Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and Global Civil Society

Transcription

1 Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and Global Civil Society Ford, Lucy H. Global Environmental Politics, Volume 3, Number 2, May 2003, pp (Article) Published by The MIT Press For additional information about this article Access Provided by Reed College at 01/30/11 11:59PM GMT

2 Challenging Lucy H. FordGlobal Environmental Governance Challenging Global Environmental Governance: Social Movement Agency and Global Civil Society Lucy H. Ford* The development of global governance is part of the evolution of human efforts to organize life on the planet, and that process will always be ongoing. Commission on Global Governance 1 Within orthodox International Relations (IR), global governance is widely regarded as the solution to problems perceived to be global, such as environmental degradation. Among these efforts to organize life on the planet social movements have been all but invisible, traditionally perceived as mere mosquitoes on the evening breeze, relegated to their national contexts, hardly seen and certainly never heard at the high table of international economic and political relations. 2 Only recently has the more established end of the spectrum of social movements that of large-scale NGOs been accorded a space for engagement with global environmental governance through the sphere of global civil society, which has been widely portrayed as a democratizing force. However the orthodox, liberal conceptualization eschews an analysis of power relations, both inside the sphere and between global civil society, the inter-state system and the global market. It tends to conºate social movements with NGOs. Much has been written about social movements in global politics, which need not be reviewed here. 3 In this article social movements are broadly conceived as lying on a spectrum ranging from grassroots movements to transnational NGOs engaged in working for what they perceive to be progressive social and ecological change. In line with the critical IPE perspective outlined in the introduction to this volume, global governance including that of the environment is seen as embedded in the neoliberal global political economy, which is hegemonic in the * The author thanks the editors, and Zoe Young for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this article. 1. Commission on Global Governance 1995, xvi. 2. Walker 1994, For example Willetts 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998; and Waterman For an excellent overview of the literature as well as the argument about conºation see Eschle and Stammers Global Environmental Politics 3:2, May by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 120

3 Lucy H. Ford 121 neo-gramscian sense that dominant power relations are maintained by consent as well as coercion. 4 Hegemony is maintained through orthodox discourse, such as that of global environmental governance and global civil society, which is not separate from but embedded in social practices. 5 A critical approach distinguishes critical theory from problem-solving theory, where the latter takes for granted the framework of existing power relations and institutions and is concerned with the smooth functioning of the system. By contrast, critical theory calls the very framework into question and seeks to analyze how it is maintained and changed. 6 The article begins by brieºy tracing the evolving discourse of international environmental regimes to that of global environmental governance, which appears to be marked in particular by the inclusion of global civil society and thereby ostensibly social movements. It then goes on to analyze social movements through a critical conceptualization of agency in relation to global hegemony. An illustration is provided of social movements campaigning against toxic waste. The relationship between thinking globally and acting locally is examined, and it is argued that all activism must have an analysis of the global, even though actual activism necessarily takes place in a particular locality, however such localities may vary. What is global about global social movement activism is the movements challenge to global hegemony and to hegemonic forms of environmental governance. Global is understood here as a causal category rather than a spatial term, thus avoiding the conºation of global with transnational or international, as orthodox analysts often do. Unlike the orthodox spatial deªnition of global environmental degradation, Julian Saurin has argued that environmental degradation is global because it is caused by social, economic and political structures that are global. 7 The emphasis here is on the cause, not the effect. The article goes on to reconsider the sphere of global civil society in a neo-gramscian framework as the site for simultaneously challenging and maintaining hegemony and it is asked to what extent global social movement agency may constitute a counter-hegemonic challenge to global environmental governance. Global Environmental Governance Within orthodox IR the response to environmental degradation has been of an institutional nature, focusing on international cooperation and the ordering and management of the inter-state system. This emerges clearly from the literature on international regime theory, 8 which has been widely criticized in ways 4. Cox 1981, 137. A neo-gramscian approach may also be adopted to explain the growth of private environmental governance. See Falkner, this volume. 5. For example Porter and Welsh Brown 1991; CGG 1995; and Young Cox 1981, Saurin For example Krasner 1983; and Young 1989.

