reducing global warming, soil erosion, etc. We can reduce our carbon footprint through carpooling instead of driving, which is cheaper and reduces our energy usage and emissions.

For more essays similar to the environmental protection essay, visit BYJU’S website. You can also find more exciting kids’ learning resources, such as poems, stories, worksheets, etc., on the website.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is environmental protection.

Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by maintaining the quality of air, water, land or ecosystem. The effects that humans have on their environment create issues for the natural environment. This can include air pollution, water pollution, and degradation of land. Governments and people are involved with environmental protection through policies and regulations.

How to protect the environment?

Environmental protection has seen a dramatic change, especially through environmental laws. These laws call for reducing pollution and environmental degradation.

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Environmental Protection Essay

Essay on Environmental Protection

Environmental protection is improving, defending, and maintaining the quality of the environment. The main methods of environmental protection are recycling, reusing, and reducing; however, some other methods such as Green Energy production, green transportation development, and eco-friendly industrialization also exist. Not only residents but also businesses and industries should play their basic roles to improve the environment.

The History of Environmental Protection

Humankind has always been concerned about the environment. The ancient Greeks were the first to develop environmental philosophy, and they were followed by other major civilizations such as India and China. In more recent times, the concern for the environment has increased because of growing awareness of the ecological crisis. The Club of Rome, a think tank, was among the first to warn the world about the dangers of overpopulation and pollution in its report "The Limits to Growth" (1972).

In the early days of environmentalism, people thought that the best way to protect nature was to set aside areas where humans would not disturb the environment. This approach, which is known as preservation, was given a major boost in the United States with the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916.

The modern environmental movement began in the 1960s when concerns about the negative impact of humans on the environment began to increase. In response to these concerns, governments around the world began to pass legislation to protect the environment. In the United States, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970.

The Principles of Environmental Protection

There are three fundamental principles of environmental protection:

The precautionary principle: This principle states that if an activity has the potential to cause harm to the environment, then steps should be taken to prevent that harm even if there is no clear evidence that the activity is damaging.

The polluter pays principle: This states that the party responsible for causing pollution should be held responsible for cleaning it up.

The public right to know the principle: This principle states that the public has a right to know about any potential threats to the environment and what is being done to address them.

The goals of Environmental Protection

There are three main goals of environmental protection:

To protect human health: This is the most important goal of environmental protection because humans cannot survive without a healthy environment.

To protect ecosystems: Ecosystems are the foundation of life on Earth, and they provide many benefits to humans, such as clean air and water, food, and fiber.

To promote sustainable development: Sustainable development is a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Environmental protection is a practice that aims to protect the natural environment from the hands of individuals, organizations, and governments. It is the need of the hour because the Earth's environment is deteriorating every day, and the reasons are human beings. They are mishandling the Earth's environment to fulfill their needs. If it goes like this, then it is difficult to say that the future generation will have a safer environment to live in. Through this essay, you will learn the importance of environmental protection.

A Long Essay on Environmental Protection

It is imperative to protect our natural environment from deteriorating, and the only way to do that is through environmental protection. This process should be adopted by every country as soon as possible before it is too late. The objective of this process is to conserve all the natural resources and try to repair some parts of the environment that are possible to get repaired. The biophysical environment is getting degraded permanently because of overconsumption, population growth, and the rapid development of technology. This can be stopped if the government plan strategies to restrict these activities to perform in a controlled way. This environmental protection essay can be a great help for the students to understand the environment they are living in.

Voluntary Environmental Agreements

Voluntary environmental agreements are getting popular in most industrial countries. Through this free essay on environmental protection, one will learn more about this type of agreement. These agreements provide the companies with a platform where they are recognized if they are moving beyond the minimum regulatory standards for protecting the environment. These agreements support the development of one of the best environmental practices. For example, the India Environment Improvement Trust (EIT) has been working in this environment field since the year 1998. Through this environmental protection essay, one is getting so much to learn.

Ecosystems Approach

An ecosystem approach to environmental protection aims to consider the complex interrelationships of the ecosystem as a whole to the process of decision making rather than just focusing on specific issues and challenges. The environmental protection essay writing will give a more precise overview of this approach. The ecosystems approach aims to support the better transferring of information, develop strategies that can resolve conflicts, and improve regional conservation. This approach has played a major role in protecting the environment. This approach also says that religions also play an important role in the conservation of the environment.

International Environmental Agreements

In the present scenario, many of the Earth's natural resources have become vulnerable because of humans and their carelessness towards the environment across different countries. As a result of this, many countries and their governments have come into different agreements to reduce the human impact on the natural environment and protect it from getting deterioration. Through this environmental protection essay in English, one will get a much clearer view on this matter particularly.

The agreements made between different governments of various countries are known as International Environmental Agreements. This agreement includes factors such as climate, oceans, rivers, and air pollution. These agreements are sometimes legally bound, and in case they are not followed, it may lead to some legal implications. These agreements have a long history with some multinational agreements that were made in the year 1910 in Europe, America, and Africa. Some of the most well-known international agreements are the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Through this environmental protection essay, it is clear that governments are taking steps to solve the environmental issue, but it is not enough.

A Short Paragraph on Environmental Protection in English

Earth is a beautiful place to live in, with the most favorable environmental conditions for living beings. But we humans are making it vulnerable and are destroying our own homes with activities that are causing pollution at an increased rate. In this protecting the environment essay, 200 words will be explained properly on how to save the environment.

Environmental protection has become the need of the hour as it is getting destroyed each day. So, governments are making policies and are coming into agreements with other countries to come up with strategies that can protect the environment. Some companies also have the same aim of protecting the environment from the activities of humans.

In this short article on environmental protection, it is clear that if sudden steps are not taken then, our future generation will have to live in a polluted environment that is conserved very conserve difficult. Environmental protection is the key to a safe and secure future with a beautiful environment to live in.

With pollution increasing each year and causing deterioration of the natural environment, it has become necessary to take steps to protect the natural environment. As we know that the reason for all these problems is humans, governments should make policies to restrict their activities that are causing harm to the environment. If they are not stopped urgently, then the world might see some catastrophic destruction in the coming years. For example, climate change has been a huge problem, and this is one of the causes of increased pollution. A secured future depends on the environment as a whole.

FAQs on Environmental Protection Essay

1. What are International Environmental Agreements?

International environmental agreements are legal contracts between countries that discuss the protection of the environment to provide better living to present and future generations. These include issues such as climate, oceans, rivers, air pollution, etc. we should always consider that if we harm our environment, then it can affect us as well, and we will become more vulnerable. If we do not take action now, it might get a lot worse. We need to be the generation that starts taking care of our planet and future generations!

2. What is the Kyoto Protocol?

The Kyoto Protocol is one of the most well-known and successful international environmental agreements that has been made in the past to protect the environment. This agreement between countries was made to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases which are causing damage to the ozone layer and climate change. With the help of Kyoto, protocol countries have reduced emission rates by 8% and are planning to reduce them more so that future generations can live in a healthy environment in which they can flourish.

3. What is the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement was made in 2015 to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and to stop climate change. This agreement is very important as it includes every country in the world, and all have agreed to work together to stop climate change. This is a huge step forward as it means that everyone is now working together to try to save our planet. If we try to solve these problems together, then we will have a chance to save our planet.

4. What is the Green Climate Fund?

The Green Climate Fund comes from an agreement made in 2010 to provide money for developing countries that are going through issues such as deforestation and air pollution by making them more sustainable. This fund has a goal of collecting 100 billion dollars by 2020 for supporting developing countries. If this can happen, then many lives can be saved, and we will be able to see a lot of positive changes in the coming years and decades so that we can see an improved environment.

5. What are some activities that harm the Environment?

Some activities that harm the environment include burning fossil fuels, deforestation, air pollution, and wastewater discharge. These activities harm not only the environment but also humans, and we must take action now to reduce the impact which we are causing. For example, the burning of fossil fuels is one of the main reasons for climate change and air pollution, which both have a huge impact on humans. If we stop these activities, then it will be a lot better for everyone!

6. How can we protect the Environment?

Environmental protection is very much required in today's time. Some of the ways to protect the environment are to reduce, reuse, recycle, conserve water, save electricity, clean up the community, educate people on pollution, conserve water, preserve soil, tree plantation, use long-lasting bulbs, and plant trees. Heaven these are the ways which help us to protect the environment from getting polluted.

7. Why is Environmental Protection Important?

The ecosystem in which we live provides the natural services that are very much important to humans and other species for health, quality of life, and survival. So to protect that, environmental protection is very important. Hence, governments of various countries should make strategies to protect our natural environment from getting polluted.

Essay on Ways to Protect The Environment

Students are often asked to write an essay on Ways to Protect The Environment in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Ways to Protect The Environment

Understanding the environment.

The environment is our home. It provides us with air, water, food, and shelter. But, it is in danger due to pollution, deforestation, and climate change.

Reducing Waste

We can protect the environment by reducing waste. We can reuse and recycle items instead of throwing them away. This reduces the amount of waste in landfills.

Conserving Water

Water is a precious resource. We can conserve it by taking shorter showers and fixing leaky faucets. This helps to preserve our water supply.

Planting Trees

Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a harmful greenhouse gas. By planting trees, we can fight climate change and provide habitats for wildlife.

Protecting the environment is our responsibility. By making small changes, we can make a big difference. Let’s do our part to protect our home.

250 Words Essay on Ways to Protect The Environment

Introduction.

The environment is our life-support system, providing the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Its protection is not just a responsibility but a necessity for our survival. College students can play a significant role in this endeavor.

Adopting Sustainable Practices

The adoption of sustainable practices is a crucial step towards environmental protection. This includes minimizing waste, recycling, and reusing items as much as possible. It also involves choosing products with less packaging, using reusable shopping bags, and opting for digital versions of documents and bills to reduce paper waste.

Energy Conservation

Energy conservation is another effective way to protect the environment. By turning off lights, electronics, and appliances when not in use, we can significantly reduce our energy consumption. Additionally, using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs can further decrease energy use.

Green Transportation

Transportation is a major contributor to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Opting for greener modes of transportation, such as walking, biking, carpooling, or using public transit, can help reduce these impacts.

Supporting Sustainable Businesses

Supporting businesses that prioritize sustainability can also promote environmental protection. These companies often employ practices that minimize their environmental footprint, such as using renewable energy sources, reducing waste, and sourcing materials responsibly.

In conclusion, protecting the environment requires concerted efforts at individual and collective levels. By adopting sustainable practices, conserving energy, choosing green transportation, and supporting sustainable businesses, we can all contribute to a healthier, more sustainable world.

500 Words Essay on Ways to Protect The Environment

The environment is a crucial aspect of our existence, providing us with essential resources and services. However, human activities have led to environmental degradation, threatening the planet’s health and our survival. This essay explores ways to protect the environment, focusing on sustainable practices, technology, policy, and education.

Sustainable Practices

Embracing sustainable practices is an effective way to protect the environment. This includes reducing, reusing, and recycling waste, which minimizes the pressure on natural resources and reduces pollution. For instance, composting organic waste can provide nutrient-rich soil for gardening, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers. Additionally, sustainable consumption, such as choosing products with minimal packaging or buying locally sourced goods, can significantly reduce our environmental footprint.

Technological Innovations

Technological advancements can offer innovative solutions for environmental protection. Renewable energy technologies, such as solar and wind power, are pivotal in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and mitigating climate change. Similarly, advancements in water treatment technologies can ensure safe and efficient water use. Furthermore, digital technologies can optimize resource use, with smart grids and IoT devices enabling energy and water conservation.

Policy Interventions

Policy interventions play a critical role in environmental protection. Governments can implement regulations to control pollution, manage resources, and promote sustainable practices. For example, emission standards can limit air pollution, while land use planning can protect ecosystems. Additionally, economic instruments, such as taxes or subsidies, can incentivize environmentally friendly practices. International cooperation is also vital, as environmental issues often transcend national boundaries.

Education and Awareness

Education and awareness are fundamental to fostering a culture of environmental responsibility. Formal education should incorporate environmental studies to equip future generations with the knowledge and skills to address environmental challenges. Besides, public awareness campaigns can inform people about the environmental impact of their actions and motivate them to adopt sustainable practices. Social media can be a powerful tool in these efforts, reaching a wide audience and facilitating engagement.

In conclusion, protecting the environment requires a multi-faceted approach that combines sustainable practices, technological innovation, policy interventions, and education. It is not just the responsibility of governments or organizations but of every individual. By making conscious choices and advocating for the environment, we can ensure a sustainable future for ourselves and generations to come.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

How to Write an Essay on the Environment

The environment where we live affects how we function and socialize as human beings. Over the years, there has been a growing focus on climate change and how shifts in weather events and temperatures are affecting living organisms.

Of course, although climate change is one of the threatening and pervasive things, currently, there are many other areas one can write about including biodiversity and pollution. Choosing what to write about is just one aspect of creating a good essay on the environment.

When tasked with writing an assignment on the environment, there are some specific factors to consider. Of course, different instructors issue different guidelines for academic writing, including the format and citation style to use. Make sure to adhere to these and stick to the question as outlined in the assignment prompt. Here are additional tips for effective essay writing.

Start by Choosing a Good Topic

The most important step in effective academic writing is selecting an appropriate topic. There are many areas of the environment where you can base your writing. However, you have to make sure that your preferred topic is in line with your assignment question, as set out in the prompt. Of course, there are times when instructors provide specific topics for their students, eliminating the need for topic selection.

In other instances, students are accorded the freedom to create their own topics. With such freedom, comes the responsibility of making sure that your topic is relevant for your project and current. Also, you have to make sure that your area of writing is precise enough to be covered within the scope of your essay. Those who are unable to find good topics can seek custom writing from professionals online.

Your essay on the environment can be in any of the following areas:• Climate change or global warming and its impacts;• Biodiversity;• Environmental pollution and how it affects living organisms.

Since the environment is a very broad topic area, you will need to conduct some research to make sure that you pick a relevant and current topic. Also, make sure to narrow down your topic .

Brainstorm for Ideas and Create a Plan

Once you have a topic for your essay, the next step is brainstorming. This is the process of thinking about the topic and noting down everything you know. The notes created here can form part of your outline.

When it comes to outlining, having a good plan will save you time much later in the course of your research and writing. This stage may require some preliminary research as well as the creation of a working thesis statement.

Create an Interesting Thesis Statement

Now that you have a topic and an outline, it is time to create a working thesis. Please note that your statement may change several in the course of your research and writing. As you proceed with your work, you may encounter different ideas and change your perspective on important issues. In essence, your thesis should be clear, arguable, interesting, and simple. It should demonstrate the position you intend to take with your argumentation.

