Environmentalism of the poor
[5] Milestones of this type of conservationism are the Convention on Biological Diversity in Rio de Janeiro (1992), the Endangered Species Act of 1973, or the creation of the Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks in the USA.
[5] The "gospel of eco-efficiency", or ‘scientific industrialism’,[10] originated with the 19th-century writings of Malthus and William Stanley Jevons and grew during the 20th century when the effects of pollution and resource exhaustion were more apparent.
As Martinez Alier puts it, the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ is ‘’worried about the effects of economic growth not only on pristine areas but also on the industrial, agricultural and urban economy’’.
[5] Instead, it searches for a growth that needs less and less resources and generates less and less pollution and waste, therefore minimizing its impacts and improving its sustainability: the so-called dematerialization of the economy.
[5] However, many criticisms have been raised against the theory of dematerialization: mainly, that the entropy law makes it impossible to infinitely improve the efficiency of a technology;[14][15] and that the decoupling of local rich economies is only possible because they outsource the production of material-intensive goods to the developing countries.
[16] The main tools proposed by the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’ concern (1) economic, eco-taxes and markets in emission permits, and (2) technological support for materials and energy-saving changes.
[5] According to Joan Martinez Alier, some of the most prominent proponents of the ‘gospel of ecoefficiency are Gifford Pinchot in the USA and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy in Europe.
Pinchot was the head of the United States Forest Service during the Progressive Era, and advocated the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal.
The Wuppertal Institute pioneered industrial ecology in Europe during the 90s, and designed several high-efficiency products such as the Passive house and also developed indicators such as the material input per unit of service (MIPS).
For instance, the Brundtland Report concluded that poverty is one of the most important drivers of environmental degradation;[13] political scientist Ronald Inglehart also argued that affluent societies are more likely to protect nature.
However, numerous case studies pointed out that poor people protect the environment against powerful interests to defend their livelihoods and cultures.
[5] Martínez Alier argues that, as the scale of the economy increases, ‘poor people’ are ‘’deprived of access to environmental resources and services, and they endure a disproportionate amount of pollution’’.
[5][22] This theory stands that traditional livelihoods have been historically shaped by the environmental conditions, and have learned to adapt to them, using sustainably the resources and the sinks available.
[5] Martínez Alier argues that poor people simply protecting their livelihoods are often on the side of resource conservation and a clean environment, although they may not claim to be environmentalists and may use other language to describe their agendas (such as sacredness, sovereignty, etc.).
[5] Instead, he argues that people will resist environmental destruction that threatens their livelihood, culture, and prospects for survival, even if they aren't interested in protecting nature for its own sake.
[5] People will not easily give away their livelihoods in exchange for economic investment and development that offers them money, because values such as sovereignty and sacredness cannot be compared by monetary terms.
Women more often have social roles that bring them into direct contact with nature such as collecting water, growing crops, tending animals, gathering, etc.
[23][24] According to Johanna oksala, ''for women living under harsh material conditions, environmental activism is simply a form of self-defense'',[25][26] because they want to protect their livelihood.
This tendency of women activists to take the leading role in the environmentalism of the poor is manifested in examples such as the Chipko movement in India, the Green Belt Movement in Kenya,[4] and the opposition to the Agua Zarca Hydroelectrical Project in Honduras[27] and is embodied in persons such as Berta Cáceres, Lesbia Urquía, Jeannette Kawas, and Margarita Murillo, all of whom fought environmental degradation in Honduras and so were assassinated.
For example, the struggle against the Tipaimukh Dam in India originated with poor people whose water source was being threatened, and that conflict became a dynamic and international resistance movement.
[6] International networks such as Oilwatch have also arisen from direct action taken by Indigenous peoples fighting against oil exploration in places like the Niger Delta, Colombia, and Peru.
[4] Although there are some clear differences, the ‘gospel of eco-efficiency’, the ‘cult of wilderness’, and the ‘environmentalism’ of the poor overlap and intertwine in certain topics, and can form alliances.
However, poor and indigenous people are not ignorant, and in fact are much more conscious of the necessity of biodiversity and the environment as a positive asset worthy of conservation.
[33] In Canada, Indigenous-led fire stewardship ‘’enhances ecosystem diversity, assists with the management of complex resources, and reduces wildfire risk by lessening fuel loads’’.
However, this is not always the case: if it is not driven by the logic of maximizing benefits, an improvement in a certain production process can indeed reduce the impact of that economic activity, thus opening up space for livelihoods to develop more freely.
As Martínez Alier argues, they assert that ‘'technical change will make the production of commodities compatible with ecological sustainability’’, thus emphasizing ‘’the preservation of that part of Nature which is still outside the economy[5]’’.
