Reclaiming the Land: Third World Environmental Movements and the Global Environmental Discourse

In recent decades, environmentalism has gained strength and importance in various arenas. The introduction of sustainable development brought the environment into mainstream development and economic thought. However, there continues to be environmental degradation around the world and poor and marginalised communities often bear the brunt of environmentally harmful production processes. A concurrent movement of environmentalism is that of environmental justice, which has been utilised and strengthened by locally-based environmental movements in the Third World. This article uses a political ecology perspective to examine the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) in Nigeria and highlights the broad range of issues involved in Third World environmental problems. The relevance of the environmental justice movement as a critique of sustainable development and the direction of the global environmental movement are explored through this case study.