Conduct Research and Document Sources

It is impossible to write a good essay on the environment if you don’t gather enough data and evidence. Quality academic papers present coherent arguments where ideas and points are supported using credible evidence. Conduct research on books, electronic journals, reputable websites, and primary sources. Just make sure to document the sources of your information to help with citations and references. Most importantly, take keen notes that will make organizing your essay easier.

Start Writing as Soon as Possible

Do not spend so much time with preparations that you forget to make time for the actual writing. You may have heard that freewriting is the easiest way to overcome writer’s block. However, there is an even better way — writing from an outline and researching the various sections of your paper. Just make sure to give each main idea its own paragraph, supported using evidence and examples from credible sources.

As you write your paper, grammar and syntax should not be your main priority. At this stage, just work on the drafting of your ideas and points. You can finish by editing your work for grammatical, content, and formatting consistency.

Please note that the tips provided in this article are meant to guide you through the process of academic essay writing. You still have to make sure that your writing adheres to your assignment instructions. Most importantly, you need to ensure that you proofread and edit your work.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Protecting the Environment Against Climate Change'. 4 September.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Protecting the Environment Against Climate Change." September 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/protecting-the-environment-against-climate-change/.

1. IvyPanda . "Protecting the Environment Against Climate Change." September 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/protecting-the-environment-against-climate-change/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Protecting the Environment Against Climate Change." September 4, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/protecting-the-environment-against-climate-change/.

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Essay on Environment: Examples & Tips

Updated on
May 30, 2022

In the 21st century, the Environmental crisis is one of the biggest issues. The world has been potentially impacted by the resulting hindrance in the environmental balance, due to the rising in industrialization and urbanization. This led to several natural calamities which creates an everlasting severe impact on the environment for years. To familiarize students with the importance environment, the subject ‘Environmental Studies’ is part of the curriculum in primary, secondary as well as higher school education. To test the knowledge of the students related to Environment, a question related to the topic in the form of essay or article writing is included in the exam. This blog aims to focus on providing details to students on the way, they can draft a well-written essay on Environment.

This Blog Includes:

Overview on environment, tips on writing an effective essay, format (150 words), sample essay on environment, environment essay (100 words), essay on environment (200-250 words), environment essay (300 words), world environment day.

To begin the essay on Environment, students must know what it is all about. Biotic (plants, animals, and microorganisms) and abiotic (non-living physical factors) components in our surroundings fall under the terminology of the environment. Everything that surrounds us is a part of the environment and facilitates our existence on the planet.

Before writing an effective essay on Environment, another thing students need to ensure is to get familiarised with the structure of essay writing. The major tips which students need to keep in mind, while drafting the essay are:

Research on the given topic thoroughly : The students must research the topic given in the essay, for example: while drafting an essay on the environment, students must mention the recent events, so to provide the reader with a view into their understanding of this concept.
Jot down the important points: When the students research the topic, students must note down the points which need to be included in the essay.
Quote down the important examples: Students must quote the important examples in the introductory paragraphs and the subsequent paragraphs as well.
Revise the Essay: The student after finishing writing students must revise the content to locate any grammatical errors as well as other mistakes.

Essay on Environment: Format & Samples

Now that you are aware of the key elements of drafting an essay on Environment, take a look at the format of essay writing first:

Introduction

The student must begin the essay by, detailing an overview of the topic in a very simple way in around 30-40 words. In the introduction of the essay on Environment, the student can make it interesting by recent instances or adding questions.

Body of Content

The content after the introduction can be explained in around 80 words, on a given topic in detail. This part must contain maximum detail in this part of the Essay. For the Environment essay, students can describe ways the environment is hampered and different ways to prevent and protect it.

In the essay on Environment, students can focus on summing the essay in 30-40 words, by writing its aim, types, and purposes briefly. This section must swaddle up all the details which are explained in the body of the content.

Below is a sample of an Essay on Environment to give you an idea of the way to write one:

The natural surroundings that enable life to thrive, nurture, and destroy on our planet called earth are referred to as an environment. The natural environment is vital to the survival of life on Earth, allowing humans, animals, and other living things to thrive and evolve naturally. However, our ecosystem is being harmed as a result of certain wicked and selfish human actions. It is the most essential issue, and everyone should understand how to safeguard our environment and maintain the natural balance on this planet for life to continue to exist.

Nature provides an environment that nourishes life on the planet. The environment encompasses everything humans need to live, including water, air, sunshine, land, plants, animals, forests, and other natural resources. Our surroundings play a critical role in enabling the existence of healthy life on the planet. However, due to man-made technical advancements in the current period, our environment is deteriorating day by day. As a result, environmental contamination has risen to the top of our priority list.

Environmental pollution has a detrimental impact on our everyday lives in a variety of ways, including socially, physically, economically, emotionally, and cognitively. Contamination of the environment causes a variety of ailments that can last a person’s entire life. It is not a problem of a neighborhood or a city; it is a global issue that cannot be handled by a single person’s efforts. It has the potential to end life in a day if it is not appropriately handled. Every ordinary citizen should participate in the government’s environmental protection effort.

Between June 5 and June 16, World Environment Day is commemorated to raise awareness about the environment and to educate people about its importance. On this day, awareness initiatives are held in a variety of locations.

The environment is made up of plants, animals, birds, reptiles, insects, water bodies, fish, humans, trees, microbes, and many other things. Furthermore, they all contribute to the ecosystem.

The physical, social, and cultural environments are the three categories of environments. Besides, various scientists have defined different types and numbers of environments.

1. Do not leave rubbish in public areas. 2. Minimize the use of plastic 3. Items should be reduced, reused, and recycled. 4. Prevent water and soil contamination

Hope the blog has given you an idea of how to write an essay on the Environment. If you are planning to study abroad and want help in writing your essays, then let Leverage Edu be your helping hand. Our experts will assist you in writing an excellent SOP for your study abroad consultant application.

Sonal is a creative, enthusiastic writer and editor who has worked extensively for the Study Abroad domain. She splits her time between shooting fun insta reels and learning new tools for content marketing. If she is missing from her desk, you can find her with a group of people cracking silly jokes or petting neighbourhood dogs.

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Essay on Environment for Students and Children

500+ words essay on environment.

Essay on Environment – All living things that live on this earth comes under the environment. Whether they live on land or water they are part of the environment. The environment also includes air, water, sunlight, plants, animals, etc.

Moreover, the earth is considered the only planet in the universe that supports life. The environment can be understood as a blanket that keeps life on the planet sage and sound.

Importance of Environment

We truly cannot understand the real worth of the environment. But we can estimate some of its importance that can help us understand its importance. It plays a vital role in keeping living things healthy in the environment.

Likewise, it maintains the ecological balance that will keep check of life on earth. It provides food, shelter, air, and fulfills all the human needs whether big or small.

Moreover, the entire life support of humans depends wholly on the environmental factors. In addition, it also helps in maintaining various life cycles on earth.

Most importantly, our environment is the source of natural beauty and is necessary for maintaining physical and mental health.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of the Environment

The environment gives us countless benefits that we can’t repay our entire life. As they are connected with the forest, trees, animals, water, and air. The forest and trees filter the air and absorb harmful gases. Plants purify water, reduce the chances of flood maintain natural balance and many others.

Moreover, the environment keeps a close check on the environment and its functioning, It regulates the vital systems that are essential for the ecosystem. Besides, it maintains the culture and quality of life on earth.

The environment regulates various natural cycles that happen daily. These cycles help in maintaining the natural balance between living things and the environment. Disturbance of these things can ultimately affect the life cycle of humans and other living beings.

The environment has helped us and other living beings to flourish and grow from thousands of years. The environment provides us fertile land, water, air, livestock and many essential things for survival.

Cause of Environmental Degradation

Human activities are the major cause of environmental degradation because most of the activities humans do harm the environment in some way. The activities of humans that causes environmental degradation is pollution, defective environmental policies, chemicals, greenhouse gases, global warming, ozone depletion, etc.

All these affect the environment badly. Besides, these the overuse of natural resources will create a situation in the future there will be no resources for consumption. And the most basic necessity of living air will get so polluted that humans have to use bottled oxygen for breathing.

Above all, increasing human activity is exerting more pressure on the surface of the earth which is causing many disasters in an unnatural form. Also, we are using the natural resources at a pace that within a few years they will vanish from the earth. To conclude, we can say that it is the environment that is keeping us alive. Without the blanket of environment, we won’t be able to survive.

Moreover, the environment’s contribution to life cannot be repaid. Besides, still what the environment has done for us, in return we only have damaged and degraded it.

FAQs about Essay on Environment

Q.1 What is the true meaning of the environment?

A.1 The ecosystem that includes all the plants, animals, birds, reptiles, insects, water bodies, fishes, human beings, trees, microorganisms and many more are part of the environment. Besides, all these constitute the environment.

Q.2 What is the three types of the environment?

A.2 The three types of environment includes the physical, social, and cultural environment. Besides, various scientists have defined different types and numbers of environment.

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Why we need to stand up for Earth defenders this World Environment Day

June 5 marks World Environment Day. Created by the United Nations to raise awareness of issues from air pollution to global warming, the day has grown to become one of the biggest platforms for advocating for all-important environmental causes.

While globally activism on the climate crisis have rightfully gained momentum, one of the still relatively over-looked facts is that people who are on the frontlines of these struggles –environmental human rights defenders—face the gravest risks to protect their homes and communities.

Who are environmental human rights defenders?

Environmental human rights defenders are people who speak up to protect rights associated to the environment, land and territory. They are often community leaders or advocates who seek to protect the rights and the well-being of their communities, especially by looking after their homes, air, water, land, territory and forests from destruction or contamination. Many of them are Indigenous People. While their stories are often told in local contexts, about how they are campaigning to protect their families and loved ones, their work concerns us all because it carries huge global significance. Take for example the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the Earth, which for hundreds of years have been safeguarded by Indigenous Peoples and who are on the frontline of the battle to save it from deforestation.

Yet being an environmental human rights defender has deadly consequences, making it among the deadliest types of activism. According to the NGO Global Witness, in 2017, the latest year for which it has data, almost four environmental defenders were killed each week for protecting their land, wildlife and natural resources. In 2017, 207 environmental activists were killed. The vast majority of them hailed from South America, making it the most dangerous region in the world.

Global Witness reports that the failure of many governments and businesses to act responsibly, ethically and even legally was a major driving force behind a litany of crimes against activists.

Activists are at risk because powerful forces think they can get away with attacking, killing and criminalizing local protestors, believing the rest of the world will not pay any heed. That is why it is more urgent than ever that we show global solidarity and stand up for the environmental human rights defenders who are risking everything to protect people and the planet.

Today we highlight the stories of seven incredible environmental activists from the Americas who remind us of why we need to stand up for Earth’s defenders.

BERTA CÁCERES, COPINH (HONDURAS )

Berta Cáceres cofounded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras, COPINH) in 1993 to address the growing threats posed to the territorial rights of the Lenca communities and improve their livelihoods.

On 2 March 2016, Berta was shot dead by gunmen who entered her home in Honduras. Berta and COPINH were campaigning against the impact that an hydroelectric dam project would have on the territory of the Lenca People. This struggle led to Berta’s killing and remains a great threat to the life of any organization questioning the implementation of economic projects in the Lenca territory.

While some people have been found guilty for her murder, the Honduran justice system still must find all those responsible- not just those directly involved in the murder-to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished.

JULIÁN CARRILLO AND THE COLORADAS DE LA VIRGEN COMMUNITY (MÉXICO)

“We were born and raised in Coloradas de la Virgen, so our children are like shoots, the new young branches of a tree. And sometimes trees get old, they dry out, but the shoots are still there, they keep growing. Now I’m a little older, but my little branches are budding.”

Julián Carrillo was a leader of the Coloradas de la Virgen community. His job was to take care of the territory, the water, the forest and the wildlife. He had publicly denounced logging and mining by landlords in their ancestral land, as well as violence by criminal armed groups against his community.

Coloradas de la Virgen is an Indigenous community of almost 50 hectares, located in the municipality of Guadalupe y Calvo, Chihuahua, one of the poorest and most excluded regions in Mexico. More than 850 Rarámuri Indigenous people live there and consider this land to be part of their ancestral territory. They have been historically discriminated against.

On 24 October 2018, Julián Carrillo, was killed by unidentified armed men. The murder of Julián was a predictable tragedy. He reported attacks and death threats for years. His house was burned down, and he received threats from unidentified armed groups since 2015. Five other people in his family, including his son, were also killed.

Spanish translation:

Julián Carrillo y la comunidad de Coloradas de la Virgen (México)

Julián Carrillo era un líder de la comunidad de Coloradas de la Virgen. Su trabajo era cuidar el territorio, el agua, el bosque y la vida silvestre. Denunció públicamente la tala y la minería por parte de los terratenientes en sus tierras ancestrales, así como la violencia de grupos armados criminales contra su comunidad.

Coloradas de la Virgen es una comunidad indígena de casi 50 hectáreas, ubicada en el municipio de Guadalupe y Calvo, Chihuahua, una de las regiones más pobres y excluidas de México. Más de 850 personas del pueblo indígena Rarámuri viven allí y consideran esta tierra como parte de su territorio ancestral. Históricamente han sido discriminados.

El 24 de octubre de 2018, Julián Carrillo fue asesinado por hombres armados no identificados. El asesinato de Julián fue una tragedia previsible. Denunció ataques y amenazas de muerte durante años. Su casa fue incendiada y recibió amenazas de grupos armados no identificados desde 2015. Otras cinco personas de su familia, incluido su hijo, también fueron asesinadas.

“En Coloradas de la Virgen hemos vivido, hemos nacido, entonces nuestros hijos vienen siendo como un brote, como un árbol. Y a veces los árboles se hacen viejos, se secan, pero el brote sigue, después todavía crece. Ahorita yo ya estoy un poco viejo, pero me siguen mis brotecitos”.

PARAGUAY: AMADA MARTÍNEZ, INDIGENOUS DEFENDER OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND TERRITORY

Amada is an Avá Guaraní Indigenous environment defender from the Tekoha Sauce community.

In the 1970s, the construction of the Itaipú Binational hydroelectric plant, in the border between Paraguay and Brazil, forcibly displaced her community from its ancestral territory, putting their survival at risk. Since then, she has defended the right of her community to have a territory in which they can thrive in harmony with nature and has denounced the serious impacts of hydroelectric projects on nature and Indigenous Peoples’ lives.