4 122 Challenging Global Environmental Governance which need not be repeated here. 9 The point for the present purposes is that social movements are absent from orthodox analysis, including regime theory. International regimes are the stuff of states, inter-state institutions and certain privileged non-state actors who provide experts in the epistemic communities that form around particular issue areas (but see Vogler, this volume). 10 But while NGOs may contribute to epistemic communities, the epistemic communities themselves do not embrace the concerns of the more radical NGOs and grassroots movements, which have often been created as a result of the direct experience of the problems. Simply put, epistemic communities are part of the problem-solving community, whereas many civil society groups have a more critical perspective. There is much continuity between the international regimes approach of the 1970s and 1980s and the more recent development of a discourse of global governance. The quotation from the Commission on Global Governance (CGG) at the start of this article exempliªes an orthodox discourse, which portrays global governance as a natural quest for planetary order. Within this discourse, there is a consensus that global environmental cooperation and management is crucial to dealing with global environmental degradation, which in orthodox parlance is understood in spatial terms as those issues that affect more than one country, and potentially the whole globe. 11 The orthodox discourse of global environmental governance, however, does not appear to differ much from the old tales and practices of international regimes. Both approaches can be seen as processes of institutionalization that stabilize and perpetuate a particular order. 12 Richard Ashley argues that governance as such is about the imposition of international purpose, which centers on the production and objectiªcation of enduring structures that... lend to global life an effect of continuity, of a direction, and of a uniªed collective end beyond political questioning. 13 What Ashley calls a discourse of continuity constitutes both a temporal and spatial enclosure and thereby forecloses on the possibility of change. The boundaries of the discourse are never questioned and the limited scope of a problem-solving approach precludes an understanding of environmental degradation as embedded in the wider global political economy and deeper social relations than merely those of states and experts. In concrete terms this can be seen in the relatively weak outcomes of soft environmental negotiating: for example the shallow outcomes of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the focus on voluntary arrangements such as the Global Compact rather than legally binding measures to enforce corporate accountability, and most recently the widely perceived failure of the 2002 World 9. For example Kütting 1998; and Paterson Haas et al For example Porter and Welsh Brown Cox 1981, Ashley 1993, 254.

5 Lucy H. Ford 123 Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg to fulªll its mandate. However, there is one key difference between international regimes and global governance of relevance to this article, and that is the explicit reference in the latter discourse to the growing importance of global civil society, while maintaining that the state remains the primary locus of authority. 14 The CGG Report Our Global Neighbourhood deªnes global governance as intergovernmental relationships, which now also involve NGOs, citizens movements, multinational corporations, and the global capital market. 15 On this view all that appears to be global about global governance is the inclusion of global civil society. The history of this shift from an international regimes approach to a global environmental governance approach can be charted in the history of international environmental negotiations. Key to this is the language of participation that emerged out of the Brundtland Report, which provided the groundwork for the UNCED conference, and which at ªrst sight appears to present a radical break from the mere involvement of epistemic communities. At UNCED Agenda 21 was adopted as a comprehensive blueprint for global action in key areas of sustainable development, including the role of various sectors of society: women, indigenous peoples, NGOs, workers, trade unions, business and industry, and the scientiªc and technological community. 16 In short, almost everyone had become a stakeholder in global environmental governance. While for the ªrst time ever the world s population was being called upon to participate in the saving of the planet, this democratization of environmental governance has not actually been extended to the negotiating table. Rather, the space global civil society is a fairly exclusive club, which cuts the grassroots off. As we shall see below, such a picture could equally be seen in the neo- Gramscian sense as an entrenchment and legitimation of hegemonic global environmental governance through the sphere of global civil society. However, let us ªrst turn to an analysis of agency as a generic and potentially radical concept, in order to conceptualize social movement challenges to orthodox global environmental governance. Social Movement Agency Part of the explanation for the absence and invisibility of social movements in most accounts of world politics lies in the belief that they are simply not the subject matter of inter-state relations, that they have no ontological status. Furthermore, deeper epistemological structures are involved in obscuring the role of social movements as actors in world politics as well as inhibiting an under- 14. For example Young 1997, CGG 1995, UN 1992.

