The nature and evolution of environmental activism in the Asia-Pacific region varies greatly according to its members' political, economic, and environmental histories and their approaches to social transformation, growth and development. Its institutional expressions range from grass roots organizations involved in village-level tree-growing programmes to regional NGO networks with several hundred members advocating for macro-economic and political reform; for the purposes of this paper, international organizations with activities in the Asia-Pacific region are included as well, due to their relatively greater influence compared to local ones. The number of issues of concern to the environmental movements is equally large, including, among others, indigenous peoples' rights, community forestry, forest conservation, wildlife protection, river and watershed conservation, timber production, ecolabelling and certification, environmental pollution, and environment-related aspects of international trade.
Voluntary action, the cornerstone of civil society organizations (CSOs), has a long-standing tradition in most countries in the Asia-Pacific region, reaching back to precolonial communal societies. A rich variety of associational forms has sprung up and evolved over time. Some remain of distinctly Asia-Pacific origin, including communal self-help groups of indigenous peoples concerned with the overall management of human and natural resources, such as the gotong royong in Indonesia and the bayanihan in the Philippines. Others, like trade unions and NGOs, are distinctly Western phenomena. It has even been argued that civil society as a concept denoting the "self-organization of citizens in contrast to state or government" is alien to Asian cultures (Serrano, 1994).
Environmentalism as such is by most accounts a recent appearance in the Asia-Pacific region. This is not to say that societies in the region have not traditionally cared for the natural resources their livelihoods depend on, but that organizations exclusively concerned with conservation issues are relative newcomers, even though international conservation organizations, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Conservation Union (IUCN), have operated in the region for several decades. Asia-Pacific environmental organizations of this western type have a relatively longer tradition in the industrialized countries of Australia and New Zealand, but have also become established in the newly industrialized countries (NICs) of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and even more recently in Malaysia and Thailand.
In a review of the environmental movement in India, Gadgil and Guha argue that there exist marked differences between what they refer to as First World environmentalism and Third World environmentalism (Gadgil and Guha, 1994). The former, another environmental historian notes, is a largely middle class phenomenon, "a direct consequence of economic affluence by which wilderness areas and clean air come to be cherished once basic material needs have been fulfilled" (Nash, 1982). Implied in this statement is that environmentalism in the western industrialized societies has only emerged after concerns with the quality of resources have largely replaced those of resource scarcity as a result of technological substitution and scientific resource management (Gadgil and Guha, 1994).
By contrast, Gadgil and Guha argue, India's, and other Asia-Pacific developing countries', experience has been characterized by simultaneous problems of land and resource depletion, pollution, and the decimation of biological diversity, with low prospects of a major transformation in consumption patterns to mitigate the problems caused by deforestation, soil erosion and other types of resource degradation. Because these problems most directly influence the survival and livelihood options of rural populations, economically disadvantaged constituencies figure large in third World environmentalism.
Two further differences relate to strategies and the roles of scientists. In India, for example, direct action, including sit-ins, demonstrations, and attacks on official property, have from the outset been a critical component of environmental action (Gadgil and Guha, 1994). In Western societies, particularly in the United States, environmental groups have used the legal system, the media, lobbying tactics to a greater extent. Scientists, who have been at the heart of modern environmentalism in the industrialized world have played a much smaller part in India, where journalists, Gandhians, and environmental activists have carried the banner, explaining to some extent the couching of environmental debates in political terms in general, and in the context of the north-south paradigm in particular.
The significance of these differences is not merely historical, for the future of environmentalism in developing countries will continue to be influenced by political, economic, and cultural specificities. With industrialization advancing at a rapid pace in several Asia-Pacific countries, expressions of First World environmentalism are likely to increase in number and strength. Yet, in many of these countries, significant sectors of the population have not yet benefited from the economic advances of the few, so that it is likely that both forms of environmentalism will coexist, possibly uneasily. Finally, as populations continue to increase at rapid rates in some of the region's developing countries, survival and livelihood pressures may well lead to an expansion of environmental activism by the economically disadvantaged.
