Perspectives on the defense of nature : environmental coalition building in Alaska

Abstract

The debated “new environmentalism” seeks to incorporate social and cultural dimensions in a movement criticized for its narrow scientific and aesthetic focus. A fundamental presupposition for this approach is that environmental challenges are founded in social structures, and must therefore be addressed through issues beyond wilderness preservation and pollution control. Only by connecting the “nature” and “culture” categories can a viable and wide-reaching environmentalism emerge. One practical implication of this could be that traditional environmental organizations reach out to interest parties working towards social and cultural agendas. In the case of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, a coalition made up of a wide range of organizations has defended the area from oil development for several decades. This coalition, the Alaska Coalition, can at first glance resemble a “new environmental” project because of the involvement of indigenous -and religious organizations in the work to keep developers out. This thesis aims at evaluating the Alaska Coalition in terms of its possibilities as an example of a truly multidimensional environmental project. Has it progressed into a “new environmentalism”? In the evaluation I make use of discourse- and rhetoric analysis on a selection of samples of website material from organizations within the coalition. The goal is to explore the coherence of values between the parties. Have they gone through a learning process where they have integrated several value systems, or are the different organizations merely operating side by side, within their own worldviews? In order to qualify as a “new environmentalism” project, the coalition needs to have a truly unified, pluralist discourse which incorporates aesthetic, scientific, ethical, social and cultural values. In order to give a context for the evaluation of the Alaska Coalition, this thesis also incorporates a case study of the ANWR controversy and connects this to the different discourses that constitute the U.S. environmental movement.