6 124 Challenging Global Environmental Governance standing of the role of generic agency in analyzing resistance and social change. In IR, as in other disciplines, questions about agents and structures and the relationship between the two have sparked an ongoing debate, referred to as the agent-structure problem. While this debate has stimulated important discussions regarding epistemological and ontological questions in IR theory, it is nevertheless limited in that it does not for the most part broaden the range of actors or structures. Its focus remains with states (actors) and the interstate system (structure). Further, it conºates agency with agents/actors. Orthodox IR privileges the agency of states within the state system understood as state actors and their observable actions. This conºation inhibits an understanding of the complexity of social change and the possibilities of radical transformation of the present global hegemony because it fails to recapture and theorize a generic form of agency which resides in structures and agents/actors. Agency in its generic form is an abstract concept which contains both dominant as well as emancipatory forms. Agency thus refers to what becomes socially established in any particular historical period as the natural limits of social reality and thence of social practice. 17 These natural limits of social reality and social practice are further bound by global hegemony, and any conceptualization of resistance and emancipatory forms of counter-hegemonic agency require a recognition of global hegemony and the dominant agency already inscribed within it. 18 While the orthodox framework has traditionally also marginalized social movements, the point is however not merely to bring social movements in, but to focus on radical agency and its challenge to global hegemony, in this particular instance on the part of social movements. This is not to say that there are necessarily direct causal links between social movements, resistance and change. The concept of generic agency avoids this conºation and allows us to theorize resistance and change as being mediated through the relationships of power between actors and structures. Social movement agency must be situated within global hegemony; within the natural limits of social reality. Following from the above deªnition of global, where global refers to a space of causal power, agency is thus also global. 19 If social movements themselves fail to recognize their own location within global hegemony they may end up reproducing global hegemony rather than challenging it. Maclean warns that These contemporary groups may be performing unintentionally a crucial historical requirement for the completion of the establishment of the ªrst fully global (as distinct from international) hegemonic formation. A new transnational, or non-national bloc of subordinated but informed consent, complementary to but apparently separated from the transnational, or nonnational, managerial class Maclean 1999b, 33. See also Maclean 1999a; and Bourdieu 1977, Maclean 1999a, Maclean 1999b, 182, emphasis in original. 20. Maclean 1999a, 4.

7 125 Challenging Global Environmental Governance The core of the formation of global hegemony is, according to Maclean, a discourse of technical-rational knowledge, 21 which must therefore be a focal point for resistance to global hegemony. Although it is important to make social movements visible as actors in international relations, it is not sufªcient for them merely to gain access to the negotiating table. They must also challenge the discourse of technical-rational knowledge, which is particularly prominent in global environmental governance where environmental problems are seen as problems capable of technocratic solution. Social movements campaigning against environmental degradation include a diversity of types, employing a range of tactics and strategies. The more institutionalized NGOs that are actively engaging with global environmental governance, work largely within the framework of technical-rational knowledge thereby arguably contributing unintentionally to the reproduction of orthodox global environmental governance. Other more radical movements reject engagement, pointing out the need for deep structural change by revealing the irrationalities and ecologically and socially contradictory nature of production, consumption and distribution within the global political economy. They are challenging technical-rational management, which is not capable of resolving environmental problems. Their resistance is an attempt at seizing radical, counter-hegemonic agency. However, their voices, more often than not go unheard, as they remain outside the realm of discourse. 22 As I argue below, the challenge may lie in a reconciliation between these diverse ends of the spectrum, in an attempt to challenge the boundaries of discourse and hence practice. Social Movements Campaigning against Toxic Waste Toxic waste is one example of a growing environmental problem. Increasing volumes of toxic waste and the ensuing toxic waste trade are an inherent if contradictory feature of the present global political economy, reºecting patterns of production and consumption which maintain and reproduce global hegemony. Countless social movements, from grassroots community groups to large NGOs such as Greenpeace, are campaigning to expose the damaging nature of toxic waste. The struggle against toxic waste is not a single issue, but one that is fundamentally embedded in the global political economy and one that emphasizes unequal social relations of power, throwing up questions of race, class and gender. Thus, for example, the environmental justice movements that have sprung up and are challenging the dumping of waste are often made up predominantly of women of disadvantaged social groups who in their struggle challenge the production processes directly. Issues of democracy and accountability come to the forefront during their struggles, as they ªnd they are ªghting against bureau- 21. Maclean 1999a, Bourdieu 1977, 168.

