The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments.
The environmental movement is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create sustainable living. Environmentalists advocate the just and sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behavior. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, as well as human rights.
An ecovillage is a traditional or intentional community that aims to become more socially, culturally, economically and/or environmentally sustainable. An ecovillage strives to have the least possible negative impact on the natural environment through the intentional physical design and behavioural choices of its inhabitants. It is consciously designed through locally owned, participatory processes to regenerate and restore its social and natural environments. Most range from a population of 50 to 250 individuals, although some are smaller, and traditional ecovillages are often much larger. Larger ecovillages often exist as networks of smaller sub-communities. Some ecovillages have grown through like-minded individuals, families, or other small groups—who are not members, at least at the outset—settling on the ecovillage's periphery and participating de facto in the community. There are currently more than 10,000 ecovillages around the world.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. It is involved in data gathering and analysis, research, field projects, advocacy, and education. IUCN's mission is to "influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable".
The exploitation of natural resources describes using natural resources, often non-renewable or limited, for economic growth or development. Environmental degradation, human insecurity, and social conflict frequently accompany natural resource exploitation. The impacts of the depletion of natural resources include the decline of economic growth in local areas; however, the abundance of natural resources does not always correlate with a country's material prosperity. Many resource-rich countries, especially in the Global South, face distributional conflicts, where local bureaucracies mismanage or disagree on how resources should be used. Foreign industries also contribute to resource exploitation, where raw materials are outsourced from developing countries, with the local communities receiving little profit from the exchange. This is often accompanied by negative effects of economic growth around the affected areas such as inequality and pollution
Paul Gerard Hawken is an American environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, economist, and activist.
Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. Ecologism is more commonly used in continental European languages, while environmentalism is more commonly used in English but the words have slightly different connotations.
Michael Kevin Pollan is an American journalist who is a professor and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University. Concurrently, he is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where in 2020 he cofounded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, in which he leads the public-education program. Pollan is best known for his books that explore the socio-cultural impacts of food, such as The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Orion is an advertisement-free nonprofit quarterly magazine focused on nature, culture, and place addressing environmental and social issues.
Religion and environmentalism is an emerging interdisciplinary subfield in the academic disciplines of religious studies, religious ethics, the sociology of religion, and theology amongst others, with environmentalism and ecological principles as a primary focus.
Bioneer is a neologism coined by filmmaker, author and eco-activist Kenny Ausubel. According to Utne Reader, a bioneer is "a biological pioneer, an ecological inventor who's got an elegant and often simple set of solutions for environmental conundrums." As coined by Ausubel, the term describes individuals and groups working in diverse disciplines who have crafted creative solutions to various environmental and socio-cultural problems rooted in shared core values, including whole systems, (anticipatory) thinking, a view of all life as interdependent, and sustainable mutual aid.
Ecological design or ecodesign is an approach to designing products and services that gives special consideration to the environmental impacts of a product over its entire lifecycle. Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan define it as "any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." Ecological design can also be defined as the process of integrating environmental considerations into design and development with the aim of reducing environmental impacts of products through their life cycle.
Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recover in the present situation, and catastrophic if the ecosystem is projected to certainly collapse.
A sustainability organization is (1) an organized group of people that aims to advance sustainability and/or (2) those actions of organizing something sustainably. Unlike many business organizations, sustainability organizations are not limited to implementing sustainability strategies which provide them with economic and cultural benefits attained through environmental responsibility. For sustainability organizations, sustainability can also be an end in itself without further justifications.
The term "Harmony with Nature" refers to a principle of amicable and holistic co-existence between humanity and nature. It is used in several contexts, most prominently in relation to sustainable development and the rights of nature, both aimed at addressing anthropogenic environmental crises. In 2009, the United Nations created a program of the same name. Following support from the Bolivian Government, the UN General Assembly approved further resolutions on the topic. Events like the United Nations Earth Summit 2012 have provided a platform for exchange between different stakeholders. Below is the text of the proposal.
Kenny Ausubel is a social entrepreneur, investigative journalist, and award-winning filmmaker. He launched the annual National Bioneers Conference in 1990 with Nina Simons. He has received the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s Challenge Award as well as awards from the Rainforest Action Network and Global Green, among others.
Nina Simons is a co-founder & co-CEO of Bioneers, and an organizer of women's leadership retreats and trainings. Her book Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership (2018) received the 2018 Nautilus Gold Award in the "Women" category and Silver Award in the "Social Change & Social Justice: category.
Tom B.K. Goldtooth is a Native American environmental, climate, and economic justice activist, speaker, film producer, and Indigenous rights leader. He is active at local, national, and international levels as an advocate for building healthy and sustainable Indigenous communities based upon the foundation of Indigenous traditional knowledge. Goldtooth has served as executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) since 1996 after serving as a member of the IEN National Council since 1992.
Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentieth-century laws as generally grounded in a flawed frame of nature as "resource" to be owned, used, and degraded. Proponents argue that laws grounded in rights of nature direct humanity to act appropriately and in a way consistent with modern, system-based science, which demonstrates that humans and the natural world are fundamentally interconnected.
Nature-based solutions describe the development and use of nature (biodiversity) and natural processes to address diverse socio-environmental issues. These issues include climate change mitigation and adaptation, human security issues such as water security and food security, and disaster risk reduction. The aim is that resilient ecosystems provide solutions for the benefit of both societies and biodiversity. The 2019 UN Climate Action Summit highlighted nature-based solutions as an effective method to combat climate change. For example, nature-based systems for climate change adaptation can include natural flood management, restoring natural coastal defences, and providing local cooling.