On 8 August 2018, a group of armed men threatened to kill her. Amada was leaving the community in a taxi along with his seven-year-old son, his sister and two young nephews, when the vehicle in which they were traveling was intercepted by a pickup truck with the logo of the hydroelectric plant. Amada Martínez believes that the threat against her was due to her work defending Indigenous Peoples rights and the environment.

ECUADOR: WOMEN RISKING THEIR LIVES TO SAVE THE AMAZON

PATRICIA GUALINGA, INDIGENOUS DEFENDER OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND TERRITORY

“We are united and we will continue our struggle to defend Mother Earth.”

Patricia is an Indigenous leader of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku community. She defends her people’s rights to their territory and to live in a healthy environment in the face of damaging oil activities there. Patricia is also protecting the Amazonian environment and promoting sustainable development.

In 2012, the Indigenous Sarayaku community achieved a historic victory for Indigenous Peoples against the Ecuador government after reporting an oil concession that had installed explosives on their territory without consulting them.

In the early hours of 5 January 2018, an unknown man made death threats to Patricia and attacked her at her home in Puyo, in the east of Ecuador., The man shouted, “Next time we’ll kill you, bitch!” before fleeing.

Patricia and her family had to leave their home after the attack because the property owner “was terrified that something would happen to her.”

NEMA GREFA, INDIGENOUS DEFENDER OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND TERRITORY

“They threaten me with death but I’m not going to be scared by these words. As a Sápara woman, I am going to fight for my territory.”

Nema is defending the Amazon environment and her people’s right to protect their territory from the possible negative effects of oil activity.

After being legally recognized as President of the Sápara nationality of Ecuador in January 2018, her appointment was challenged by a group of people who Nema says are supportive of oil activities on the Sápara territory. Nema’s appointment was revoked in April 2018 as a result.

Later that month a video was shared on social media featuring a man armed with a spear, identified by Nema as belonging to the group who had challenged her appointment, issuing her with a death threat: “Those present here are united in rejecting her and are thus going to kill Nema Grefa; she has no territory.”

One year on, the Attorney’s Office has yet to open in investigation into the death threat.

On 19 October 2018 Nema was finally recognized as president but still faces serious threats to her life. In April this year, despite the Ecuadorian authorities’ promises to protect her and her family, unknown individuals forcibly broke into her home to steal two computers containing sensitive information on her human rights work.

SALOMÉ ARANDA, INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS DEFENDER

“This attack is in retaliation for my fight to defend life and our territories from the threat of oil exploitation.”

Salomé is an Indigenous leader from the Kichwa people who is defending the Amazonian environment and the right of women in her community to live in a healthy environment, free from sexual violence. Salomé is the Women and Family Leader in Moretecocha commune, Pastaza province.

Salomé has publicly denounced the possible environmental impacts of oil operations in the Villano River basin, Pastaza province, and the sexual abuse of Indigenous women that have occurred in this context.

In the early hours of 13 May 2018, a number of unidentified individuals attacked and threatened her and her family at home. Despite making a formal complaint, the Pastaza Provincial Attorney’s Office has yet to make any significant progress in this investigation. The authorities have not even offered her protection measures to address the risk facing her and her family.

MARGOTH ESCOBAR, ENVIRONMENTAL AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ RIGHTS DEFENDER

“We have to carry on defending, wherever we are in the world. The contribution we make to nature is the most valuable thing we can do for future generations. We are seeking the common good for all because that is the best legacy we can leave to humanity.”

Margoth has devoted her life to defending the environment and Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

In August 2015, Margoth was physically attacked by police officers at a protest and national strike called by the social and Indigenous movements in Puyo, Pastaza province. She was held on pre-trial detention for more than a week despite poor health caused by her injuries. She was charged with “attack and resistance”, which she was eventually acquitted of.

In September last year Margoth’s house was set on fire, destroying all her belongings.

On 1 October 2018, the Puyo Fire Brigade Commander stated that the fire at Margoth’s house had been intentional. Margoth lodged a criminal complaint with the Pastaza Provincial Attorney’s Office to investigate the attack, yet no progress has been made in her case.

Margoth refused to join the country’s witness protection program because of her previous experience at the hands of the police: “I didn’t want to join the victim and witness protection system because I have no faith in the current government, I have no faith in the independence of the legal system in Ecuador, nor in the military or police forces.”

The importance of storytelling in fighting climate change

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Yale Climate Connections

New handbook explains how to advocate for the environment

Think differently about how things work

To change people’s relationship with the environment, Inches argues, one must first “learn to think differently,” the subheading for the first part of the book. And that work starts with (re)listening to the stories humans have told about the way the world works – for these stories about success and value typically leave out the environment.

Successful advocacy means speaking in terms that others can understand and appreciate, Inches writes, something one can do only after listening carefully to how they describe their lives and express their values.

That interpretive work can be aided by listening for indications of world views. Here Inches draws on the work of cognitive linguist and philosopher George Lakoff, who characterizes the differences between conservative and liberal thinking by comparing them with the strict father versus nurturing models of parenting.

Finally, one needs to understand how government works at different levels – local, state, and federal – and the ways actors in those roles are influenced by political parties, business interests, the media, and the public. Again here listening, ideally with an ear trained by an insightful and accessible handbook, is necessary.

Only with a practical understanding of what they want to do can advocates devise and execute a strategy, she insists. This work is the focus of the second half of Inches’ book, “Gather Your Power and Take Action.”

Key steps in the process: research, perseverance, drafting, selling

In her first meeting with her boss on her first day of work with Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, Susan Inches was given a confusing piece of advice: “The first thing you need to know is that there are federal fish and there are state fish.” By this, he meant that Maine could formulate fishing policies and practices only for state fish, for fish caught within three miles of its shoreline. What happened more than three miles from the shore was not under the jurisdiction of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources. The takeaway for advocates: Don’t waste time urging policymakers to do something they can’t do.

If, for example, you’re trying to get your state’s colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuels, Inches has explained to students at the different institutions where she has taught, then first determine whether these decisions are made by the boards of trustees for the university, by pension fund managers, or by state legislators.

Like fishing, advocacy requires perseverance. In her book, Inches recalls campaigns that took years, even decades, to yield results. It took seven years for Maine’s Working Waterfront Coalition to pass legislation that increased access to fishing, aquaculture, and boating businesses. It took eight years, and the electoral defeat of the governor, for a coalition of environmental groups to get a statewide plastic bag ban passed and implemented. While stymied at the state level, the activists worked with individual towns and cities. Train for the long haul.

Sometimes the work of changing policies starts by changing how key stakeholders see the problem advocates want to address. Inches describes fact-finding trips she organized to Denmark and Japan for independent fishing operations and for community groups trying to reorganize their utilities. By seeing what was possible elsewhere, these groups could imagine new ways of solving their problems in Maine.

That still leaves the work of crafting a plausible policy and “selling” it to the legislators and administrators who would first have to approve and then implement change. And that may require years of work communicating with the public, the business community, and the media.

Inches devotes each part of every chapter in this second section of the book to describing a step in the process and then explaining how to complete it. Toward that end, she provides samples of meeting agendas, letters to editors, and legislative testimonies. Appendices at the end of the book include templates for press releases, fact sheets, FAQs, and talking points. Inches also describes, from personal experience, what it’s like to testify before a legislative committee, organize a community meeting, and research and write a white paper.

Focus on adverse climate impacts … or on positives from taking action?

For advocacy on climate change, in particular, Inches offers well-researched advice on framing and visual communication. Highlighting the negative consequences of inaction on climate change, she explains in one example, is generally more effective than highlighting the possible gains of action.

The ultimate goal of environmental advocacy, in Inches’ view, is creating a society that can function effectively and equitably in harmony with nature. About this long-term goal she is reassuringly upbeat. In fact, she ends the book with eight reasons to be optimistic, including this silver lining for the dark clouds hanging over our politics: “The current disruptions may be our best opportunity in years.”

“Advocating for the Environment” was published just weeks before the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act . A very big opportunity, indeed. But as climate experts Hal Harvey and Justin Gillis noted in a recent New York Times op-ed , the incentives the bill provides will not, by themselves, make things happen.

Local school boards must decide to replace their diesel-fueled school buses. Public utility commissions must mandate that electricity companies adopt clean energy technologies. And city and state governments must install the thousands of new charging stations needed for the transition to electric vehicles. Without smart advocacy at appropriate levels of government, the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act cannot deliver the desired reductions in carbon pollution. Knowing how to advocate for the environment has never been more important.

The passion and goodwill Susan B. Inches brings to that task are evident in her clearly written book. And, she reports at its end, she feels well rewarded for her efforts: every day feels like a bracing new challenge.

With her book, she shares that passion for building a better world.

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Michael svoboda.

Michael Svoboda, Ph.D., is the Yale Climate Connections books editor. He is a professor in the University Writing Program at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he has taught since... More by Michael Svoboda

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3.3: Environmental Ethics- Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman)

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Golden West College via NGE Far Press

15 Environmental Ethics and Climate Change Jonathan Spelman 56

1. Introduction

I grew up out in the country, and sometimes my brother and I would spend the afternoon catching grasshoppers. It was a bit of a challenge, and it was fun. Once we’d catch one, we’d simply let it go. No one got hurt. When I was ten or so, my family moved to the suburbs, and my brother and I spent more time playing with the kids who lived nearby. One day, while walking down the sidewalk with the neighbor boy, we spotted a grasshopper just sitting on the sidewalk. The next thing I knew, the neighbor boy walked right up to it and … Crunch! … stepped on it.

I was appalled by what the neighbor boy had done, but had he done anything wrong? He certainly hadn’t done anything legally wrong, but maybe his crushing the grasshopper was morally wrong. And what about my brother and me? Although our catching grasshoppers wasn’t illegal , maybe it was immoral, nonetheless.

Going forward, I’m going to focus my attention on these moral questions. (Accordingly, when I ask whether an act is “wrong,” I am asking whether it is morally wrong.) Answering these questions requires us to do ethics. The central question of ethics (or moral philosophy) is something like: “How should we act?” Historically, ethicists have focused their attention on questions of interpersonal ethics , that is, questions about what we owe other people. But over the last century, ethicists have become increasingly convinced that figuring out how we should act also requires us to answer questions of environmental ethics , that is, questions about what we owe our environment. This includes people, but it also includes animals, plants, and ecosystems.

In this piece, I’ll introduce you to the field of environmental ethics. To begin, I argue that it was wrong for the neighbor boy to crush the grasshopper. In the process, I identify a moral principle that I then go on to apply to the most significant environmental problem of our time, the problem of climate change. After briefly sketching that problem, I’ll argue that in light of it, you and I are morally obligated to (i) reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, (ii) offset our remaining emissions, and (iii) advocate for climate-friendly policies and politicians. Why? Because failing to do these things is irresponsible.

2. Is it wrong to harm grasshoppers for no good reason?

Humans deserve moral consideration, which is to say that their interests deserve to be taken into account when we’re deciding what to do. This explains why we can’t crush humans. Playdough, however, doesn’t deserve moral consideration. This explains why we can crush it. But what about grasshoppers? Do they deserve moral consideration? Can we crush them?

You might think that humans are the only things that deserve moral consideration. This view is called anthropocentrism . If anthropocentrism is correct, then since grasshoppers aren’t human, they don’t deserve moral consideration, and therefore it is perfectly permissible to harm or even kill them for no good reason. While this view is coherent, it’s rather implausible. My neighbor’s dog isn’t human, but surely it would be wrong for me to kick it, and thereby harm it, for no good reason.

In response to this objection, you might admit that it would wrong for me to kick my neighbor’s dog for no good reason, not because my doing so involves harming a dog , but because my doing so harms someone’s property or harms something that someone cares about . On this view, it is perfectly permissible to harm grasshoppers provided that no one owns them or cares about them. Again, although this view is coherent, it’s still rather implausible. After all, it seems like it would be wrong for me to kick any dog for no good reason, even if that dog is unowned and unloved.

In response to this further objection, you might admit that it would be wrong for me to kick any dog for no good reason, even if it were unowned and unloved, not because it is wrong for me to harm dogs, but because it is wrong for me to do anything that makes me more likely to harm humans. But even if it’s true that my kicking dogs would make me more likely to harm humans, this seems like the wrong explanation for why it is wrong for me to kick dogs. It is wrong for me to kick dogs because of what it does to the dogs, not because of what it does to me.

In light of these arguments, we should reject anthropocentrism. We should admit that humans are not the only things that deserve moral consideration, that at least some nonhuman animals deserve moral consideration. But which ones? According to one relatively popular view, all sentient beings (i.e., beings that have subjective experiences or are capable of experiencing pleasure and pain) deserve moral consideration. This view is called sentientism . Whereas anthropocentrists cannot explain why it is wrong to harm dogs for no good reason, sentientists can.

Let’s say that we accept sentientism. Does that mean that it is wrong to harm grasshoppers for no good reason? Not necessarily. According to sentientists, grasshoppers deserve moral consideration only if they are sentient. But it’s not clear that grasshoppers are sentient. While it’s relatively clear that they are conscious (i.e., that they have subjective experiences), it’s less clear that they are capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. So, if what makes a being deserving of moral consideration is that it is capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, it’s not clear that grasshoppers deserve moral consideration.

This might lead us to believe that we simply cannot know whether it is wrong to harm grasshoppers for no good reason. But I don’t think that’s correct. The reason for this is that some actions are wrong simply for being unnecessarily risky. Imagine that your friend works in demolition and her and her team have been tasked with demolishing an old warehouse. While you are visiting her over your lunch break, she asks you if you would like to use the wrecking ball to destroy it. You love destroying things, so you get behind the controls. Just as you’re about to strike the first blow, you see a dog run behind the warehouse. Although you think you saw it run away, you realize that it may have run into the building. Your lunch break is almost over, so you don’t have time to let her and her team search the warehouse for the dog. If you’re going to use the wrecking ball, it’s now or never.

In this case, is it permissible for you to destroy the old warehouse before your friend and her team search the warehouse for the dog? Of course not. Why not? Because doing so is unnecessarily risky; it is irresponsible. Even if you would enjoy using the wrecking ball, that fact doesn’t justify your performing an action that may kill a sentient being. We can say the same thing about the neighbor boy who crushed the grasshopper. Was it permissible for him to step on the grasshopper? No. Why not? Because it was unnecessarily risky; it was irresponsible. Even if he enjoys stepping on grasshoppers, that fact doesn’t justify his performing an action that may kill a sentient being.

In this section, I have argued that humans are not the only things that deserve moral consideration. Many nonhuman animals do as well. Some environmental ethicists have gone so far as to argue that plants and even ecosystems also deserve moral consideration. I have not discussed those arguments here simply because you do not need to accept them in order to accept the conclusions that I argue for in Section 4. (In fact, you may not even need to accept my argument for sentientism to do that.) What you do need you to accept, however, is that unnecessarily risky acts are wrong. We cannot endanger others for the sake of minor benefits.

