Grassroots struggles to protect occupational and environmental health

This chapter is based on a number of international case studies of grassroots occupational and environmental health struggles that are attempting to link workplace, environment and community. Interviews with key people involved in each struggle, in combination with documented campaigns and our own experience as occupational and environmental health activists, have provided a picture of the changing patterns of work under neoliberalism, and the implications for community and workers’ struggle for environmental justice and occupational health. Themes include the erosion of the distinction between work and community and between the workplace and the environment; the increasing casualisation and precarity of work; downward pressure on working conditions; repression of trade unions and decline in union membership; deregulation of work, safety and environmental protection; and particular risks faced by women, young and migrant workers. Union and community organisers are employing diverse tactics in the face of these challenges.

Community, development and popular struggles for environmental justice

This chapter provides an introduction and theoretical overview of the book. It explores how the environment is a key battle ground and location for struggle, as economic decision making in the interests of capital accumulation lead to cost shifting onto the environments of those with least economic or political leverage. Building on the lasting legacies of colonialism and settler colonial relations, in the current stage of neoliberalism this environmental-economic dumping has become increasingly acute and systematic. Moreover, it has generated new waves of self-reflective community action and social movement processes in which community development plays a role. Such resistance draws on the rich yet conflicted theoretical resources which have developed through academic labour around analysing the social practices of community, development and environmental justice as well as the intellectual work of ordinary people engaged in material struggles to change the world from where they live and work and make community.

The environment as a site of struggle against settler-colonisation in Palestine

This chapter explores how the environment in Palestine has been a site of struggle for control between settler colonisers and Palestinians for over 100 years. It argues that the Zionist settler colonisation of Palestine may be understood as an ecological distribution conflict since the action of colonisers – from the British Mandate through the establishment of the state of Israel through to the military occupation of the remainder of the Palestinian territory – has been predicated on the expropriation of resources and the expulsion of the Palestinian population. Community development has been a component of the Palestinian popular struggle against settler colonisation. By exploring examples of community development, the chapter will analyse the context in which this has become integral to the popular struggle as well as threats that community development, especially in relation to environmental issues, has been used to normalise and legitimise the Zionist occupation.

‘Mines come to bring poverty’: extractive industry in the life of the people in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Communities who happen to live where there is potential for big money to be made from mining the resources from under their feet, face a daunting set of challenges. Many people are saying ‘No’ to mining capital, and many communities are divided. We consider the thinking and praxis of militants from a number of areas in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) who are thinking resistance to a wave of real and prospective new coal mining initiatives. We conclude that this irruption of the “No” is simultaneously powerful and fragile. It is the assertion of the human life of the people against the forces of death. Provided the struggle that unfolds remains faithful to the fundamental 'No' that originated it, then it stops simply reproducing or modestly-reforming that world as-it-is, but instead marks out an emancipatory future of what could be.

Resisting Shell in Ireland: making and remaking alliances between communities, movements and activists

The 15-year-long resistance to Shell’s pipeline in Rossport, Ireland became a strategic and symbolic site for resistance to neoliberalism and the petroleum industry, combining a community-based environmental justice struggle with a range of left social movements and international ecological activists. The movement faced state violence and media demonisation as well as divisions within the community, tensions between ecological and redistributive priorities and instrumentalisation by some political parties. Despite this the campaign was unusually long, forced substantial changes to state policy and contributed to anti-austerity alliance formation and popular learning processes in resisting fracking, as well as raising the political and financial cost of such projects. Its eventual defeat had more to do with the balance of forces against it than with internal difficulties. This chapter highlights the importance of sustained popular mobilisation, learning through action, counter expertise and alliance formation as key elements needed to bring about a better world.

Communities resisting environmental injustice in India: philanthrocapitalism and incorporation of people’s movements

With the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister in 2014, opportunities for inward investment by global capital have flourished, generating resistance to its socio-environmental impact. Land grabs aimed at extracting minerals have seen the state backing transnational corporations against communities; Special Economic Zones and corridors for industrial development have multiplied with relaxed labour and environmental regulations, displacing communities and leaving those remaining fighting against pollution and contamination; the impacts of growth have led to urban gentrification and battles over diffuse pollution and access to space. Moreover, the funding of the non-profit sector has been inextricably linked to the global market through philanthrocapitalism by international Foundations and Corporate Social Responsibility, with widespread co-option into the neoliberal agenda. Environmental justice campaigners are faced with a significant challenge of supporting people’s movements at the grassroots whilst working for a coordinated opposition to its cause in post-colonial neoliberalism.

Learning and teaching: reflections on an environmental justice school for activists in South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa with all its initial promises to address injustice continues to be a highly unequal country with an economy consistent with neoliberal global capital and a presumption that the spoils of something termed economic ‘growth' trickle down to those positioned at the bottom of the wealth and resource pyramid. groundWork, an environmental justice organisation, runs the Environmental Justice School (EJS) for activists to develop a strong and informed cadre of grassroots activists to contribute towards the mobilisation and transformation to a more just society. This chapter contextualises the school, describes its curriculum design and draws on the voices and reflections of participants and authors. Informed by Freirean and popular education principles, it is underpinned by a vision of a better world, beginning with the world the participants encounter presently.

Conclusion

This chapter reflects on the processes of production of the book and the themes which have emerged across diverse contexts. Our commitment to the interface between activist knowledge and academic reflection has taken different forms and generated insights which are often excluded in academic publications. It has raised challenging questions about who speaks for whom, about voice, authorship, interests and justification. All contributors are facing the exploiting and fragmenting impacts of neoliberalism on communities, workers and the environment in different ways and resisting at the interface of community development and popular struggle. Both the impacts and resistance are mediated by settler colonialism, post colonialism, ethnic and gendered divisions, and traditional and new of structures of power and class struggle. Through reflecting on these struggles we are drawn back to the principles of community development in agency and solidarity and how these are continually reinvented in the struggles for environmental justice.

Ecological justice for Palestine

Palestine enjoys a privileged geographical location lying between three continents: Asia, Europe and Africa. Palestine is a small area compared to many other countries, yet its environment contains a wide range of temperatures, rainfall, and topography. In addition, throughout history it has been the cradle several different civilizations, religions, and cultures. Land is central to the conflict between Palestinians and the Zionist movement. Actions taken by the Israeli occupiers have disrupted the delicate ecosystem and damaged the unique environment of Palestine in addition to harming the people, so many Palestinians have forgotten the importance of preserving their homeland. However, the successful preservation of the land is intertwined with the continuing struggle for justice by the Palestinian people. Without the consideration of the ecology of Palestine, the Palestinian people may never find true and lasting justice.

An unfractured line: an academic tale of self-reflective social movement learning in the Nova Scotia anti-fracking movement

The chapter shares a series of reflections garnered from being involved in Anti-fracking and subsequent social movement organizing in Nova Scotia/Mi’kma’ki, Canada, from 2010 until now. Providing a framework for these reflections is Foley’s notion of social movement learning in struggle as I went from being part of demonstrations, to helping organize them, to working on submissions to an expert panel, to working with the steering committee of Nova Scotia’s anti-fracking coalition. The story of the Nova Scotia anti-fracking movement describes how we were able to build a successful alliance between communities of the Mi’kmaq First Nation and Nova Scotia settlers that pressured government, even through a change in ruling parties, to legislate a ban on fracking. This unfractured movement speaks to the potential to use the original treaties between the Mi’kmaq and the British as a source of unity in popular struggle.