Drivers of environmental change

Since 1960s, scholars and policy makers have been debating on questions like what is actually driving the environmental changes and whether the change is leading us to progress or perils. In the initial decades, the debates were focused on relationship among population growth, environmental degradation and poverty. Later on, during the debates of environmental security in 1990s, the same positions became visible in various interpretations of relationship between environment and conflict. According to Clapp and Dauvergne (2005), we see still these positions or worldviews in the discussion of current global environmental politics. While going through the literature, it seems that there has been a little change in these worldviews. Is this really true? Or the scholars are simply repeating the same frameworks again and again? To what extent the analytical categories of pessimists, optimists, institutionalists and distributionists help us to understand environmental politics? At one level the framework clarifies different environmental discourses, but it also hides several aspects of environmental politics. For example, state, which is still central in environmental politics, is absent in such categorization. I do not think authors would agree that, as some might argue, with increasing involvement of actors outside the state in environmental politics, state's role has become less interesting and less relevant. It's true that state is not a homogenous body. It comprises all worldviews distributed around its various departments and organs. But, while making or not making particular policy response, it adopts a particular worldview which is not described by such framework. Although authors have accepted that the categories in the framework are not clear-cut, the problem with the framework becomes more obvious when we discuss about position of an actor. Let us take an example of a local level NGO activist in a developing country blowing trumpets of conservation, international treatises and conventions and social justice at the same time and receiving supports from bilateral and multilateral donors, international conservation organizations and corporate foundations. Can we put such activists under a single category? I think their positions are important because they crosscut various worldviews and potentially present a balanced view on a local eco-political issue. In my opinion, we need more such actors, which rather than embracing one particular worldview, encompass all worldviews and come up with a more nuanced position. Therefore, as Nicholson and Wapner argued, we need to understand environmental harm in terms of "material" factors (described by IPAT formula) and "ideational" factors (cultural and socio-political context). For me, drivers of environmental change can be best understood in terms of economic activities or livelihood strategies of population and formal and informal institutions and structures (ranging from policies, rules, regulations to customs, social relations, beliefs and values).