Rethinking Environmental Advocacy for the 21st Century
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In his latest piece for triplepundit, author and socially responsible businessman Martin Melaver (Living Above the Store: Building a Business That Creates Value, Inspires Change, and Restores Land and Community) advocates for a “fourth wave” environmental movement—a blueprint for environmental advocacy groups that replaces stridency with practicality, and uses the best practices of an efficient business without sacrificing its guiding principles.
In my circles, there’s an old Jewish joke that defines the beginning of life as the point in time when the dog dies and the kids go off to school. I’d like to add my own personal twist: when you step down as chairman of the board of an environmental advocacy group, which for me happens this week.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed my time with the Georgia Conservancy, an old-time organization, forty-plus years old, that has served the state well over the decades. But managing this organization makes running a business seem like child’s play.
Bring to the table disparate stakeholders from various big businesses and you bring down the ire of other environmental groups all claiming you’ve sold out. Cobble together a coalition of environmental groups advocating on behalf of alternative energy or water-conservation efforts and big business interests vilify you as being too strident and unable to work with. Collaborate with various state agencies and you have both the environmental and business communities jumping down your throat. I used to believe that if an environmental group is doing its principled best, it’s got everyone a bit pissed-off with it. But surely there’s a more effective model.
The general situation reminds me of a line attributed to Henry Kissinger about why academic politics are so nasty: because the stakes are so low. Only in this case, the politics are nasty but the stakes are huge. What’s an environmental advocacy group to do in order to be effective? How do you serve as a leading advocate while also managing to serve as a trusted convener of myriad stakeholders, all of whom need to be on board if we are to implement the many necessary reforms related to carbon emissions, energy, water, diminishing biodiversity, soil depletion, burgeoning use of toxic substances, loss of marine life, etc.? More pointedly, are environmental advocacy groups locked into old governance paradigms out of step with the exigencies of the 21st Century? And, if so, what type of re-tooling is called for?
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