Environmental Justice, Grassroots Movements, and the Performance of Protest
Conceptual Frameworks of Environmentalism and Performance
Environmental concerns are unevenly distributed across urban and rural spaces, influenced heavily by geography, power, and performance.
Performance is defined in a broad sense that extends beyond the traditional stage, singing, or dancing. It encompasses daily actions and functions, such as:
Everyday habits like brushing your teeth in the morning.
Athletic performance in sports.
Professional performance in the workplace.
Governmental performance, specifically regarding how effectively a state takes care of its community and citizens.
In a neoliberal context, ecologies are frequently shaped by histories of extraction, segregation, and systemic neglect. These frameworks often lead to two distinct treatments of rural land:
Romanticization: Viewing rural areas through a lens of pastoral idealism.
Sacrifice: Utilizing rural lands for development projects such as housing, road construction, land for farming (specifically for the meat industry), and commercial plantations. This type of development often prioritizes industrial growth over the conservation of biodiversity and natural environments.
The Relational Approach and Reciprocity
A relational approach, as seen in community-led movements like the Standing Rock protests, emphasizes care, reciprocity, and connection rather than extraction.
Distinction between Responsibility and Reciprocity:
Responsibility is often viewed as a neoliberal or colonial term that implies a forced obligation or a demand made by an external authority.
Reciprocity, Connection, and Care represent an internal drive to protect something based on love or deep personal connection, rather than adherence to laws, bills, or mandates.
The Māori concept of kaitiakitanga (taking care of the environment) is often described as the responsibility of the iwi (tribe). However, the word "responsibility" may be a colonial term used to explain a concept that is more inherently rooted in the relational duties of the iwi.
Case Study: The Green Belt Movement and Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai was a figure of historic significance:
She was the first woman from Africa to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was the first woman to become a professor in her home country of Kenya.
The Green Belt Movement (founded in 1977):
The movement began with the simple act of planting one tree.
Context: In Kenya's poorest areas, rural women were severely impacted by the degradation of the environment. Indigenous forests were being cleared for commercial plantations, leading to increased drought, loss of biodiversity, and poverty.
The Process: Women worked together to grow seedlings and plant trees to bind the soil, store rainwater, and provide food and firewood. For every tree planted, the women earned a small sum of money.
Impact: By , the movement had planted approximately trees.
Evolution into Political Activism:
The movement empowered women by demonstrating they were not powerless against poverty.
When the Kenyan government began selling forest land for private construction projects, Wangari Maathai and the movement mobilized in opposition.
Despite facing police brutality, the activists exposed government corruption and a lack of transparency. The movement eventually gained enough support to force the government to halt the private projects.
The legacy continues through initiatives like the Trillion Trees campaign, following Maathai's passing in .
The Green Belt Philosophy: "Start little and do the best you can. Think about the big picture, knowing that each change you make to one part will affect the whole."
Strategic Programs of the Green Belt Movement
Climate Change Program: This initiative strengthens the understanding of rural communities to take action. It challenges the academic jargon that suggests rural people are ignorant of climate change; though they may not know terms like "greenhouse gases," they live with the daily reality of droughts, crop failures, and floods.
Mainstream Advocacy: Focused on political accountability and expanding democratic spaces. In this context, democracy includes the right to a safe and comfortable home with proper sewage, running water, and electricity.
Gender Livelihood: Aimed at creating resilient communities and empowering women. Historically, in these rural areas, men often left for construction or agricultural work elsewhere, while women remained at home. Therefore, the movement focuses on empowering women to protect the forest, because the forest in turn protects them (providing soil stability, resources, and food).
Community-Based Management in Informal Settlements
Residents in informal settlements reclaim agency through community-based organizations when the government fails to address their needs.
Examples in Nairobi include:
Slums Going Green and Clean.
Kibera Eco Care.
Recycling as Agency: These groups move beyond simple sorting. They identify materials that can be converted into a source of income. This money is then used to fund community projects, repair infrastructure, or buy new materials. This is an act of agency where the community members "call the shots."
Challenges Faced:
Funding: Governments that neglect basic housing are unlikely to fund waste management, forcing groups to rely on fundraising, volunteers, and international NGOs.
Education: They must promote a change in behavior regarding consumption patterns, which is a slow process when starting from scratch without established infrastructure.
Performance as Protest
Protest Performance in Colombia:
Professional recyclers in a Colombian town square dumped of trash as a protest against a pay cut in a single month.
These laborers earn between and per day, which is below the minimum wage.
The performance was designed to make visible the "invisible" labor of these recyclers and to demand better price protections and working conditions.
Principles of Effective Protest Art:
Performance art must be "bold and blunt" to be effective.
Going "halfway" (e.g., using a single banana peel in a container to represent rubbish) fails to create the necessary impact. Effective protest performance should make the audience feel a reaction, such as being "absolutely disgusted," to force them to acknowledge the urgency of the issue.
Musical Protest in Mukuru (Nairobi):
The AIR Network was formed as a collaboration between residents of the Mukuru settlement and African and European researchers to address air pollution.
They created a protest song with a direct message to the President. Use of the local language ensures the message resonates directly within the community hearts and minds, highlighting that a clean environment is essential for safe living.
Questions & Discussion
Question: What can you say about Wangari Maathai? What do you know about her?
Response: She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and a professor in Kenya who started a reforestation movement by planting trees to help rural women.
Question: What were the women in the Green Belt Movement doing besides planting trees?
Response: They were defending the land and getting resources back to their communities. They were "planting seeds of peace" by restoring their own environment to provide food, water, and soil stability.
Discussion on Consumption Patterns:
Dialogue centered on how consumption patterns are viewed differently in clean areas compared to settlements where people must start from scratch. The strength of these community projects is that they are relational and born from care for the place where people live.