3. The problem of climate change

While abrupt climate change is definitely a problem, it is not necessarily a moral problem. Abrupt, anthropogenic (i.e., human-caused) climate change, however, is a moral problem. To see this, consider the difference between a scenario in which a forest fire burns your neighbor’s house down and a second scenario in which you burn your neighbor’s house down. In the first scenario, when the forest fire burns your neighbor’s house down, something bad has happened, but no one is morally responsible for that bad thing. No one has done anything morally wrong. In the second scenario, however, when you burn your neighbor’s house down, not only has something bad happened, but someone is morally responsible for that bad thing, namely, you. You have done something morally wrong.

Is there abrupt, anthropogenic climate change? Yes, there is. When humans take fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, and natural gas) out of the ground and burn them to heat their homes, power their cars, and charge their electronics, they must emit greenhouse gases (GHGs), most notably carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. These GHG particles absorb and emit radiant energy, which causes global warming (i.e., an increase in the Earth’s average surface temperature) and other climate changes (e.g., altered precipitation patterns that increase the number of extreme weather events). Although some people deny this, it is relatively uncontroversial.

What is controversial, however, is the question of what you and I are morally required to do in response to about abrupt, anthropogenic climate change (hereafter, simply climate change ). Environmental ethicists generally agree that you and I are morally obligated to do something in response to climate change, but they disagree about what that is. In the following section, I’ll argue that you and I are morally obligated to do three things in response to climate change. First, we must reduce our GHG emissions. Second, we must offset our remaining GHG emissions (if we can afford to). And third, we must advocate for climate-friendly policies and politicians. Why? Because failing to do these things is irresponsible.

4. How should we respond to the problem of climate change?

Return to the scenario in which you burn your neighbor’s house down. In that scenario, you clearly harm to your neighbor. Even if you don’t physically harm her, you destroy her property. You force her to find a new place to live. Climate change has similar effects. Between increasing the severity of droughts and floods and by causing sea levels to rise, climate change is killing and will continue to kill humans and nonhuman animals. Others are being forced to abandon their homes and find new places to live. For many humans, this will be much more difficult than simply finding a new home to buy. It will require abandoning one’s homeland and moving somewhere completely foreign. For nonhuman animals, it will be even more difficult. Some species, like polar bears, for example, may find it impossible to adapt and will go extinct.

Now, when you burn down your neighbor’s house, you endanger your neighbor and force her to find a new place to live. This is clearly wrong. But when you contribute to climate change, do you endanger anyone? Do you force anyone to find a new place to live? It’s not clear that you do. Notice that the harms of climate change are cumulative harms. Your contribution to the problem is relatively insignificant. This leads some to argue that when you contribute to climate change, you do not do anything morally wrong. 57

While it may be true that your contribution to climate change is relatively insignificant, it is worth noting that how much you contribute to climate change varies significantly depending on where and how you live. Those living in Australia, Canada, and the United States, for example, emit much more carbon dioxide per capita than those living in India, Indonesia, and Brazil. This, on its own, may be a reason to think that you are doing something morally wrong since you are contributing more than your fair share to climate change. Regardless, I want to argue that even if your contribution to the problem of climate change is relatively insignificant, it is still wrong.

To see this, let’s return to the hypothetical scenario we’ve been discussing, the scenario in which you burn your neighbor’s house down. This time, however, let’s assume that you don’t actually burn your neighbor’s house down. Instead, you create a trail of dry brush from a nearby forest to your neighbor’s house. This, on its own, doesn’t harm your neighbor in the least. It does, however, make it more likely that your neighbor’s house will burn down. This is especially bad if there are frequent forest fires. But even if there aren’t frequent forest fires, it’s still morally wrong for you to endanger your neighbor and her home for no good reason. It’s irresponsible.

When we contribute to climate change, we do something analogous. We don’t necessarily force anyone to find a new place to live, but we do increase the likelihood that people across the globe will have to find new places to live. This is morally wrong, especially when our reasons for contributing to climate change aren’t good ones. If, for example, you start your car engine before getting into your car so that it has time to warm up, you’re doing something morally wrong. Why? Because you’re increasing the likelihood that human and nonhuman animals across the globe will have to find new places to live, and you’re doing it for no good reason. Sure, it’s nice to warm up your car before getting into it, but that isn’t a sufficiently good reason to justify your endangering both human and nonhuman animals.

Some reasons, however, are sufficiently good to justify your endangering both human and nonhuman animals. When it is very cold outside, for example, it is morally permissible to heat your home so that your pipes don’t freeze. Or when your salary does not permit you to live close to your workplace, and you can’t carpool or use public transportation to get there, it is morally permissible for you to drive to work. It’s true that in driving you’ll emit some carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s also true that this makes it slightly more likely that sentient beings will have to find new places to live, but you’re not acting irresponsibly. Similarly, when you light a candle in your home, it increases the likelihood that your neighbor’s house will burn down, but it doesn’t follow from this that it’s always wrong to light a candle in your home.

Is this the full story? Not quite, and here’s why. Imagine that you’ve got a sufficiently good reason to light a candle. You realize that this increases the likelihood not only that your house will burn down but also that your neighbor’s house will burn down. Now, imagine that there is some small thing you could do to reduce the likelihood of your neighbor’s house burning down. You could install a smoke alarm, for instance. It seems like you are morally obligated do this.

Note that you are not morally obligated to do this for your own sake. There is nothing necessarily wrong with burning yourself or destroying your house. I certainly don’t recommend doing either of those things, but they are not necessarily morally wrong. The reason, then, that you are morally obligated to install a smoke alarm is not to protect yourself but to protect your neighbor. If your candle were to start a fire, your smoke alarm would alert you to the danger, and you could call on the fire department to put out the fire before it destroys your neighbor’s house. Failing to install a smoke alarm would be irresponsible. This becomes increasingly true as the number of people living close to you increases. If you are surrounded by homes, or if you live in an apartment and are surrounded by neighboring families with children and pets, lighting a candle without having a smoke alarm is especially irresponsible.

When we contribute to climate change, we’re doing something analogous. We’re increasing the likelihood that humans and nonhuman animals will die or be forced to find new places to live. Fortunately, there’s something we can do to reduce the likelihood of this. We can offset our GHG emissions (hereafter, simply emissions ). When we purchase carbon offsets, we fund projects that reduce emissions by funding the development of wind farms, enabling landfills to capture emissions, and/or preventing deforestation. When we offset enough of our emissions, we go carbon neutral , which is to say that our net emissions (i.e., our emissions minus our offsets) equals zero. By offsetting our emissions, we make it the case that no human or nonhuman animal is more likely to die or lose her home on our account. When we offset our emissions, we act responsibly. This is what morality requires. 58

Finally, imagine that you’re living in an apartment and are surrounded by neighboring families. You light candles from time to time, but you have installed a smoke alarm and a sprinkler system. You do not significantly increase the likelihood that others will lose their homes. The same, however, cannot be said of your neighbors. They light candles all the time but don’t have smoke alarms or sprinkler systems. They are endangering all the people and nonhuman animals living in the apartment complex, but they don’t see the problem. You would move to a new apartment complex, but let’s assume that you’re stuck in this one. It seems to me that, in a case like this, a responsible person would not simply cross his fingers and hope for the best. He would try to convince his neighbors to stop lighting candles all the time. He would encourage the manager of the apartment complex to add smoke alarms and sprinkler systems to every unit. He would petition the local government to require these things in apartment buildings and vote for candidates who support these policies. He would advocate for change.

We are in an analogous position. Those around us are continually contributing to climate change, and in doing so, they are increasing the likelihood that human and nonhuman animals around the world will die or lose their homes. But they do not see the problem. They do not see that their actions are unnecessarily risky. We might like to move to a new planet, but we are stuck on this one. We have nowhere else to go. It seems to me that, in a case like this, a responsible person would not simply cross his or her fingers and hope for the best. She would try to convince others to reduce their emissions and to offset whatever emissions remained. She would encourage her local and national representatives to pass legislation that would reduce emissions, and she would vote for candidates who support these laws. She would advocate for change.

For Review and Discussion

1. Most people kill flies, spiders, and any other insects that they find in their homes when, in many cases, they could capture those insects and release them outside. Spelman argues that it is morally wrong to kill grasshoppers for no good reason, but what about a grasshopper (or a spider) that has found its way into your home? Do we have a sufficiently good reason to kill it? Or should we capture it and release it outside?

2. Spelman contends that it is morally wrong to contribute to climate change unless one has a sufficiently good reason to do so. Identify at least three activities that contribute to climate change. When do we have sufficiently good reasons to perform those activities? When do we lack sufficiently good reasons to perform those activities?

3. Spelman argues that individuals are morally obligated not only to reduce their GHG emissions and offset any remaining emissions, but also to advocate for climate-friendly policies and politicians. What sorts of activities would count as advocating for climate-friendly policies? Which of those activities are morally obligatory, and which ones are not?

Protect the environment, prevent pandemics, ‘nature is sending us a clear message’

A woman poses in a field in Ardabil, Iran.

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On this year’s World Environment Day , celebrated on June 5, the UN is drawing links between the health of the planet, and human health, and highlighting the importance of protecting biodiversity, the system that supports life.

“At least 70 per cent of emerging infectious diseases” such as COVID-19 , are crossing from the wild, to people, and “transformative actions are urgently required to protect environment and human rights”. This was the message from David Boyd, the independent UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, ahead of this year’s Day.

Mr. Boyd added that countries should take urgent action to protect the environment and stop climate disruption, biodiversity loss, toxic pollution and diseases that jump from animals to humans.

Get the message

UN chief António Guterres said in his message that “nature is sending us a clear message. We are harming the natural world, to our own detriment.”

He noted that habitat degradation and biodiversity loss were accelerating, “climate disruption is getting worse…To care for humanity, we must care for nature.”

Time for natureSince World Environment Day was launched in 1974, it has grown to become the UN’s biggest annual event, advocating for environmental action and raising worldwide awareness of the need to increase protection for the planet’s long-term survival.

The 2020 edition, which has the tagline “Time for Nature”, is being hosted by Colombia, which is organizing several events, streamed live, which can be accessed here, or on social media. The theme is biodiversity protection, at a time when one million animal and plant species are believed to be on the brink of extinction.

This year’s Day inevitably references the global COVID-19 health crisis, noting that, with the population doubling over the past 50 years, and the global economy growing fourfold over the same period, the delicate balance of nature has been disrupted, creating ideal conditions for pathogens, such as COVID-19, to spread.

As countries open up, and governments approve stimulus packages to support job creation, poverty reduction, development and economic growth, the UN Environment Programme ( UNEP ), is urging them to “build back better”.

This involves capturing opportunities for green investment — such as renewable energy, smart housing, green public procurement, and public transport — guided by the principles and standards of sustainable production and consumption.

A failure to do so, warns UNEP, and an attempted return to business as usual, risks seeing inequalities rising even further, and a worsening of the degradation of the planet, at a time when one million animal and plant species are on the brink of extinction.

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A Growth Strategy that Creates and Protects Value

David A. Hofmann
John J. Sumanth

Four steps to build a continuous value creation cycle.

For organizations to truly innovate and grow, leaders in every role and at every organizational level must be attuned to how they are creating new value while simultaneously protecting existing value. Just as a soccer coach must simultaneously pursue both scoring and defending, leaders must constantly focus their attention on opportunities to create value — through innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation — and to protect value — by preserving and defending key aspects of their responsibilities. Because both approaches are essential to success, organizational leaders must proactively and continually encourage their teams to adopt both a creating value and protecting value mindset when tackling their day-to-day responsibilities. But how can leaders do this? More specifically: Where and how do leaders deploy these two approaches, and how do these approaches change over time? In this article, the authors offer four steps leaders can take to ensure that they’re on the right path for growth.

Ask any leader what comes to mind when they hear the word “innovation” and you’ll quickly hear examples of a new, user-centric product design, or an R&D team pursuing a new mission, or their company’s exploration of a new market opportunity to drive additional revenue. But what if this relatively narrow view captures only a slice of the potential innovation that resides within your organization? What if your organization could unlock non-traditional avenues and areas for innovation, experimentation, and value creation?

David A. Hofmann is the Hugh L. McColl, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Senior Associate Dean of UNC Executive Development at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
John J. Sumanth is the James Farr Fellow & Associate Professor of Management at the Wake Forest University School of Business.

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Environmental conflicts and defenders: A global overview

Arnim scheidel.

a Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Daniela Del Bene

b College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

Grettel Navas

Sara mingorría, federico demaria, sofía avila, brototi roy, irmak ertör.

c The Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey

Leah Temper

d Department of Natural Resource Sciences, McGill University, Canada

Joan Martínez-Alier

Associated data.

• Support of environmental defenders requires better understanding of environmental conflicts.
• Environmental defenders employ largely non-violent protest forms.
• Indigenous environmental defenders face significantly higher rates of violence.
• Combining preventive mobilization, tactical diversity and litigation increases activists’ success.
• Global grassroots environmentalism is a promising force for sustainability.

Recent research and policies recognize the importance of environmental defenders for global sustainability and emphasize their need for protection against violence and repression. However, effective support may benefit from a more systematic understanding of the underlying environmental conflicts, as well as from better knowledge on the factors that enable environmental defenders to mobilize successfully. We have created the global Environmental Justice Atlas to address this knowledge gap. Here we present a large-n analysis of 2743 cases that sheds light on the characteristics of environmental conflicts and the environmental defenders involved, as well as on successful mobilization strategies. We find that bottom-up mobilizations for more sustainable and socially just uses of the environment occur worldwide across all income groups, testifying to the global existence of various forms of grassroots environmentalism as a promising force for sustainability. Environmental defenders are frequently members of vulnerable groups who employ largely non-violent protest forms. In 11% of cases globally, they contributed to halt environmentally destructive and socially conflictive projects, defending the environment and livelihoods. Combining strategies of preventive mobilization, protest diversification and litigation can increase this success rate significantly to up to 27%. However, defenders face globally also high rates of criminalization (20% of cases), physical violence (18%), and assassinations (13%), which significantly increase when Indigenous people are involved. Our results call for targeted actions to enhance the conditions enabling successful mobilizations, and for specific support for Indigenous environmental defenders.