8 126 Challenging Global Environmental Governance cratic hierarchies whose economic interests tend to side with industry. 23 Dominant forms of knowledge are also prevalent, as activists come up against a scientiªc elite who are defending a particular discourse and rationality that may discredit any tacit and lay understandings of the environmental and health consequences. 24 Furthermore, the movements challenging the toxic waste trade point out the issue of injustice between countries and communities across the globe and are part of a growing, diverse constellation of global counterhegemonic movements. 25 The case of toxic waste clearly illustrates attempts to disrupt dominant technical-rational enclosures. The struggle against toxic waste is a struggle against expert knowledge, especially scientiªc knowledge. Science is not a neutral tool but needs to be understood in the context of the global political economy as capable of being turned to the use of states to justify inaction in the face of scientiªc uncertainty 26 or for the protection of corporate interests. One of the ªrst incidents exposing the devastating effects on human health resulting from the dumping of toxic waste was Love Canal. The town suffered decades of highly toxic waste dumping by a chemical subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum. Construction of a school and hundreds of homes on the site took place with the full knowledge of public ofªcials. 27 In the words of Lois Gibbs, who initiated the grassroots community movement, the history of Love Canal was one of: cover-ups, lies, and deception; data manipulation by corporations and government as well as fraudulent claims and faked studies... It s a story of money and power; of how corporations inºuence government actions and how this collusion affects the public. 28 Such practices triggered the politicization of waste, exposing the class, race and gender aspects of waste pollution. The placing of landªlls alone became a controversial political issue. On the one hand, protests such as Love Canal have triggered an environmental justice movement, which challenges the hegemonic discourse of technical-rational knowledge as played out through states and interstate institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. Some of these movements are part of a wider anti-globalization/pro-democracy movement, such as for example the Peoples Global Action (PGA). 29 On the other hand, the more mainstream NGOs counterparts do not necessarily campaign against the underlying structures and processes of power, but for the amelioration of the environment, or the greening of government and business. In the process they tend to adopt and 23. Gibbs and CCHW Krauss 1993; Brown and Masterson-Allen 1994; and Brown and Ferguson Puckett 1999; and Hallowes Saurin 1996, Gibbs and CCHW Gibbs and CCHW 1995, Ford 1999.

9 Lucy H. Ford 127 work within the technical-rational discourse. The radical groups, however, seek to challenge the total enclosure of capitalist industrialization. In doing so they must be reºexive and conscious about their agency and their position within global hegemony. From Nimby to Niaby A Global Movement? Groups campaigning against toxic waste dumping are engaged in the very speciªc targeting of, for example, a ªrm or government department. However, their concerns do not thereby remain of a narrow, single-issue type. What started off as a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) campaign fostered consciousness about the toxic organization of society and a deepening of understanding of the related issues on a more systemic basis, leading to what some have called a radical environmental populism. 30 The ideological shift from calls for NIMBY to calls for NIABY (Not In Anybody s Back Yard) 31 presents a concrete recognition that toxic waste should not be produced, or at least that any production should be substantially reduced, dealt with at source and disposed of properly, thereby directly challenging production processes and consumption patterns. It is also a wider realization of an environmental justice movement that engages with broader questions of gender, class and racial inequality, lack of democracy, the power of knowledge, the wider capitalist political economy; in short the enclosures that shape and are shaped by social relations of power. The issue of toxic waste in a concrete way breaks through these enclosures, politicizing issues that were previously considered economic (industrial processes, landªlls) and private (individual family health) as well as politicizing previously marginalized citizens, in particular women. 32 Apart from challenging technical-rational discourse, social movements must be aware of their position in global hegemony as seen above. John Maclean has argued that: social movements and TNGOs (transnational non-governmental organizations) that profess emancipatory aims (and do so sincerely) are bound to misrecognize their own relationships with the deep structure of hegemony in the late-modern world, unless their analysis of agency is articulated through the context of globalization. 33 The activism around waste highlights dynamics between the local and the global within the environmental movement as well as the global political economy. In particular it demonstrates a paradox relating to activity in developed and developing countries, as seen in the initial NIMBY movement in the North, which contributed indirectly to the dumping of toxic waste in poorer countries 30. Szasz 1994, Brown and Masterson-Allen 1994, Krauss Maclean 1999a, 3.