Numerous attempts at establishing typologies of civil society organizations (CSOs) have been undertaken. They vary according to definitions of civil society, the specific field within which they originate (agricultural development being the most frequent one), and the geographic region they apply to. A typology that originates from the Asia-Pacific region has been proposed by Richard Holloway, Executive Director of Private Agencies Collaborating Together (PACT) in Bangladesh. He argues that "the fundamental distinction is between those organizations operating for the benefit of their members and those operating for the benefit of others," and that "the governance structure, the accountability, the access to resources, the links to outsiders all depend on whether the organization is a creation of its members for itself or a creation of individuals for others" (quoted in Serrano, 1994).
All of the above categories may include organizations with environmental objectives, though the greatest representation is found among the NGOs. Trade and professional organizations can include those that represent the interests of the private sector, academic institutions, or even government agencies; technically part of civil society, their political affiliations may yet exclude them in certain cases. Similarly, since networks and forums are often established by donors or national governments, either to facilitate the dissemination of information, to promote networking among local and international organizations, or as fronts for outright political mobilization, their autonomy has to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
Organizations of Civil Society
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Membership |
Non-membership |
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· Indigenous Community |
· Local Philanthropic Institutions |
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· Mass Organizations |
· Area-based Benevolent Societies |
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· Religious Societies |
· Service Clubs |
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· Cooperatives |
· Non-profit Companies |
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· Trade Organizations |
· NGOs - Private Voluntary Welfare and Development |
|
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· Professional Organizations |
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- implementing organizations |
|
|
- peoples organizations |
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- support organizations (capacity building NGOs) |
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- networks and forums |
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- apex organizations (representative for NGO sector) |
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Source: Modified from Holloway, 1993
In the Asia-Pacific region, it may be helpful to further differentiate ECSOs by size and origin. As argued above, an organization's origin and general structure may already give an indication of the nature of its approach, its constituency, and its scope and reach. The distinction between organizations that have their origin outside the region is blurred in the case of international organizations that have more or less autonomous country or regional offices, such as WWF, Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth. For this reason, the column headings in the table below include a reference to the headquarters of the organization.
The number of organizations present in Asia-Pacific countries varies considerably. Exact sizes may never be established, but it can be assumed that they are large and growing rapidly (Serrano, 1994). The following figures do not distinguish between environmental and other organizations, but they give an indication of civil societies' relative vibrancy.
The country with the second biggest population in the region, India, probably has the most autonomous citizens' organizations in the region, estimated at over 100,000 reaching half the country as of the early 1990s (ANGOC, 1995). Bangladesh, famous for its enormous number of organizations relative to its geographical size, is home to more than 12,000. In Japan, where the term NGO was unheard of until recently, 131 NGOs and foundations were listed in 1986, representing but a tiny fraction of the actual number. A more recent estimate places the number of active grass-roots conservation organizations at 3,000 (Holliman, 1990).
The Philippines, like India and Bangladesh, has a very active and vocal civil society. In the early 1990s, the country's Securities and Exchange Commission listed about 26,000 organizations, including 2,000 development NGOs (Serrano, 1994). Some 14,000 organizations are registered with the National Culture Commission of Thailand. In Indonesia, three quarters of the 1,000 known NGOs are involved in environmental protection (ANGOC, 1995). Nepal had some 1,200 NGOs and people's organizations as of 1991 (Serrano, 1994).
ECSOs by Size and Origin
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Origin/Headquarters in the region |
Origin/Headquarters outside the region |
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· large, national development/environment organizations in developing countries (Sarvodaya, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) |
· large international environmental organizations (World Wide Fund for Nature, International Conservation Union) |
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· small environmental organizations in developing countries (Environmental Foundation, King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation) |
· small international environmental organizations (World Resources Institute, World Society for the Protection of Animals) |
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· small to medium-sized environmental organizations in newly industrialized countries or emerging economies (Malaysian Nature Society, Thailand Environment Institute) |
· international networks of environment/development organizations (Rainforest Action Network) |
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· small to large environmental organizations in developed countries (Australian Conservation Foundation, Japan Tropical Forest Action Network) |
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· national/regional networks of development/environment organizations (Third World Network, Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development) |
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The number of organizations is determined to a large extent by the nature of the political environment. Some of the more restrictive societies, including Myanmar and China, make it relatively difficult for civil society to organize itself. In China, for example, the civic voluntary tradition was broken when communism was established in 1949. Foreign NGOs have been active for more than a decade, however, with the NGO China Group, involving Oxfam (United Kingdom), NOVIB (Netherlands), and the German Agro-Action, assisting the Chinese government in reaching out to the poor since 1986. In other countries, like the Philippines and Thailand, where registration is not required, a great number of citizens' groups are established informally.