1. Introduction

Environmental defenders are individuals and collectives who protect the environment and protest unjust and unsustainable resource uses because of social and environmental reasons. They may include Indigenous people, peasants or fisherfolks whose lives and livelihoods may be threatened by environmental change or dispossession, as well as environmental activists, social movements, journalists, or any other who actively defend the environment because degradation has reached for them unacceptable levels ( Butt et al., 2019 , Ghazoul and Kleinschroth, 2018 , UNEP, 2018 ). The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council has unanimously recognized the vital role of environmental defenders for environmental protection and sustainability ( UN, 2019 ). While this formal recognition of the role of environmental defenders for sustainability is recent, already previous research has highlighted how civil society groups and grassroots movements shape the politics and practices of resource use, frequently towards positive social and ecological outcomes (e.g. Bebbington et al., 2008 , Escobar, 1998 , Guha and Martinez-Alier, 1997 , Kenney-Lazar et al., 2018 , Martinez-Alier, 2002 , Scheidel et al., 2018 , Villamayor-Tomas and García-López, 2018 ).

Such movements in defense of nature and equitable resource use are a promising force for global sustainability and just environmental futures ( Nagendra, 2018 , Temper et al., 2018b ). Yet their activism comes at a heavy cost to both life and limb. Global Witness (2019) reported that 164 environmental defenders were murdered in 2018. The trend of annually recorded killings has generally increased over the last fifteen years ( Butt et al., 2019 ). Defenders face not only murder and physical violence, but also severe environmental, health, and cultural impacts ( Navas et al., 2018 ), as well as social stigma, such as being accused to act on behalf of malevolent foreign interests ( Dupuy et al., 2016 ). The urgency of supporting and protecting defenders from violence and repression is therefore high ( Knox, 2015 , Tanner, 2011 ). While activists continue to resort to protest as a legitimate way to seek redress ( Hanna et al., 2016 ), the UN has put forward policy frameworks to promote greater protection of environmental defenders ( UN, 2018 , UNEP, 2018 ).

However, support to environmental defenders may benefit from a more systematic understanding of the underlying environmental conflicts ( Ghazoul and Kleinschroth, 2018 ), as well as from better knowledge on the factors that enable affected groups to mobilize successfully for environmental justice ( Zabala, 2019 ). Awareness about killings of environmental defenders has increased substantially with Global Witness’ annual reports and recent analyses of their database (e.g. Butt et al., 2019 , Middeldorp and Le Billon, 2019 ). Yet a global analysis of the causes and characteristics of the underlying environmental conflicts and the protest forms employed by environmental activists has been lacking. While environmental conflict studies are numerous in the field of political ecology, they frequently are limited to local or national case studies ( Le Billon, 2015 ). Larger statistical analyses involving up to several hundred cases have become available only recently (e.g. Del Bene et al., 2018 , Gerber, 2011 , Haslam and Ary Tanimoune, 2016 , Jeffords and Thompson, 2016 , Martinez-Alier et al., 2016a , Pérez-Rincón et al., 2019 ). Comparative analysis of the conditions leading to success for environmental movements have been rare (see however Aydin et al., 2017 , Bebbington et al., 2008 , Hess and Satcher, 2019 ) and large global analyses have not been done at all.

In this paper, we aim to address this research gap by providing a global overview of environmental conflicts and mobilizations by environmental defenders. Our study is an analysis of the Environmental Justice Atlas database (EJAtlas, www.ejatlas.org ), which we created in 2011 to foster systematic and comparative research on environmental conflicts ( Temper et al., 2018a , Temper et al., 2015 ). We understand environmental conflicts as social conflicts over the environment that manifest through mobilizations by individuals or groups in response to perceived environmental threats with detrimental social impacts. The EJAtlas documents such conflicts in a standardized manner, based on the integration of different information sources. The extensive collaborative process has involved so far several hundred individuals and organizations worldwide. With about 3100 cases registered by April 2020, the EJAtlas has become the largest global inventory of environmental conflicts that documents also the claims and actions of involved environmental defenders.

In an effort to advance statistical political ecology, we present here the largest analysis of environmental conflicts up to date, based on 2743 recent, visible, and previously documented cases registered in the EJAtlas. Through descriptive statistics we provide a global perspective on i) where which types of environmental conflicts occur, ii) the characteristics of involved environmental defenders and how they mobilize successfully for environmental justice, and iii) important positive and negative conflict outcomes for environmental defenders. We focus not only on global rates of murder, but also on the criminalization of dissent and physical violence against activists, and how these incidences change when Indigenous people are involved in mobilizations.

We find bottom-up mobilizations for more just and sustainable uses of the environment to occur globally, testifying to the important role that diverse forms of grassroots activism play for sustainability. Environmental defenders are often comprised of vulnerable groups, acting frequently in collectives and employing largely non-violent protest forms. When Indigenous people are involved in such mobilizations, protesters face significantly higher rates of violence. Yet, mobilizations bring also important successes for environmental movements and defenders. In 11% of cases globally, protesters contributed to halt environmentally destructive and socially conflictive projects. Combining strategies of preventive mobilization, diversification of protest and litigation can significantly increase this success rate to up to 27%. These findings have direct implications for enhanced support of environmental defenders that we address in the concluding section.

2. Theoretical background

2.1. environmental conflict research.

Environmental conflicts can be broadly defined as social conflicts related to the environment. They differ, but frequently overlap, with other types of conflicts on gender, class, territory, or identity ( Flint, 2005 ). Conflicts over natural resources have always been part of human history, for instance, “the idea that wars are associated with resources is probably as old as war itself” ( Le Billon, 2012, p. 9 ). Research orientation lies often on violent and armed conflicts, although there is a wider range beyond those involving overt violence. Scholars have studied environmental conflicts from different angles and disciplines, addressing the causes, the actors and their motivations, the forms of mobilization, the outcomes, and their multiple impacts within different contexts (for a review, see Le Billon, 2015 ).

A prevalent argument has been that environmental conflicts are largely due to poverty or resource scarcities, which can be demand-induced, supply-induced, or structural ( Homer Dixon, 1999 ). This implies that the occurrence and intensity of conflicts would increase as resources become scarcer, or if resources have been overused, depleted, or degraded to a certain threshold, environmental conflicts would exacerbate. In response to this frequently apolitical perspective on conflict causes, the field of political ecology emerged as a radical critique in the 1970–80s, coined by cultural ecologists, anthropologists and geographers ( Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987 , Watts and Peets, 2004 , Peluso and Watts, 2001 , Robbins, 2012 ). Political ecology aims to provide more nuanced analyses of power relations in environmental conflicts by departing from the “neo-Malthusian assumptions, reductionist and essentializing character” ( Le Billon, 2015, p. 603 ) of the studies that primary focus on scarcity as conflict driver.

Political ecologists recognize that scarcity or abundance of resources are relative social constructs ( Kallis, 2019 ). The transformation from ‘nature’ into a ‘resource’ is a historical process of social construction, which is related to human desires, needs and practices, and the conditions, means and forces of production ( Harvey, 1996 ). The study of environmental conflicts sheds light on who has the power to decide about, control and allocate environmental benefits and burdens, which includes issues of distribution, access rights, and the division of labor ( Robbins, 2012 ). Martínez-Alier and O’Connor (1996) termed such struggles over the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, ecological distribution conflicts . In contrast to economic distribution conflicts , ecological distribution conflicts do not arise over economic costs and benefits, or being linked to profits, salaries, or prices between sellers and buyers over commodities, but are conflicts that arise over the unfair distribution of environmental ‘goods’, such as clean water and air, or access to fertile land, and ‘bads’ such as exposure to pollution, as well as risks and threats to health, livelihoods, social and cultural identities.

Studies on ecological distribution conflicts have frequently highlighted both social and biophysical dimensions of conflicts. Martinez-Alier et al. (2010) pointed to the different valuation languages apparent in environmental conflicts, reflecting incommensurable worldviews, values, and priorities of different actors. But also, the social metabolism , that is, the appropriation, transformation, and disposal of energy and material resources by societies, is considered a relevant conflict driver ( Muradian et al., 2012 ). This view stems from the parallel development of the field of ecological economics, which poses that industrial economies are entropic, and not circular ( Georgescu-Roegen, 1971 , Haas et al., 2015 ). From this perspective, even a non-growing industrial economy would need a continuous supply of natural resources from the commodity extraction frontiers ( Moore, 2000 ) and dispose waste to maintain itself. Consequently, this may trigger the appropriation of natural resources from other (customary) users. The growing problems of waste disposal and contamination indicate that powerful actors are able to reap the benefits from environmental goods while shifting environmental burdens to marginalized or poorer actors ( Demaria and D’Alisa, 2013 ). By focusing explicitly on the relation of conflicts to commodities and resource use sectors, the EJAtlas and this study builds on the tradition of ecological distribution conflicts research.

Most research on environmental conflicts are site-specific case studies at the local level, or sometimes at national, regional, or sectoral scales (e.g. Amengual, 2018 , Bebbington et al., 2013 , Urkidi, 2010 , Veuthey and Gerber, 2012 , Yang and Ho, 2018 ). Larger comparative studies and statistical approaches have become available only recently (e.g. Gerber, 2011 , Haslam et al., 2018 , Haslam and Ary Tanimoune, 2016 , Jeffords and Thompson, 2016 ) and offer new avenues to the recent calls to expand methodological plurality in political ecology ( Zimmerer, 2015 ). Also the EJAtlas represents a new research tool: it enables standardized data collection on environmental conflicts worldwide in order to move towards a more systematic understanding of environmental conflicts ( Temper et al., 2018a ).

The first studies that used the EJAtlas as a novel database were published in 2015 ( Latorre et al., 2015 , Martinez-Alier et al., 2016a , Temper et al., 2015 ). A recent special issue further consolidated its use for comparative political ecology ( Temper et al., 2018a ). These studies employed in their analysis up to a few hundred cases and focused mainly on regional trends, such as environmental conflicts in Andean countries ( Pérez-Rincón et al., 2019 ), sectoral dynamics, such as conflicts over wind power ( Avila, 2018 ), dams ( Del Bene et al., 2018 ), or mining ( Aydin et al., 2017 ), or specific thematic concerns, such as multidimensional violence in Central American conflicts ( Navas et al., 2018 ). The only study employing a global dataset of 1357 EJAtlas cases was published by Martinez-Alier et al. (2016b) , and provided some preliminary statistics on the involved actors and mobilization forms, while focusing further on qualitative aspects, such as a description of the protest vocabulary used by environmental justice movements. Since then, the number of registered conflicts has more than doubled. With an analysis of 2743 conflicts, this article is by far the largest study using the EJAtlas data. It provides entirely new analyses of environmental conflicts in relation to sectors and income groups, actors and their successful protests forms, and key positive and negative conflict outcomes and their association with Indigenous and non-indigenous mobilizations.

In this regard, the EJAtlas has not only enabled multi-sites comparative studies with larger samples in geographical, sectoral, or thematical terms. The EJAtlas also expands the research scale of political ecology to a global level to advance a comparative statistical political ecology. Without dismissing the importance and richness of in-depth case study and other qualitative methods, we argue that such a broad comparative view can reveal global patterns that are relevant for a more systematic understanding of the characteristics of environmental conflicts worldwide, the actors involved, and their successful mobilization forms.

2.2. Environmental defenders: terms and concepts

Among the key actors in environmental conflicts are those that defend the environment against negative social or ecological impacts, because their lives and livelihoods depend on healthy ecosystems, or because of other directly related social or environmental reasons. Such actors have been termed environmental defenders in media, civil society reports (e.g. Global Witness, 2019 , Global Witness, 2014 ), academia ( Butt et al., 2019 , Knox, 2015 , Martinez-Alier et al., 2016b , Middeldorp and Le Billon, 2019 , Tanner, 2011 ), and recently also in international human rights policies. The UN Environment Programme refers to environmental human rights defenders as “ anyone (including groups of people and women human rights defenders) who is defending environmental rights, including constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment, when the exercise of those rights is being threatened whether or not they self-identify as human rights defenders. Many environmental defenders engage in their activities through sheer necessity” ( UNEP, 2018 ). This may include Indigenous people, peasants, fisherfolks, environmental activists, social movements, journalists, or any other people concerned over adverse corporate or state-driven resource uses and related environmental change.

In protesting and mobilizing against the exploitation of nature, environmental defenders frequently serve a larger purpose of environmental protection, even though their actions are not always framed as such ( Ghazoul and Kleinschroth, 2018 ). The UN Human Rights Council (2019) asserts that there can be no environmental protection without recognition and respect for environmental defenders. The contributions of environmental activists to sustainability have also been highlighted in the academic literature on environmental conflicts and transformations towards sustainability (e.g. Nagendra, 2018 , Scheidel et al., 2018 , Temper et al., 2018b ).

While the term environmental defenders and the attention given to it is recent, it relates to previous debates. 1 Guha and Martinez-Alier (1997) introduced the concept of an environmentalism of the poor as early as in the 1980s to describe the environmental protection actions by poor people who were struggling against the degradation of the environment upon which their livelihood depended. Similarly, Indian scholars Gadgil and Guha (1995) called them ecosystem people , highlighting how many rural dwellers rely on healthy ecosystems. The idea of an environmentalism of the poor emphasized the material and social interest in the environment as a livelihood source for marginalized groups in rural areas in the global South. It questioned the theory that only rich people would defend the environment because they have their needs covered and thus can prioritize ecological actions ( Bell, 2020 , Martinez-Alier, 2002 ).

In the same period that the notion of an environmentalism of the poor was put forward, the idea of environmental justice, and a strong social movement supporting it, was born in the United States during the struggles against waste dumping in North Carolina in 1982. Environmental justice was defined and developed by civil rights activists and members of Christian churches as well as sociologist Robert Bullard ( Bullard, 1994 , Bullard, 1990 ). Their protests began to make a connection between racism and social injustices and the negative environmental impacts suffered by people of color in urban or peri-urban areas in the United States. The neighborhoods where African Americans lived were the most contaminated as most landfills were allocated there.

By taking a global view, Anguelovski and Martínez Alier (2014) argued that, despite the diversity of actors and their different origins, the overall concerns of environmental justice movements and the environmentalism of the poor frequently converge over aims to reassert customary practices and to protect lands and livelihoods from adverse environmental change. Here we take such a global perspective and use the term environmental defenders to refer to any individuals, civil society groups and social movements that mobilize against unsustainable or socially unjust uses of the environment, no matter if they are from the global North or South, or whether social or ecological reasons are their primary motives.

2.3. Violence in environmental conflicts

The assassination of environmental defenders is the highest and most visible expression of direct violence, but it is not the only one appearing in environmental conflicts ( Navas et al., 2018 ). Structural violence is understood as a process that refers to the violence ingrained in the social, political, and economic structures, producing discrimination or social inequality ( Farmer, 2004 ). Cultural violence refers to how cultural elements (i.e., language, religion, or ideology) are used to legitimize the former forms of violence ( Galtung, 1990 ). Slow violence points out the daily and long-lasting violence, caused, for instance, by the increasing and cumulative effects of daily exposure of communities to contamination by extractive industries such as mining ( Nixon, 2011 ).