10 128 Challenging Global Environmental Governance giving rise in turn to environmental justice movements in these countries. This highlights the active role a social movement can assume as part of the distanciated features of globalization and how such a NIMBY movement needs to be reºexive and critical about its own role within current hegemonic structures. Another paradox relates to the emancipatory potential of movements. The initial NIMBY movement, while misguided on a global scale, nevertheless nurtured valid and valuable forms of gender and political emancipation. This selfcreative aspect of social movement activism needs to be a part of the reconstruction of radical agency. Radical social movement agency cannot solely be equated with revolutionary agency and juxtaposed to reformist agency. Such a fragmentation of social movement agency is disempowering in the face of dominant hegemonic agency. There is a spectrum of social movements with emancipatory potential, however latent and diverse. Furthermore, this type of activism is mostly a reaction to concrete local concerns rather than triggered by orthodox global concerns such as ozone depletion or global warming. 34 For these reasons the environmental justice movements that campaign around issues of toxic waste present a radical challenge to mainstream environmentalism. On the issues of class and gender, for example, the politicization of working-class women through the issue of toxic waste has instilled a suspicion of mainstream environmental organizations that tend to reºect the masculinist, hierarchical nature of social institutions 35 and which fail to analyze the underlying issues of inequality in access to power and inºuence. 36 The global aspect of grassroots movements forming a decentralized environmental justice movement thus lies in their challenge to global hegemonic structures of production and consumption, unlike mainstream environmental movements that campaign about global issues. More and more movements are addressing issues explicitly in their global context. However, as noted above, the global is not a spatial but a causal category. It is thus possible to think globally and act locally simultaneously. Ultimately, movements that seek to challenge global hegemony have to adopt a holistic approach, which some global social movements are doing by targeting the interconnectedness of environmental and social problems within the global political economy. However, this analysis needs to be reconsidered in the light of global civil society. Global Civil Society: Democratizing Force for Global Governance or Challenge to Global Hegemony? Global civil society is usually understood as a sphere of voluntary societal association that is located above the individual and below the state but also across state boundaries, where people voluntarily organize themselves to pursue various aims. 37 It is interpreted as a space for dialogue between the institutions of 34. Brown and Ferguson Seager Krauss 1993, Wapner 1997, 66.

