Analysis of the Social Oppression Inflicted by the Environmental Activist Groups

Well-meaning attempts by activists to ‘save the planet’ too often result in less privileged groups in society experiencing new forms of political, economic or social oppression. Discuss using examples.

Nowadays, as the environment changes, there is more information about environmental activism. It became a popular topic and spread through our daily lives. The growing environmental matters raised awareness and led to get people involved in helping “save the planet”. Back in the days, community seldom showed concerns and were insensitive to the environment unless disasters. However, the recent environment state has called to action that the past privileged people in society found them became less advantage. They continued experiencing the consequences and suffered through for a long period. (Connell, 2007)

Activists from different parties always have similar goals when aiming to protect the environment, but attempts vary among groups, such as the environmental non- government organisations and communities. Regarding well-meaning activists have good intention to achieve the goal of saving the environment, it always ends up at the cost of oppression to less-privileged groups in political, social or economic aspect. Activists are not the one suffering, but less-privileged people in the community and those at the lower pyramid, who often be excluded in the discussion, are bearing the brunt.

In the essay, it will argue/examine that whether there are people making the conditions while achieving to “save the planet” and the oppression of current people should be sacrificed due to the needs of future generation. It will be discussed with the two examples, the Murray-Darling Basin and Green-Black alliance.

Murray-Darling Basin

Political and economic oppression can be viewed in the politics of the Murray- Darling Basin Plan when striving to “save the planet”. Stakeholders had been sought advices during the decision and policymaking process of the plan. However, this was happened after most critical decisions and the initial draft plan had been made and established, resulting little amendments was done after consultation regardless of active returning responses. Political oppression is clearly seen as the community was being oppressed to voice out their political view. (Connell, 2007)

Moreover, the livelihoods of farmers are threatened due to the new MDB water management. (Connell, 2007) Since there is yearly limit of water taken from Basin, they struggle to water the crops, affecting their living. Owing to the long history of relying on the river, this economic oppression makes their life inconvenient and has an inverse impact on their livelihood.

Environmental activists support the MDBP and are suggesting stricter guidelines in order to design sufficient measures for river recovery plan. The issues come up: activists make decisions with absolute environmental perspectives that they find it hard to strike a balance between the economic and social side.

One core in MDBP is the environment is a water “user”. It is legally entitled to water allocations as an equal with other consumers. (Sue, 2017) This causes me to question: at what point does the needs of future generations outweigh the oppression of the current groups of people? Does “saving the environment “ pay back the recent economic aspect?

On account of over allocation of water resources, MDBP comes at the cost of economic oppression of farmers, suffering their lives ad threatening their livelihood while “saving the planet”. The new river management is not sustainable that may consequently cause exhaustion of resources. (Connell & Ross, 2016)

Green-Black alliance

Green-Black alliance is another example showing political and social oppression. It occurs on Indigenous land owners as their rights and land relations are sacrificed. Although Indigenous people and environmental activists have similar good intention to “save the planet”, their ways of dealing with environment are often competing. (Christoff, 2017)

To have a better understanding, Franklin River Dam in 1980 Tasmania will be an example for discussion. In order to avoid developing hydroelectricity on Franklin River, environmentalists enlisted and deployed the term “genuine wilderness” – a primordial part of Australian landscape untouched by human hands, strategically in an effort to succeed in achieving the World Heritage List. (Goodin, 1992) Franklin River was eventually successfully preserved, but the continuing and wide use of language, “ wild” and “ wilderness” is being greatly criticised and doubted. (Christoff, 2017)

Franklin River has been politically spoken of in the way of nature with the term “wilderness”. There is a political and media framing of “wilderness” since government and industry branded the concept. (McGaurr, Tranter, & Lester, 2015) “The concept of wilderness as nature without any trace of human interaction dehumanises the Indigenous peoples living within that landscape.” (Bayet-Charlton, 1998) This political and social oppression affected the already marginalised community. They removed the long history of Indigenous occupation in the area and erased the Indigenous associations with the use of their ancestral lands over thousands of years. (Grossman, 2003)

This evidence highlights the social oppression on the marginalised groups. Franklin River perhaps might possibly been saved in the absence of “wilderness” if Australia Indigenous people were involved in a greater extend and engaged in the conversion with environmentalists in a larger scale consultation. This might result in a win-win environmental solution eventually arrives, balancing voice of everyone.

Conclusion

Well-meaning attempts by activists to ‘save the planet’ are not ideal on all occasions. Some groups may worse-off to the quest of it which caused by the flaw of human and their incomplete decision/resolution. With the analysis of the above examples, it shows that some forms of oppression are avoidable, with the term “wilderness” being an example. To achieve the ultimate goal of “saving the planet”, it is important to know how to strike a balance between environmental, economic or social concerns in present day without upsetting anyone and ensure our planet is healthy all the time for current and future generations.