Given these manifold forms of violence, Navas et al. (2018) called for a multidimensional approach to violence in environmental conflict research. While we recognize the importance to address the subtler forms of violence, these are also more difficult to be tracked and assessed at the global level. Based on the data provided by the EJAtlas, we focus in this study on three aspects of violence: a) assassinations, b) physical violence against activists and c) criminalization of environmental defenders. For a definition of these terms, and all other variables analyzed in this study, see Appendix A.

3.1. Overview

The study presents a quantitative analysis of 2743 cases of environmental conflicts, the characteristics of the involved environmental defenders, successful mobilization strategies, and positive and negative conflict outcomes from the perspective of environmental defenders. The cases were documented based on secondary sources and were coded in a standardized manner through the EJAtlas.

3.2. The Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas)

The EJAtlas was created in 2011 through a collaborative process between academics and civil society groups ( Temper and Del Bene, 2016 ). Among the aims of establishing the EJAtlas was to advance and expand political ecology by going beyond case study research and moving towards large comparative and statistical analyses ( Temper et al., 2018a ). Today, it constitutes the largest global database on environmental conflicts and the involved actors mobilizing for environmental justice. For further information on the EJAtlas rationale, see Temper et al. (2015) .

3.3. Unit of analysis and case documentation

The unit of analysis of the documented cases is an environmental conflict provoked by a specific state- or corporate-driven resource use project (e.g. a hydroelectric dam, or a mine) due to perceived risks and negative socio-environmental impacts triggering mobilizations. Perceived threats may include social and environmental impacts that were either documented or directly noted by local groups in the absence of formal assessments, or anticipated risks severe enough to trigger conflict. The latter is, for instance, frequently the case for nuclear power plants. Conflict cases are documented in a standardized form that includes information on general characteristics (location, relevant background information), project details, companies, finance institutions and government actors involved, visible and potential social and environmental impacts, actors mobilizing to defend the environment, forms of mobilizations used, conflict outcomes, and references to relevant legislation, academic research, videos, and other media. Note that this focus is broader and different than Global Witness’ database on environmental defenders. While the latter principally focuses on events of killings as the unit of analysis, the EJAtlas focuses on the underlying environmental conflict and protest dynamics as the unit of analysis, whereas one conflict could involve several assassinations.

Information on conflict events is coded and provided also qualitatively in the EJAtlas as descriptive texts. Conflicts are mapped by economic and resource use sectors provoking the conflict, covering ten main categories: biomass and land use, conservation, energy and climate, industries, infrastructures, mining, nuclear, tourism, waste management, and water management (for definitions, see Appendix A). The socio-environmental concerns in conflicts frequently overlap across various categories, e.g. a mine may cause also land conflicts over land acquisition for the mining concession. In such cases, conflicts are categorized in one of the ten mutually exclusive main categories based on the sector causing the conflict, which in the previous example would be mining. However, the ten main categories can be complemented in the EJAtlas by indicating 52 mutually non-exclusive sub-categories.

3.4. Data collection, validation and quality checks

The scarcity of grounded data is a major challenge for a better understanding of the local dynamics of environmental conflicts. Under such circumstances, the use of local and non-academic knowledge sources is a valuable approach to overcome knowledge gaps ( Couzin, 2007 , Gerber, 2011 , Huntington, 2011 ). The use of newspaper accounts on conflict and mobilization events is also a common practice in social movement studies, despite limitations on potential coverage bias (for a thorough discussion and justification see Earl et al. (2004) ). The EJAtlas has made a substantial effort in facilitating data gathering from various sources on a global scale to bring local knowledge to environmental conflicts research ( Temper et al., 2015 , Temper and Del Bene, 2016 ).

Case data are collected through a collaborative process among academics and civil society actors, whereas individuals (e.g. academics, journalists, environmental activists and other knowledgeable persons) and collectives (e.g. local associations, non-governmental organizations, academic groups, and other collectives) must first register in the EJAtlas as contributors. Once registered, collaborators can identify environmental conflict cases, and provide information and secondary sources on the conflict events. Data gathering over the past eight years has involved several hundred collaborators.

The EJAtlas documents only cases that are verifiable through secondary sources, published previously elsewhere. Sources include academic papers, newspaper articles, lawsuits, formal complaints and other legal documents, civil society reports, and other sources. Case documentation is coordinated, and the quality of the provided information is reviewed, cross-checked and validated by a permanent team located at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), who also counts on external experts’ support if necessary. The same team also assures consistency and completeness in the coding of reported conflict events. All conflict cases analyzed here and the way they have been coded can be looked up online at www.ejatlas.org.

3.5. EJAtlas dataset and limitations

The resulting EJAtlas dataset is a large convenience sample of recent and previously documented conflicts from an unknown total number of environmental conflicts worldwide. Therefore, the dataset is statistically not representative globally; the shown frequencies and associations of observations reflect the distributions within the EJAtlas dataset. Similar limitations apply also to several other global conflict datasets, such as Global Witness’ data on killings of environmental defenders, or the NGO GRAIN’s database on land grabbing conflicts that was used by research institutions for describing global land grab characteristics (e.g. World Bank, 2010 ).

This is an important caveat that has several implications for interpreting EJAtlas data. First, some regions such as parts of Russia and Mongolia, Central Asia, and Central Africa have limited coverage in the EJAtlas. This may result in the underrepresentation of actors and mobilizations forms common in these areas, such as conflicts involving pastoralists ( Fratkin, 1997 ). Second, some countries are mapped in more detail than others, not necessarily because of having more conflicts, but because of better data availability. This limits possibilities for meaningful comparisons across countries and continents, such as whether one country has more conflicts than another. However, global country groupings by income, as defined by the World Bank, are relatively homogenously covered in terms of documented conflicts per millions of people (see Appendix A for a discussion and data). Therefore, we compare here only world income regions. Third, the EJAtlas has limited information on environmental conflicts in war zones, where confrontations may be embedded in more violent histories and contexts. Further inclusion of environmental conflicts from such areas could lead to an increase of violent events reported in the dataset, both against and by protesters.

Despite these limitations, the EJAtlas dataset represents currently the most extensive global sample available on environmental conflicts. Therefore, it allows for new insights from a broad comparative perspective that has not been possible before. Where applicable, we encourage the comparison of results with other databases to further assess the strength of derived findings.

3.6. Statistical analysis

The sample analyzed here (n = 2743) includes all conflicts that were registered, reviewed, and approved for publication on the EJAtlas since its inception in 2011 and until March 26 th , 2019. These are predominantly recent conflicts: 95% of the 2743 cases began during or after 1970; 50% of the cases began during or after 2008 and reach the present (for more details, see Appendix A). We use descriptive statistics to analyze the characteristics of environmental conflicts, the environmental defenders involved, and the mobilization strategies used. Results are presented by indicating the frequency of observations, percentages of the total sample, and confidence intervals at 95%. We use Pearson’s Chi-square tests of independence to examine the associations between selected conflict outcomes (project cancellation, assassinations, violence against activists, criminalization) and different sectors (main EJAtlas categories), mobilization strategies (timing of mobilizations, legal actions, and protest diversification) and actors (involvement of Indigenous groups in mobilizations). Reported p-values are two-tailed. The significance level was set at 5%. All data used in this article are provided as data tables in Appendix A.

4. Environmental conflicts across world income regions

Environmental conflicts are driven by a range of economic activities related to resource extraction, processing, and waste disposal. Of the 2743 cases documented in the EJAtlas and analyzed here ( Fig. 1 a), the most frequently reported sectors are the mining sector (21% of all cases), the (fossil) energy sector (17%), biomass and land uses (15%), and water management (14%) such as dams ( Fig. 1 b). These activities concentrated in the extractive and agrarian sectors are those which are most associated with assassinations of environmental defenders ( Fig. 1 c). The murder of the Cambodian forest and land activist Chut Wutty in 2012 motivated Global Witness to start the systematic documentation of killings of environmental defenders worldwide ( Global Witness, 2012 ). The killing of Berta Cáceres in 2016, who opposed the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam in Honduras, caused an international outcry that reinforced global efforts for better protection ( Middeldorp and Le Billon, 2019 ). Globally, 13% of the environmental conflicts documented in the EJAtlas involve assassinations of environmental defenders ( Fig. 1 c).

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Environmental conflicts registered in the EJAtlas and occurrence of assassinations of environmental defenders across conflict types (n = 2743). a: Geographical coverage of environmental conflicts reviewed here (each dot represents one case). b: Types of conflicts and coverage (pie colours corresponds to the colour of the cases shown in the map). c: Occurrence of assassinations of environmental defenders per conflict type. Error bars are 95% CIs.

We find mining and land conflicts, with assassinations occurring in one out of five conflict cases, significantly deadlier than other categories and the global average (Pearson χ 2 = 77.58, df = 9, p < 0.001), which is consistent with Global Witness data ( Butt et al., 2019 ). Even projects aiming to enhance sustainability, such as conservation zones and renewable energy infrastructures, frequently cause conflicts over restriction of livelihood activities or enforced evictions ( Avila-Calero, 2017 , Brockington and Igoe, 2006 , Del Bene et al., 2018 , Scheidel and Sorman, 2012 , Schleicher et al., 2019 ). Assassinations associated with the establishment of conservation zones occur in our data in one out of eight conflict cases. This points to how initiatives relevant for environmental sustainability that do not address social justice concerns can lead to severe and violent conflict.

EJAtlas data show that environmental conflicts occur across all country income groups, whereas the relative prevalence of conflict types changes with economic development ( Fig. 2 ). (For an analysis of the relation between income and killings of environmental defenders, see Jeffords and Thompson (2016) ). Conflicts over conservation, biomass and land, and water management (i.e. dams), account for 52% of all cases in low-income countries, yet they account only for 19% in high-income countries. Conversely, conflicts about waste management, tourism, nuclear power, industrial zones, and other infrastructure projects account for a minor share (14%) in low-income countries but rise to almost half of all conflicts (48%) in high-income countries. Likewise, in poorer countries, most environmental conflicts recorded in the EJAtlas are rural, and as income levels per capita increase, urban and semi-urban conflicts account for an increasing share, representing up to half of all conflicts (see Appendix A, supplementary Table 4). The triggers of environmental conflicts vary thus with patterns of industrialization, urbanization, and technology use, and environmental conflicts emerge in new sectors along the lines of economic development. Muradian et al. (2012) explain this by pointing to the changing social metabolism associated with economic development, i.e. the growing demand for sources of material and energy provision, and sinks required for waste, pollution and emissions (see also Martinez-Alier et al., 2016a , Spiric, 2018 ). These changes fundamentally reconfigure resource extraction and use patterns and thus affect the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across different actors and sectors.

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Occurrence of types of environmental conflicts across world income regions (n = 2737).

In urban areas of middle to high-income countries, mobilizations arising in environmental conflicts are frequently termed movements for environmental justice , while in rural areas of low-income countries, they have been referred to as environmentalism of the poor (see Section 2 ) . There are certainly regional and sectoral differences between them that shape conflict dynamics, specific movement concerns, strategies, and outcomes (see Bebbington et al., 2008 , Borras et al., 2018 , Edelman and Borras, 2016 ). Yet, they commonly share overarching goals of just and sustainable resource uses, based on the reaffirmation of customary practices as well as on concrete efforts to protect their living environment from adverse change ( Anguelovski and Martínez Alier, 2014 ). The fact that such bottom-up mobilizations for socially and environmentally more benign forms of resource uses are widely documented in the EJAtlas, across large parts of the world and among all country income groups, testifies that various forms of grassroots environmentalism exist globally. This is a promising force for sustainability and just environmental futures.

5. Environmental defenders and successful mobilization strategies

Environmental defenders are frequently self-organized local groups ( Fig. 3 ), such as local associations, social movements, neighbors and recreational users, driven to action over concerns about local socio-environmental impacts. Both local organizations (involved in 69% of EJAtlas cases) and neighbors (67%) are the two most frequent actor groups mobilizing to defend their environment. While formal recognitions for environmental defenders, such as the Goldman Environmental Prize, as well as media reports and statistics of killings tend to portray the individual struggles of defenders, the high frequency of groups involved in environmental mobilizations shows the importance of collective struggle.

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Characteristics of actors mobilizing in environmental conflicts according to the EJAtlas (n = 2743). Error bars are 95% CIs.

Institutionalized groups, such as political parties (active in 36% of cases), trade unions (12%), or religious groups (12%), appear less frequently globally, but their involvement can be decisive. Trade unions intervene in such conflicts in industrial areas to support healthy work conditions as part of a working-class environmentalism ( Barca and Leonardi, 2018 ). Religious groups are important supporters, particularly in Southeast Asia and Latin America, but also in the US. For example, the United Church of Christ played a leading organizational role in the US environmental justice movement ( UCC, 1987 ). Buddhist monks frequently shape environmental activism in Southeast Asia, where customary and sacred landscapes such as forests are threatened by state and corporate economic activities ( Walter, 2007 ). Professional organizations and supporters, such as international NGOs (active in 30% of cases) and local scientists (active in 40% of cases) can become important allies. They may help to legitimize local claims in the media and international fora, facilitate regional and global networking, and engage in the collection of scientific evidence on risks and impacts to support movements’ claims.

Environmental defenders belong frequently to vulnerable segments of society that are disproportionally threatened by development projects and resource exploitation (cf. Blaikie et al., 1994 ). Many are exposed to intersectional discrimination and subject to vexed dynamics of class, ethnicity, or gender that generate both risk and inequality ( Acker, 2006 , Thomsen and Finley, 2019 ). Of these, we find in the EJAtlas that Indigenous people mobilize most frequently against damaging environmental activities, appearing in 41% of documented environmental conflicts. 47% of cases involve farmers (including Indigenous ones), underlining the need to ensure appropriate land tenure rights ( FAO and CFS, 2012 ). 21% of EJAtlas cases highlight the role of women as leaders and claimants for feminist rights in the mobilizations, sometimes because of being disproportionally affected by environmental and health impacts ( Deonandan et al., 2017 , Rodriguez Acha, 2017 ). Many of them also face repression and killings ( Martinez-Alier and Navas, 2017 ).