11 Lucy H. Ford 129 global governance, such as for example the WTO or the UN, and societal actors ranging from NGOs to business and industry lobbyists. In this view, global civil society represents a liberal democratic space that complements the states-system and as such constitutes global governance. 38 It is less clear how global civil society thus understood could represent a site for challenge. This view seems at best naive and at worst subversive of the potentiality of social movements because it obscures power relations and hegemony. From a neo-gramscian perspective, global civil society is seen as the terrain for both legitimizing and challenging global governance. This is so irrespective of whether global civil society is strictly outside the state and the market economy, or whether market and state actors are understood as part of global civil society. Further, global civil society is not just a sphere of activity, but a discursive space, which helps to reproduce global hegemony. As mentioned above, social movements must recognize their position within this hegemonic constellation, and recognize also that their obstacles are not only other, more powerful actors, such as states and market actors, but that there are structural and discursive forces at play, of which the very framework of global civil society is itself a part, and which social movements themselves may actually be actively reproducing, rather than challenging. At the same time, however, social movements can be creative, emancipatory forces for social change. In particular their insistence on transparency and accountability of global institutions, their tactics of sometimes engaging with and sometimes by-passing states and interstate institutions, as well as their diversity of connections between professional, established NGOs and grassroots movements may actually contribute to positive, emancipatory cultural and social change by introducing new ways of organizing and interacting. Social movements as an element of the global political economy cannot be ignored in that they are instrumental in getting issues on the agenda, though they may not be able to directly inºuence the direction the agenda takes. Some social movements, particularly the more established NGOs, seek to inºuence the global agenda by engaging with the institutions of global governance. 39 Environmental movements, as well as other actors such as labor organizations or consumer groups, have managed to persuade institutions such as the WTO to begin implementing calls made in Agenda 21 for increasing NGO participation. Such participation is not institutionalized as yet, but informal arrangements have been made. The representation of NGOs alongside corporate actors corresponds very much with the liberal description in Our Global Neighbourhood. Further, the NGOs represented tend to be large mainstream NGOs as opposed to citizens movements. Institutions such as the WTO or the World Bank show their awareness that calls for participation and transparency need to be addressed, though it remains to be seen whether this goes beyond paying lip service to the rhetoric 38. CGG 1995; and Lipschutz Williams and Ford 1998.

12 130 Challenging Global Environmental Governance of Agenda 21 or Our Global Neighbourhood. This is not to undermine the vast efforts made by NGOs within the UN system and other global institutions. However, the question of cooptation remains. Even though some NGOs may critique orthodox approaches to trade, environment and sustainable development, for example, it is questionable to what extent orthodoxy is up for negotiation within fora that are designed from the start by dominant institutions. Rather, their engagement in this setting could be seen as reproducing the existing hegemony, especially with the tendency to adopt the technical-rational discourse. 40 Similarly for example, the Secretariat of the Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (Basel Convention) allows NGOs to observe its various meetings. The back row is always taken up by a variety of members of global civil society ranging from Greenpeace to CEFIC (The European chemical industry lobby). The Basel Convention may be an exceptional case, in that over the years NGOs such as Greenpeace have been instrumental in collecting data about the toxic waste trade, and have been at the forefront, together with the developing countries, of campaigning for a ban on the trade in waste from North to South. In this sense the overall shaping of the Basel Convention has been directly inºuenced by a major environmental NGO. 41 However, at the Conferences of Parties and technical working group meetings, the agenda is already set by the Secretariat and the member states. The Basel Convention, as such, remains an inter-state institution. It is a standard response to NGOs to tell them to go and lobby their member states. NGOs are thus marginalized within the international negotiating process. In other institutions such as the WTO, they are at present still excluded from the actual processes of negotiations. Global civil society is not necessarily an emancipatory force in this sense. Rather, its agency is enclosed in the institutions of global governance and the NGOs that enter that realm run the risk of cooptation while real decision-making power remains within the organizations which have not been democratized, such as the WTO, World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) which pay more attention to the voices of business and industry, or in business organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development directly. 42 As seen above, many movements reject dominant forms of global environmental governance. However, to what extent do they constitute a counterhegemonic force? According to the neo-gramscian analysis of Robert Cox a transformation in world order would require fundamental change in social relations and in the national political orders, which correspond to national structures of social relations. 43 For Cox this project cannot take place within the global institutions, as they are capable of absorbing counter-hegemonic 40. Williams and Ford 1998; and Ford Clapp 1994, Chatterjee and Finger 1994, 151ff; and Ford 1999, Cox 1996, 140.

