Environmental groupstough challenge to the ‘whiteness’ of the environmental movement. One of
its achievements is its inclusiveness which, according to Schlosberg (1999a),
has been nurtured by a form of discursive democracy based on respect for
different identities and backgrounds, and with no attempt to impose any
strong ideology on the movement.
The absence of an equivalent large working-class or non-white grassroots
environmental justice movement in Europe may reflect different political
opportunity structures, notably the more pluralistic nature of the Ameri-
can polity, and the greater possibility in Europe of expressing social justice
issues in partisan terms through left-wing or green parties. Most networks
of environmental groups in European countries still retain an explicitly
environmental focus, whether campaigning on pollution, energy or nature
conservation issues (Rootes 2003 ). In Germany, for example, protests through
the1990s were still dominated by the anti-nuclear issue. The one notable
change in character was a shift away from protests against the construction
of nuclear power stations – for no more were being built – towards protests
against the transport and storage of nuclear waste (Rucht and Roose 2003 ;
Fischer andBoehnke 2004 ). One recent example of an incipient environ-
mental justice movement is the loose network of waste campaigns in the
UK, particularly in opposition to proposed incinerators. Plans to site mas-
sive incinerators in socially deprived sites, such as Crymlyn Burrows, South
Wales, have seen the language of environmental justice employed both by
local campaigners and Friends of the Earth.
One of the most significant coalitions in Europe, the UK anti-roads
protests, developed a mild social justice agenda, but it had a more overtly
‘green’ character than the American environmental justice movement. The
anti-roads movement involved a series of linked struggles against the build-
ing of new roads as part of the Conservative government’s massive con-
struction programme, starting in 1992 with opposition to the M3 motorway
extension at Twyford Down, and moving on to similar campaigns through-
out the country. The loose coalition of some 250–300 anti-roads groups was
co-ordinated by two volunteer umbrella groups, Road Alert and Alarm UK.
An interesting feature of the anti-roads protests was that each individual
campaign involved a coalition of two kinds of grassroots group (Doherty
1999 :276). There was always one group of local residents who had opposed
thespecific scheme for many years, primarily from NIMBY motivations, and
had exhausted all legal avenues of opposition. They were then joined by a
second group of activists from the green counter-culture, popularly known
as ‘eco-warriors’ or eco-protesters. Thus the public was treated to graphic
images of middle-aged, middle-class residents bringing food and drink to
theeco-warriors in their treehouses and tunnels.
The radical eco-protester wing of the anti-roads movement, like the envi-
ronmental justice movement, was born out of disillusionment with the
perceived ineffectiveness of the mainstream, professional environmental
groups, especially FoE and Greenpeace (Seel 1997 :121–2; Wall 1999 ). An