Diverse forms of protest shape environmental defenders’ repertoire of contention ( Fig. 4 ). The vast majority are non-violent actions that, following Gene Sharp (1973) , we group here into acts of non-violent protest and persuasion , non-cooperation , and non-violent intervention . Formal petitions (reported in 58% of all cases), public campaigns (57%), and street protests (56%) are the most commonly reported forms of protest and persuasion, followed by the creation of collective action networks, involvement of NGOs, and media-based activism. Strikes, boycotts of official processes, companies, and products, or refusal of compensation payments are relevant forms of non-cooperation particularly in urban contexts, however, they appear globally only in up to 10% of all cases.

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Characteristics of forms of mobilization and protest reported globally in the EJAtlas. Protest actions are clustered following Sharp (1973) (n = 2743). Error bars are 95% CIs.

Environmental defenders use different forms of non-violent interventions. We find legal strategies such as lawsuits in almost half of all cases, and objections to environmental impact assessments (EIAs) in a quarter of all cases. Local scientists and professionals frequently support the creation of new knowledge and alternative proposals (see Conde, 2014 ). Reports that provide the perspective of affected communities on conflictive projects are produced in 36% of cases, while alternative project proposals are put forward in 23% of cases. More disruptive interventions such as road blockades (28%), occupation of public buildings (13%), land occupation (12%), and self-sacrifice are often employed when previous interventions were not successful ( Hanna et al., 2016 ). Their use depends also on the political culture; for instance, 40% of cases involving hunger strikes come from India and reflect the Gandhian tradition of civil disobedience (see also Williams and Mawdsley, 2006 ).

Potentially violent protest actions, such as property damage, sabotage, or threats to use arms have been documented in 7%, 3%, and 3% of cases, respectively, testifying to the overwhelmingly non-violent character of defenders’ protest actions.

Understanding how civil society movements mobilize successfully is important for developing effective support ( Hess and Satcher, 2019 , Zabala, 2019 ). While successes take many forms (e.g. Özkaynak et al., 2015 ), the cancellation of conflictive projects with adverse socio-environmental impacts is a common goal of those mobilizing and it is worth examining those protest strategies that achieve project cancellations more frequently. Here we analyze project cancellation in relation to three specific mobilization strategies: timing of mobilizations, protest diversification, and pursuit of legal actions. We acknowledge that many other factors beyond mobilization strategies influence whether success is achieved or not (e.g. political climate or movement diversity, see for instance Bebbington et al., 2008 , Aydin et al., 2017 ). Yet the significant differences observed in conflict outcomes in relation to these strategies reveal their relevance for mobilizations ( Fig. 5 ).

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Mobilization strategies and project cancellation rates. (a) Percentage of cancellation of conflictive projects in relation to three different strategies: preventive strategy (n = 2533), legal strategy (n = 2743) and diversification of protest (n = 2743). (b) Percentage of cancellation of conflictive projects in cases with a combined strategy (preventive, highly diverse, lawsuits and EIA objections) (n = 101). Note: Highly diverse mobilizations = use of 10 or more different mobilizations forms as reported in Fig. 4 ; diverse mobilizations = use of 5–9 different mobilization forms; not diverse mobilizations = <5 different mobilization forms. For definition of other categories see supplementary Tables 6–9, 14. Error bars are 95% CIs.

When mobilizations were preventive, undesired projects were canceled in 17% of all cases. This is about twice as much as when mobilizations occurred in reaction to project implementation, or for reparations once impacts were experienced (Pearson χ 2 = 50.36, df = 2, p < 0.001). Besides the situated contexts of specific cases, environmental mobilizations initiated in a preventive stage usually imply better awareness of the risks and access to information, knowledge, and networks of local groups and key actors ( Bondes and Johnson, 2017 , Christoph Steinhardt and Wu, 2016 ). Features like this may come together with preventive actions, such as early campaigning, formal objections to impact assessments before projects are constructed, or alternative knowledge creation from the onset to point out neglected risks or frame alternative pathways. Furthermore, it is arguably easier to stop a project during planning phase because more leverage points exist for groups to intervene, fewer resources have been invested so that the cancellation costs are lower for state and corporate entities, and a longer timeframe for negotiating and creating alternatives is available. Recognizing the effectiveness of preventive protest has key implications for supporting environmental defenders: it points to the need to address those factors that inhibit or enable preventive mobilization.

Where protesters used more than ten different mobilization forms, projects were again more than twice as frequent to be canceled (16%) than in cases with less than five types of protest actions (7%) (Pearson χ 2 = 26.93, df = 2, p < 0.001). Such tactical diversity is arguably beneficial because it reflects a range of skills available in the movement, it allows more people to participate in a diverse range of protest activities and thus to increase pressure on proponents of conflictive projects, and it may turn mobilizations more resilient as claimants can move between protest forms in case of repression of a particular one ( Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011 ). Regarding legal strategies, the filing of lawsuits alone does not significantly associate with higher cancellation rates. However, when combined with formal objections to EIA, we observe a cancellation rate of 15.5% (Pearson χ 2 = 12.87, df = 3, p < 0.01).

The most successful way to mobilize seems to not rely on a single strategy but to combine several at once ( Fig. 5 b). We find a significantly higher project cancellation rate of 26.7% (Pearson χ 2 = 25.67, df = 1, p < 0.001) in those cases where mobilizations were preventive, highly diverse and took strong legal action (lawsuits and formal EIA objections). Effective support for environmental defenders should thus promote measures that enable them to pursue litigation, preventive protest and diverse mobilizations all together.

6. Outcomes of environmental conflicts

Both positive and negative outcomes for environmental defenders mark environmental conflicts ( Fig. 6 a). One frequent positive social outcome is strengthened participation among affected people (documented in 29% of cases), including cases of increased civic engagement and participation in consultation, planning, and politics related to project development. Other positive outcomes include environmental improvements (12%), such as through the rehabilitation of degraded areas. Negotiated alternative solutions, such as negotiated reductions of conflictive land concessions to mitigate community impacts, or changes in the routes of conflictive pipelines, are reported in 10% of cases. More radical achievements from the perspective of environmental defenders are the above-discussed cancellation of conflictive projects, apparent on average in 11% of all EJAtlas cases. The struggles led by environmental defenders can thus bring important social and environmental benefits and evidence how environmental movements are important actors for sustainability.

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Positive and negative conflict outcomes from the perspective of environmental defenders (a) and occurrence of repressive outcomes when Indigenous groups are involved (b). n = 2743, except for cases with lawsuits (court successes and failures), where n = 1220. Error bars are 95% CIs.

However, for the case of renewables and conservation areas, tensions between social and ecological sustainability goals may become apparent. For instance, while locally affected groups may celebrate the cancellation of an unjust wind park, others may worry about not reaching renewable energy goals. Given that sustainability is multidimensional and multiscalar, such tensions between global environmental goals and local socio-environmental impacts are not surprising. Environmental conflicts play an important role here in fostering societal negotiation processes and the search for alternatives that are both ecologically sustainable and socially more just ( Scheidel et al., 2018 ).

In cases where defenders were able to take legal actions, 18% of cases reported a court failure while 34% of cases a court success (some cases may have both due to multiple and overlapping proceedings). Legal successes can take many forms, such as winning demands for monetary indemnification, land restitution, recognition of customary land rights, or orders to suspend and cancel conflictive and unsustainable projects. The relatively high rate of court victories suggests that many conflictive projects do not develop in compliance with prevailing laws as well as social and environmental standards. This emphasizes the need for enhanced monitoring and accountability of corporate and state-led resource use projects and confirms the importance of improving defenders’ access to justice as an effective way of support.

Regarding negative outcomes, 21% of the 2743 cases provoke displacement, either directly caused by corporate or state-driven projects ( Satiroglu and Choi, 2015 ), or due to the adverse effects of environmental change ( Rechkemmer et al., 2016 ). Defenders face also physical violence (18% of all cases) and assassinations (13%). Criminalization of dissent, for instance, through imprisonment, restriction of activists' rights, or prosecution without clear charges ( Moore et al., 2015 ), appears in 20% of cases and shows the structural violence that environmental defenders face.

Butt et al. (2019) have highlighted the role of structural factors and country contexts (i.e. rule of law, corruption) in shaping the occurrence of violence in environmental conflicts. Our data furthermore evidence that Indigenous environmental defenders are significantly more susceptible to various forms of violence ( Fig. 6 b). While assassinations occur in 8% of cases when Indigenous people are not involved, killings rise dramatically to 19% when Indigenous people are part of the mobilizations (Pearson χ 2 = 68.93, df = 1, p < 0.001). With Indigenous involvement, also the occurrence of criminalization of dissent (25%) and physical violence against activists (27%) is significantly higher than in cases where Indigenous people were not involved in mobilizations (with Pearson χ 2 = 64.65, df = 1, p < 0.001 and Pearson χ 2 = 58.87, df = 1, p < 0.001, respectively). Indigenous populations have historically suffered from coloniality and racism ( Quijano, 2000 ). This trend has not changed until today. Furthermore, state and corporate pressure to exploit Indigenous territories is high as they represent to the global economy some of the remaining frontiers of resource extraction. The significantly higher exposure to criminalization, violence, and assassinations underlines the urgent need to specifically support Indigenous environmental defenders.

7. Concluding discussion

Our results show that non-violent bottom-up mobilizations in response to adverse environmental and social impacts of economic activities and development projects occur worldwide across all income groups, testifying to the existence of various forms of grassroots environmentalism globally. This indicates a promising force for environmental sustainability and social justice, yet one that comes too often at a heavy cost of violence and repression. To enhance the protection and support of environmental defenders, we close this article by discussing some implications of our results.

First, the EJAtlas database indicates that, assassinations, physical violence and criminalization occurs significantly more often in mining and land conflicts and when Indigenous groups are involved in mobilizations. These results are consistent with Global Witness data ( Butt et al., 2019 ) and the strong evidence for these findings emphasizes the urgent need for developing specific protection mechanisms within these sectors and particularly for Indigenous people. The role of Indigenous communities in environmental defense must be recognized and celebrated. Ongoing efforts to recognize their territories and the right to self-determination as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples, must be accelerated ( Feiring, 2013 , UN, 2008 ).

Second, effective support for environmental defenders should enhance the conditions that enable successful mobilizations to defend livelihoods and the environment. We found that strategies pursuing preventive mobilizations, diversification of protest, and legal actions are important to achieve positive outcomes, and particularly successful, when combined. Towards this end, access to justice must be improved beyond the development of general policy frameworks ( Knox, 2015 ). Concrete measures could include the provision of free legal education, training, and aid, as well as monetary support to cover related expenses. Leverage points for legal interventions can be identified by tracking the legal liabilities of involved companies across the entire investment chain ( Blackmore et al., 2015 ). This requires states and companies to enforce corporate transparency and accountability ( Fox, 2007 ), not only where investments are made, but also in investing countries for human rights abuses committed by their corporations abroad. Transparency must also be improved in public administration, as early disclosure and knowledge about development plans, project bids and tenders are key to enable preventive mobilizations.

However, the effectiveness of such recommendations, policies and formal procedures has also limits. Environmental conflicts develop within complex political, socio-economic, and cultural contexts that do not necessarily respond to such measures. Many governments are not supportive of environmental defenders and rather seek to delegitimize them, for instance by stigmatizing them as agents of foreign influence to limit support from international actors ( Matejova et al., 2018 ). Bottom-up protest in its manifold forms remains then a central and necessary strategy for the claims-making of affected groups, particularly when external support is constrained and when existing formal procedures, such as project safeguards, free prior informed consent, or social and environmental impact assessments are not conducted or enforced by states ( Hanna et al., 2016 ). Diversification of protest, which we found to be highly relevant to achieve movement goals, can be enhanced through networking and sharing of knowledge about successful mobilizations. The EJAtlas, apart from opening avenues for comparative political ecology research on such themes, can be a useful resource for activists, as it documents diverse mobilization strategies and their outcomes across the globe. Furthermore, it can also be used as an advocacy map for citizens’ grievances to reach diverse actors, such as local and national government bodies as well as global media ( Drozdz, 2020 ).

Finally, to address some of the underlying drivers, it is important to consider that environmental conflicts are embedded in global economic structures that require continuous resource extraction ( Muradian et al., 2012 ). Our results show that environmental conflicts do not disappear with economic development but are shifted to new sectors, following the changes in resource uses. A lasting reduction of pressures on local communities’ territories as sources of resource extraction or sinks for pollution and emissions will require a substantial downscaling of the global social metabolism ( Akbulut et al., 2019 , Scheidel and Schaffartzik, 2019 ). Possible pathways to achieve this are currently being discussed, explored, and practiced in research and civil society (e.g. Escobar, 2015 , Kothari et al., 2019 ). This process should consider the constructive potential of environmental conflicts, that is, the many ideas and proposals about alternatives put forward by environmental defenders in their effort to find more sustainable and socially just environmental futures.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This paper has been developed by the project ‘EnvJustice’ (GA 695446), funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Arnim Scheidel acknowledges funding from the Beatriu de Pinós postdoctoral programme supported by the Government of Catalonia's Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Ministry of Economy and Knowledge (2017 BP 00023). Leah Temper acknowledges funding from the International Social Science Council for the ACKnowl-EJ project (TKN150317115354). Sofía Avila acknowledges funding from CONACYT (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología). We thank all organizations and individuals who kindly collaborated with the data gathering for the EJAtlas. The constructive comments of anonymous reviewers helped us to improve the paper.

Author contribution statement

Arnim Scheidel led the design and writing of the study. Daniela Del Bene moderated data gathering and revised the EJAtlas cases. Juan Liu and Federico Demaria led the writing of the theoretical background. Joan Martínez-Alier and Leah Temper developed the EJAtlas platform and secured funding for this research. Sara Mingorría, Grettel Navas, Sofía Avila, Brototi Roy, Irmak Ertör gathered and revised case data. All authors contributed to data gathering, interpretation and writing of the manuscript.

1 Other approaches not covered here have referred to this phenomenon as subaltern environmentalism , livelihood ecology or liberation ecology (see Martinez-Alier 2002 for an overview).

Appendix A Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102104 .

Appendix A. Supplementary data

The following are the Supplementary data to this article:

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David Brooks

What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself?

Several Israeli soldiers, seen from behind.

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

There seems to be a broad consensus atop the Democratic Party about the war in Gaza, structured around two propositions. First, after the attacks of Oct. 7, Israel has the right to defend itself and defeat Hamas. Second, the way Israel is doing this is “over the top,” in President Biden’s words. The vast numbers of dead and starving children are gut wrenching, the devastation is overwhelming, and it’s hard not to see it all as indiscriminate.

Which leads to an obvious question: If the current Israeli military approach is inhumane, what’s the alternative? Is there a better military strategy Israel can use to defeat Hamas without a civilian blood bath? In recent weeks, I’ve been talking with security and urban warfare experts and others studying Israel’s approach to the conflict and scouring foreign policy and security journals in search of such ideas.