13 Lucy H. Ford 131 ideas. 44 This line of argument complements the view that the liberal notion of global civil society acts as a vehicle of cooptation. Cox argues that counterhegemonic forces need to return to the national context. Although activism can necessarily only take place in a geographical place, that is a locale, the transnational links are invaluable in terms of creating a shared understanding of global hegemony however differentially it is manifested across the globe. Although ultimately social movements will return to their individual localities, they are building bridges of mutual awareness of the struggles going on around the globe. In the spirit of this growing collective consciousness social movements may need to adopt a symbiotic strategy of pragmatic engagement as well as resistance. An example could be seen in the case of the campaign against toxic waste. During the negotiations of the Basel Convention and in later negotiations, NGOs played an important role. In particular, alliances were formed between NGOs and delegates from the Group of 77 developing countries in attempts to push for a ban on the waste trade between developed and developing countries. 45 The International Toxic Waste Action Network and later the Basel Action Network (BAN) are examples of networks of transnational movements campaigning against the toxic waste trade. BAN actively promotes implementation of the Basel Convention and the ban on national levels but also maintains links with grassroots movements across the globe. Members of BAN as well as Greenpeace attend the COPs on a regular basis, thus taking on a dual role, engaging with the international policy process as well as resisting on the ground. 46 BAN thus differs from other NGOs that actively engage in the international policy process, such as Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) or the World Conservation Union, that are highly institutionalized and have arguably lost touch with the grassroots of the environmental movement. BAN is a global social movement in the sense outlined above, because it appreciates the causal importance of the global political economy in the production of the global toxics crisis. 47 While the Basel Convention in itself is not by any means an attempt at challenging hegemony, a ban on toxic waste moving from developed to developing countries is nevertheless an important incremental step towards progressive social change. Engaging in this process as well as retaining an outside, grassroots critique is an important element of reºexive social movement agency. The question of cooptation is therefore not so clear-cut. Strategically a symbiotic approach may be the way forward for realizing radical agency in the global political economy. Zoe Young has remarked: 44. Cox 1996, Clapp 1994, Puckett 1999, Available online at Policy Principles.

14 132 Challenging Global Environmental Governance Elites adopting and adapting outsiders rhetoric also recruit their smartest experts; while radicals extend the visible territory of critique, amenable insiders play the game of consultancy, money and inºuence. While used to defend the global system from attack, they may channel support to the resistance in their constituencies, and in return carry their ideas nearer to the heart of power. 48 The challenge for grassroots movements is to re-radicalize the NGOs and their message, which often becomes watered down through the process of institutionalization. In this way, global social movements may start to radicalize global civil society. Conclusions Global social movements have the potential to challenge global hegemony. A diverse range of movements are attempting to challenge orthodox environmental governance. They do so through a variety of strategies, some engaging with the global agenda in order to inºuence its direction, others taking a rejectionist stance against the totality of global capitalist hegemony. Rather than juxtaposing them as insiders versus outsiders, however, this article has argued that they may be seen more broadly as located on a spectrum. Furthermore, the article has argued that the agency of social movements involves more than merely participating in global environmental governance. Agency, including social movement agency, is already tied up in global hegemony and global civil society, which raises a number of questions for social movements to consider in realizing their own radical agency. Part of the challenge they face is the dominance of technical-rational discourse, which is constitutive of global hegemony. The article showed that some movements are indeed contesting this discourse. The article also argued that a conceptualization of global as causal rather than spatial is crucial in the realization of radical agency, and that social movements adopting such an analysis may be seen as global social movements. These movements are also beginning to recognize their place within global hegemony. A collective global consciousness would bring the insiders and outsiders together in a symbiotic strategy. Some radical movements are pointing out the dangers of cooptation through global civil society, as well as the dangers of adopting orthodox discourse. They are recognizing the need for the engagers to retain links with the grassroots in the battle over the agency of global civil society and attempts to radicalize and expand it. 49 Similarly, grassroots movements that think globally while resisting locally, nationally and transnationally across the globe can remain in dialogue with the institutionalized environmental organizations, keeping them alert and keeping the radical message of ecol- 48. Young 1999, Gorz 1987, 40.