The activities of constituents of environmental movements vary with their size and geographical scope, among other factors. Generally, large Asia-Pacific developing country ECSOs approach environmental issues from the perspective of poverty reduction and therefore place human concerns at the centre of their strategies. International ECSOs, as well as Asia-Pacific ECSOs from industrialized countries, on the other hand, tend to place the conservation of nature and natural resources at the top of their agendas, with human concerns often added as an afterthought. This distinction is increasingly overcome, however, reflected, for example in the trend by conservation organizations towards Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs).
A review by the Asian NGO Coalition (ANGOC) revealed a number of approaches used by Asian NGOs in addressing the relationship between poverty and environment:
· information dissemination on environmental issues among the various publics, e.g. communities, government, business, etc.;· education and training of technical and field staff and community leaders on environmental protection, conservation, rehabilitation processes and technologies;
· field projects on environmental protection, conservation, and rehabilitation;
· establishing local and international linkages with other NGOs and resource organizations, especially the environmental NGOs; and
· field projects on community forestry with components (e.g. fruit-tree planting, nurseries, etc.); alternative agricultural practices (e.g. organic farming, wasteland development, coastal development, etc.); fuel-efficient lamps and cook stoves; alternative sources of energy (e.g. solar, biogas, waste recycling, etc.); sanitation and health facilities and services; housing with sanitation and potable water components; potable water sources and facilities (ANGOC, 1995).
Most of these activities are also undertaken by international ECSOs, either as components of larger projects or as stand-alones. In order to better involve local stakeholders, many international ECSOs, particularly the large conservation NGOs, establish working partnerships with local counterpart organizations.
Forestry and forest-related issues are only one domain where NGOs and other civil society organizations have increasingly become involved. Globally, the amount of international funds channelled through NGOs reached about US$ 7 billion in 1990 - the equivalent of 16% of total bilateral aid flows - compared to only US$ 3.6 billion in 1983 (Williams, 1990; dark, 1991). As a result, their positive and negative characteristics have been the subject of intensive research, a review of which would clearly go beyond the scope of this paper. Furthermore, some of the conclusions do not readily apply to all environmental organizations, mainly because one of the major evaluation criteria, that of reaching the greatest number of rural people, is often irrelevant to ECSOs.
On the other hand, many of the more general traits apply both to CSOs in general and to ECSOs. Compared to government and the private sector, often-mentioned factors on the positive side of CSOs can include their ability to:
· reach the poor;
· obtain participation of the intended beneficiaries;
· achieve the correct balance between development processes and outcomes;
· work with the people;
· be more flexible and responsive;
· strengthen local institutions;
· achieve outcomes at less cost, partly as a result of low cost management style;
· act as an instrument of empowerment - enable local people to take control of development decisions;
· pluralize the institutional environment and promote a democratic political culture;
· experiment with unorthodox ideas and practices;
· show patience coupled with a strategic perspective;
· undertake people-centred research and to act quickly and flexibly;
· faster learning through and application of experience;
· to articulate rural reality;
· to struggle to get things right, and thereby question, change and learn at the local level; and/or
· to work on longer time horizons, as they are less affected by the time and target-bound 'project' culture.
On the negative side, CSOs are sometimes criticized for their:
· technical and human capacity limitations;
· lack of accountability;
· intransigence;
· short lifetime;
· self-righteousness or limited vision (particularly in the case of environmental ECSOs); and/or
· opportunistic raison d'être.
In sum, demands for transparency and accountability are as appropriate for CSOs as for government agencies and the private sector if CSOs are to contribute to sustainable forestry management in constructive ways.
