An ENGO (environmental non-governmental organization) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the field of environmentalism. These organizations operate both locally and internationally which makes them play an important role in dealing with different kinds of environmental issues that are happening in the contemporary world. [1] One of the most distinguishable things between environmental NGOs and environmental movements is that environmental NGOs have constitutions that state the rules of how power gets distributed among the people who are part of them. [1]
From the emergence of environmental NGOs in the 1970s and 1980s, back when people only started to acknowledge the seriousness of environmental issues, [1] many developments have been made towards helping the planet and its inhabitants. Some notable examples of these contributors are WWF, Greenpeace, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Friends of the Earth, Himalayan Wildlife Foundation, the Environmental Investigation Agency and the David Suzuki Foundation.
To evaluate the classification of environmental NGOs, it is important to consider these five factors: [1]
Main goals of environmental NGOs include but are not limited to: [2]
To fully understand the social, economic, and environmental effects that the organization can have on a region, it is also important to note that the organization can act outside the formal processes what state governments and other government institutions must comply with.
Environmental NGOs are organizations that are not run by federal or state governments, therefore they receive funds from private donors, corporations, and other institutions. [3] With political backup, environmental NGOs also receive considerable amounts of assets and resources through government sponsors such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) who supersede environmental policies. The funds issued by various parties inevitably influence the way their efforts will be put out, the different kinds of environmental policy-making, and the activities pursued to challenge and put pressure on the states to cooperate in environmental protection. [3] It is clear that private and non-private funding influences and affects the way environmental NGOs view and report environmental conditions.
The concept of local is also crucial to the kinds of efforts and objectives which environmental NGOs will carry out. [4] This aim is going to aid how environmental NGOs will "facilitate, fund, promote, and provide planning and organizational assistance to so-called grassroots organizations". [4] Their efforts come in many forms such as: launching campaigns against nuclear weapons testing, protesting whale hunting, and "international campaigns against the degradation of environmental goods caused by practices like "clearing of timber, and criticize states for their ineffective policies or transnational corporations for environmentally damaging production". [3]
By the 1980s, most of Zimbabwe's best land had been taken control of by European settlers which have been divided into categories of "(1) large-scale commercial farmland. (2) resettlement areas, (3) communal lands, (4) national parks and safari areas, (5) forest lands, and (6) urban land" which (with the exception of communal land) is owned and operated by the state. [5] Environmental problems there are defined as "a change in the physical environment brought about by human interferences which are perceived by people to be unacceptable with respect to a particular set of commonly shared norms". [6]
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.
Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.
A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in humanitarianism or the social sciences; they can also include clubs and associations that provide services to their members and others. NGOs can also be lobby groups for corporations, such as the World Economic Forum. NGOs are distinguished from international and intergovernmental organizations (IOs) in that the latter are more directly involved with sovereign states and their governments.
Ecological anthropology is a sub-field of anthropology and is defined as the "study of cultural adaptations to environments". The sub-field is also defined as, "the study of relationships between a population of humans and their biophysical environment". The focus of its research concerns "how cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments, and how people used elements of their culture to maintain their ecosystems". Ecological anthropology developed from the approach of cultural ecology, and it provided a conceptual framework more suitable for scientific inquiry than the cultural ecology approach. Research pursued under this approach aims to study a wide range of human responses to environmental problems.
The Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas or FUNAI is a Brazilian governmental protection agency for Amerindian interests and their culture.
Environmental issues in Pakistan include air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, climate change, pesticide misuse, soil erosion, natural disasters, desertification and flooding. According to the 2020 edition of the environmental performance index (EPI) ranking released by Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, Pakistan ranks 142 with an EPI score of 33.1, an increase of 6.1 over a 10-year period. It ranked 180 in terms of air quality. The climatic changes and global warming are the most alarming issues risking millions of lives across the country. The major reasons of these environmental issues are carbon emissions, population explosion, and deforestation.
Debt-for-nature swaps are financial transactions in which a portion of a developing nation's foreign debt is forgiven in exchange for local investments in environmental conservation measures.
The Rainforest Foundation Fund is a charitable foundation founded in 1987 and dedicated to drawing attention to rainforests and defending the rights of indigenous peoples living there.