The thorniest reality that comes up is that this war is like few others because the crucial theater is underground. Before the war, Israelis estimated Hamas had dug around 100 miles of tunnels. Hamas leaders claimed they had a much more expansive network, and it turns out they were telling the truth. The current Israeli estimates range from 350 to about 500 miles of tunnels. The tunnel network, according to Israel, is where Hamas lives, holds hostages, stores weapons, builds missiles and moves from place to place. By some Israeli estimates, building these tunnels cost the Gazan people about a billion dollars, which could have gone to building schools and starting companies.

Hamas built many of its most important military and strategic facilities under hospitals, schools and so on. Its server farm, for example, was built under the offices of the U.N. relief agency in Gaza City, according to the Israeli military.

Daphne Richemond-Barak, the author of “Underground Warfare,” writes in Foreign Policy magazine: “Never in the history of tunnel warfare has a defender been able to spend months in such confined spaces. The digging itself, the innovative ways Hamas has made use of the tunnels and the group’s survival underground for this long have been unprecedented.”

In other words, in this war, Hamas is often underground, the Israelis are often aboveground, and Hamas seeks to position civilians directly between them. As Barry Posen, a professor at the security studies program at M.I.T., has written , Hamas’s strategy could be “described as ‘human camouflage’ and more ruthlessly as ‘human ammunition.’” Hamas’s goal is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in that way build international pressure until Israel is forced to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Hamas’s survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents.

The Israelis have not found an easy way to clear and destroy the tunnels. Currently, Israel Defense Forces units clear the ground around a tunnel entrance and then, Richemond-Barak writes, they send in robots, drones and dogs to detect explosives and enemy combatants. Then units trained in underground warfare pour in. She writes: “It has become clear that Israel cannot possibly detect or map the entirety of Hamas’s tunnel network. For Israel to persuasively declare victory, in my view, it must destroy at least two-thirds of Hamas’s known underground infrastructure.”

This is slow, dangerous and destructive work. Israel rained destruction down on Gaza, especially early in the war. Because very few buildings can withstand gigantic explosions beneath them, this method involves a lot of wreckage, compounding the damage brought by tens of thousands of airstrikes. In part because of the tunnels, Israel has caused more destruction in Gaza than Syria did in Aleppo and more than Russia did in Mariupol, according to an Associated Press analysis .

John Spencer is the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, served two tours in Iraq and has made two visits to Gaza during the current war to observe operations there. He told me that Israel has done far more to protect civilians than the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Spencer reports that Israel has warned civilians when and where it is about to begin operations and published an online map showing which areas to leave. It has sent out millions of pamphlets, texts and recorded calls warning civilians of coming operations. It has conducted four-hour daily pauses to allow civilians to leave combat areas. It has dropped speakers that blast out instructions about when to leave and where to go. These measures, Spencer told me, have telegraphed where the I.D.F. is going to move next and “have prolonged the war, to be honest.”

The measures are real, but in addition, Israel has cut off power in Gaza, making it hard for Palestinians to gain access to their phones and information and, most important, the evacuation orders published by Israel. Israel has also destroyed a vast majority of Gaza’s cellphone towers and on occasion bombed civilians in so-called safe areas and safe routes. For civilians, the urban battlefield is unbelievably nightmarish. They are caught between a nation enraged by Oct. 7 and using overwhelming and often reckless force and a terrorist group that has structured the battlefield to maximize the number of innocent dead.

So to step back: What do we make of the current Israeli strategy? Judged purely on a tactical level, there’s a strong argument that the I.D.F. has been remarkably effective against Hamas forces. I’ve learned to be suspicious of precise numbers tossed about in this war, but the I.D.F. claims to have killed over 13,000 of the roughly 30,000 Hamas troops. It has disrupted three-quarters of Hamas’s battalions so that they are no longer effective fighting units. It has also killed two of five brigade commanders and 19 of 24 battalion commanders. As of January, U.S. officials estimated that Israel had damaged or made inoperable 20 to 40 percent of the tunnels. Many Israelis believe the aggressive onslaught has begun to restore Israel’s deterrent power. (Readers should know that I have a son who served in the I.D.F. from 2014 to 2016; he’s been back home in the States since then.)

But on a larger political and strategic level, you’d have to conclude that the Israeli strategy has real problems. Global public opinion is moving decisively against Israel. The key shift is in Washington. Historically pro-Israeli Democrats like Biden and Senator Chuck Schumer are now pounding the current Israeli government with criticism. Biden wants Israel to call off its invasion of the final Hamas strongholds in the south. Israel is now risking a rupture with its closest ally and its only reliable friend on the U.N. Security Council. If Israel is going to defend itself from Iran, it needs strong alliances, and Israel is steadily losing those friends. Furthermore, Israeli tactics may be reducing Gaza to an ungovernable hellscape that will require further Israeli occupation and produce more terrorist groups for years.

Hamas’s strategy is pure evil, but it is based on an understanding of how the events on the ground will play out in the political world. The key weakness of the Israeli strategy has always been that it is aimed at defeating Hamas militarily without addressing Palestinian grievances and without paying enough attention to the wider consequences. As the leaders of Hamas watch Washington grow more critical of Jerusalem, they must know their strategy is working.

So we’re back to the original question: Is there a way to defeat Hamas with far fewer civilian deaths? Is there a way to fight the war that won’t leave Israel isolated?

One alternative strategy is that Israel should conduct a much more limited campaign. Fight Hamas, but with less intensity. To some degree, Israel has already made this adjustment. In January, Israel announced it was shifting to a smaller, more surgical strategy; U.S. officials estimated at the time that Israel had reduced the number of Israeli troops in northern Gaza to fewer than half of the 50,000 who were there in December.

The first problem with going further in this direction is that Israel may not be left with enough force to defeat Hamas. Even by Israel’s figures, most Hamas fighters are still out there. Will surgical operations be enough to defeat an enemy of this size? A similar strategy followed by America in Afghanistan doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

A second problem is that the light footprint approach leaves power vacuums. This allows Hamas units to reconstitute themselves in areas Israel has already taken. As the United States learned in Iraq, if troop levels get too low, the horrors of war turn into the horrors of anarchy.

Another alternative strategy is targeted assassinations. Instead of continuing with a massive invasion, just focus on the Hamas fighters responsible for the Oct. 7 attack, the way Israel took down the terrorists who perpetrated the attack on Israeli Olympians in Munich in 1972.

The difference is that the attack on Israelis at Munich was a small-scale terrorist assault. Oct. 7 was a comprehensive invasion by an opposing army. Trying to assassinate perpetrators of that number would not look all that different from the current military approach. As Raphael Cohen, the director of the strategy and doctrine program at the RAND Corporation, notes : “In practical terms, killing or capturing those responsible for Oct. 7 means either thousands or potentially tens of thousands of airstrikes or raids dispersed throughout the Gaza Strip. Raids conducted on that scale are no longer a limited, targeted operation. It’s a full-blown war.”

Furthermore, Hamas’s fighters are hard to find, even the most notorious leaders. It took a decade for the United States to find Osama bin Laden, and Israel hasn’t had great success with eliminating key Hamas figures. In recent years, Israel tried to kill Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, seven times , without success.

The political costs of this kind of strategy might be even worse than the political costs of the current effort. Turkey, a Hamas supporter, has made it especially clear that Israel would pay a very heavy price if it went after Hamas leaders there.

A third alternative is a counterinsurgency strategy, of the kind that the United States used during the surge in Iraq. This is a less intense approach than the kind of massive invasion we’ve seen and would focus on going after insurgent cells and rebuilding the destroyed areas to build trust with the local population. The problem is that this works only after you’ve defeated the old regime and have a new host government you can work with. Israel is still trying to defeat the remaining Hamas battalions in places like Rafah. This kind of counterinsurgency approach would be an amendment to the current Israeli strategy, not a replacement.

Critics of the counterinsurgency approach point out that Gaza is not Iraq. If Israel tried to clear, hold and build new secure communities in classic counterinsurgency fashion, those new communities wouldn’t look like safe zones to the Palestinians. They would look like detention camps. Furthermore, if Israel settles on this strategy, it had better be prepared for a long war. One study of 71 counterinsurgency campaigns found that the median length of those conflicts was 10 years. Finally, the case for a full counterinsurgency approach would be stronger if that strategy had led to American victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, which it did not.

A fourth alternative is that Israel should just stop. It should settle for what it has achieved and not finish the job by invading Rafah and the southern areas of Gaza, or it should send in just small strike teams.

This is now the official Biden position. The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has argued that Israel can destroy Hamas in Gaza without a large invasion but “ by other means ” (which he did not elaborate on). The United States has asked Israel to send a delegation to Washington to discuss alternative Rafah strategies, which is good. The problem is that, first, there seems to be a budding disagreement over how much of Hamas needs to be destroyed to declare victory and, second, the I.D.F. estimates that there are 5,000 to 8,000 Hamas fighters in Rafah. Defeating an army that size would take thousands of airstrikes and raids. If you try to shrink the incursion, the math just doesn’t add up. As an Israeli war cabinet member, Benny Gantz, reportedly told U.S. officials, “Finishing the war without demilitarizing Rafah is like sending in firefighters to put out 80 percent of a fire.”

If this war ends with a large chunk of Hamas in place, it would be a long-term disaster for the region. Victorious, Hamas would dominate whatever government was formed to govern Gaza. Hamas would rebuild its military to continue its efforts to exterminate the Jewish state, delivering on its promise to launch more and more attacks like that of Oct. 7. Israel would have to impose an even more severe blockade than the one that it imposed before, this time to keep out the steel, concrete and other materials that Hamas uses to build tunnels and munitions, but that Gazans would need to rebuild their homes.

If Hamas survives this war intact, it would be harder for the global community to invest in rebuilding Gaza. It would be impossible to begin a peace process. As the veteran Middle East observers Robert Satloff and Dennis Ross wrote in American Purpose, “Any talk of a postwar political process is meaningless without Israel battlefield success: There can be no serious discussion of a two-state solution or any other political objective with Hamas either still governing Gaza or commanding a coherent military force.”

So where are we? I’m left with the tragic conclusion that there is no magical alternative military strategy. As Cohen wrote in Foreign Policy: “If the international community wants Israel to change strategies in Gaza, then it should offer a viable alternative strategy to Israel’s announced goal of destroying Hamas in the strip. And right now, that alternate strategy simply does not exist.”

The lack of viable alternatives leaves me with the further conclusion that Israel must ultimately confront Hamas leaders and forces in Rafah rather than leave it as a Hamas beachhead. For now, a cease-fire may be in the offing in Gaza, which is crucial for the release of more hostages.

Israel can use that time to put in place the humanitarian relief plan that Israeli security officials are now, at long last, proposing (but that the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has not agreed to so far). Israel would also have to undertake a full-scale civilian evacuation of Rafah before any military operation and then try to take out as much of Hamas as possible with as few civilian casualties as possible. Given the horrors of this kind of tunnel-based urban warfare, this will be a painful time and painfully difficult. But absent some new alternative strategy, Biden is wrong to stop Israel from confronting the Hamas threat in southern Gaza.

Finally, like pretty much every expert I consulted, I’m also left with the conclusion that Israel has to completely rethink and change the humanitarian and political side of this operation. Israel needs to supplement its military strategy with an equally powerful Palestinian welfare strategy.

Israel’s core problems today are not mostly the fault of the I.D.F. or its self-defense strategy. Israel’s core problems flow from the growing callousness with which many of its people have viewed the Palestinians over the past decades, magnified exponentially by the trauma it has just suffered. Today, an emotionally shattered Israeli people see through the prism of Oct. 7. They feel existentially insecure, facing enemies on seven fronts — Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. As Ross has noted , many often don’t see a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinians. Over 80 percent of West Bank Palestinians told pollsters they supported the Oct. 7 attack.

As the columnist Anshel Pfeffer wrote in the Israeli paper Haaretz, “The very idea that Israel needed to take any responsibility whatsoever for the place from which those who had murdered, raped and pillaged had emerged was seen as a moral abomination.”

Pfeffer continued that because of this attitude, “the government’s policy on humanitarian supplies to Gaza is a combination of vengeance, ignorance and incompetence.” He quoted unnamed I.D.F. officials who acknowledged that of course Israel is responsible for the welfare of the people in the area it controls but that the civilian leaders refuse to confront this.

On occasions when Israel has responded to world pressure and shifted policy, it has done so in secret, with no discussion in the cabinet.

An officer whose duties specifically include addressing the needs of civilians told Pfeffer that he didn’t have much to do except for some odd jobs.

Israel is failing to lay the groundwork for some sort of better Palestinian future — to its own detriment. The security experts I spoke with acknowledge that providing humanitarian aid will be hard. As Cohen told me: “If the Israeli military takes over distributing humanitarian aid to Gaza, they will likely lose soldiers in the process. And so Israelis are asking why should their boys die providing aid to someone who wants to kill them. So the United States needs to convince Israel that this is the morally and strategically right thing to do.”

For her book “How Terrorism Ends,” the Carnegie Mellon scholar Audrey Kurth Cronin looked at about 460 terrorist groups to investigate how they were defeated. Trying to beat them with military force alone rarely works. The root causes have to be addressed. As the retired general David Petraeus reminded his audience recently at the New Orleans Book Festival, “Over time, hearts and minds still matter.”

Israel also has to offer the world a vision for Gaza’s recovery, and it has to do it right now. Ross argues that after the war is over, the core logic of the peace has to be demilitarization in exchange for reconstruction. In an essay in Foreign Affairs, he sketches out a comprehensive rebuilding effort, bringing in nations and agencies from all over the world, so Gaza doesn’t become a failed state or remain under Hamas control.

Is any of this realistic given the vicious enmity now ripping through the region? Well, many peace breakthroughs of the past decades happened after one side suffered a crushing defeat. Egypt established ties with Israel after it was thoroughly defeated in the Yom Kippur War. When Israel attacked Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006, the world was outraged. But after the fighting stopped, some Lebanese concluded that Hezbollah had dragged them into a bloody, unnecessary conflict. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was forced to acknowledge his error, saying he didn’t know Israel would react so violently. The Lebanese border stabilized. Israel’s over-the-top responses have sometimes served as effective deterrents and prevented further bloodshed.

Israel and the Palestinians have both just suffered shattering defeats. Maybe in the next few years they will do some difficult rethinking, and a new vision of the future will come into view. But that can happen only after Hamas is fully defeated as a military and governing force.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author, most recently, of “How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.” @ nytdavidbrooks

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