15 Lucy H. Ford 133 ogy and social justice alive by challenging the limits of social reality and social practice. References Ashley, Richard Imposing International Purpose: Notes on the Problematic of Governance. In Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges, edited by Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau, Lexington MA: D. C. Heath. Bourdieu, Pierre Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Phil, and Faith I. T. Ferguson Making a Big Stink Women s Work, Women s Relationships, and Toxic Waste Activism. Gender and Society 9 (2): Brown, Phil, and Susan Masterson-Allen The Toxic Waste Movement: A New Type of Activism. Society and Natural Resources 7 (3): Clapp, Jennifer The Toxic Waste Trade with Less-Industrialised Countries: Economic Linkages and Political Alliances. Third World Quarterly 15 (3): Chatterjee, Pratap, and Matthias Finger The Earth Brokers. London: Routledge. CGG (Commission for Global Governance) Our Global Neighbourhood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cox, Robert W Social Forces, States and World Orders. Millennium 10 (2): Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method. In Approaches to World Order, edited by Robert W. Cox and Timothy J. Sinclair, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eschle, Catherine, and Neil Stammers Taking Part: Social Movements, INGOs and Global Change. Paper presented at the 5 th Conference of the European Sociological Association. Helsinki. Ford, Lucy H Social Movements and the Globalisation of Environmental Governance. IDS Bulletin 30 (3): Gibbs, Lois M., and CCHW (The Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste) Dying from Dioxin: A Citizen s Guide to Reclaiming our Health and Rebuilding Democracy. Boston MA: Southend Press. Gorz, André Ecology as Politics. London: Pluto. Haas, Peter, Robert Keohane, and Marc A. Levy, eds Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection. Cambridge: MIT Press. Hallowes, David Hidden Faces Environment, Development, Justice: South Africa and the Global Context. Scottsville: Earthlife Africa. Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Krasner, Stephen D., ed International Regimes. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Krauss, Celene Women and Toxic Waste Protests: Race, Class and Gender as Resources of Resistance. Qualitative Sociology 16 (3): Kütting, Gabriela Assessing the Effectiveness of International Environmental Agreements: A Critique of Regime Theory and New Dimensions of Analysis. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British International Studies Association, Leeds.

16 134 Challenging Global Environmental Governance Lipschutz, Ronnie D., with Judith Mayer Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance. Albany: SUNY Press. Maclean, John. 1999a. Towards a Political Economy of Agency in Contemporary International Relations. Draft Paper b. Towards a Political Economy of Agency in Contemporary International Relations. In Politics and Globalisation: Knowledge, Ethics, Agency, edited by Martin Shaw, London: Routledge. Paterson, Matthew Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation, Resistance. London: Macmillan. Porter, Gareth, and Janet Welsh Brown Global Environmental Politics. Boulder: Westview Press. Puckett, Jim When Trade is Toxic: The WTO Threat to Public and Planetary Health. Seattle: APEX/BAN. Available online at: Saurin, Julian Global Environmental Degradation, Modernity and Environmental Knowledge. Environmental Politics 2 (4): International Relations, Social Ecology and the Globalisation of Environmental Change. In The Environment and International Relations, edited by John Vogler and Mark Imber, London: Routledge. Seager, Joni Earth Follies: Feminism, Politics and the Environment. London: Earthscan. Szasz, Andrew Ecopopulism Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. United Nations Agenda 21. Geneva: UNCED. Walker, R. B. J Social Movements/World Politics. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 23 (3): Wapner, Paul Governance in Global Civil Society. In Global Governance: Drawing Insight from the Environmental Experience, edited by Oran Young, Cambridge: MIT Press. Waterman, Peter Globalization, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms. London: Continuum. Willetts, Peter, ed The Conscience of the World: The Inºuence of NGOs in the UN System. London: Hurst and Co. Williams, Marc, and Lucy Ford The World Trade Organisation, Social Movements and Global Environmental Management. In Environmental Movements: Local, National, Global, edited by Chris Rootes, London: Frank Cass. Young, Oran International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press., ed Global Governance: Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press a. Rights, Rules and Resources in World Affairs. In Global Governance: Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience, edited by Oran Young, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Young, Zoe NGOs and the Global Environmental Facility: Friendly Foes. In Environmental Movements: Local, National, Global, edited by Chris Rootes, London: Frank Cass.