Papua New Guinea together with the West Papua region of Indonesia make up a major tropical wilderness area that still contains 5% of the original and untouched tropical high-biodiversity terrestrial ecosystems. PNG in itself contains over 5% of the world's biodiversity in less than 1% of the world's total land area. The flora of New Guinea is unique because it has two sources of origin; the Gondwana flora from the south and flora with Asian origin from the west. As a result, New Guinea shares major family and genera with Australia and the East Asia, but is rich in local endemic species. The endemicity is a result of mountainous isolation, topographic and soil habitat heterogeneity, high forest disturbance rates and abundant aseasonal rainfall year round. PNG boasts some 15–21,000 higher plants, 3,000 species of orchids, 800 species of coral, 600 species of fish, 250 species of mammals and 760 species of birds and 8 species of tree-kangaroos out of which 84 genera of animals are endemic. Ecosystems range from lowland forests to montane forests, alpine flora down to coastal areas which contains some of the most extensive pristine mangrove areas in the world. Much of this biodiversity has remained intact for thousands of years because the ruggedness of the terrain made the interior lands inaccessible; furthermore low population density and restrictions on the effectiveness of traditional tools, ensured that these biodiversity was never overexploited.
Deforestation in Cambodia has increased in recent years. Cambodia is one of the world's most forest endowed countries, that was not historically widely deforested. However, massive deforestation for economic development threatens its forests and ecosystems. As of 2015, the country has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
Conservation refugees are people who are displaced from their native lands when conservation areas, such as parks and other protected areas, are created.
The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is a non-profit NGO working in Africa and South America. It is one of the first international organizations to support the indigenous peoples of the world's rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and fulfill their rights to land, life and livelihood. The Foundation aims to protect rainforests by securing the land rights of indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities. It also campaigns internationally on issues such as industrial logging, climate change, agricultural expansion and nature conservation.
Environmental anthropology is a sub-discipline of anthropology that examines the complex relationships between humans and the environments which they inhabit. This takes many shapes and forms, whether it be examining the hunting/gathering patterns of humans tens of thousands of years ago, archaeological investigations of early agriculturalists and their impact on deforestation or soil erosion, or how modern human societies are adapting to climate change and other anthropogenic environmental issues. This sub-field of anthropology developed in the 1960s from cultural ecology as anthropologists borrowed methods and terminology from growing developments in ecology and applied them to understand human cultures.
Arun Agrawal is a political scientist and the Samuel Trask Dana Professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) at the University of Michigan. Agrawal is the coordinator for the International Forestry Resources and Institutions network and does research in Africa and South Asia.
The term ‘hybrid institution’ is not yet well-established or clearly defined in academic literature. German and Keller possibly introduced the term in 2009, describing it as "an institutional arrangement governing the interdependencies among discrete property holders and regimes". Abbot and Faude have suggested more recently that most areas in world politics today are governed "neither by individual institutions nor by regime complexes composed of formal interstate institutions. Rather, they are governed by “hybrid institutional complexes” comprising heterogeneous interstate, infra-state, public–private and private transnational institutions, formal and informal." Whether they are anything more than euphemisms for public-private partnerships, which are nothing new, is yet to be firmly established.
The anthropology of institutions is a sub-field in social anthropology dedicated to the study of institutions in different cultural contexts.
Green grabbing or green colonialism is the foreign land grabbing and appropriation of resources for environmental purposes, resulting in a pattern of unjust development. The purposes of green grabbing are varied; it can be done for ecotourism, conservation of biodiversity or ecosystem services, for carbon emission trading, or for biofuel production. It involves governments, NGOs, and corporations, often working in alliances. Green grabs can result in local residents' displacement from land where they live or make their livelihoods. It is considered to be a subtype of green imperialism.
Transnational environmental policies are efforts to confront global environmental issues such as climate change, ozone depletion, or marine pollution. Environmental policies are transnational when they include actors from at least two sovereign states. As of 2018, more than 1,800 multilateral environmental agreements are in effect.
Environment and Ecology Bureau is one of the fifteen policy bureau of the Government of Hong Kong. The agency was established on 1 July 2022. The current Secretary for Environment and Ecology is Tse Chin-wan.