ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of voluntary environmental organizations. This area was chosen as the UK example of a field in which the voluntary sector contributes to society in the sense of ‘promoting rights and self-expression’. The ‘self-expression’ element relates to the means by which environmental goals are pursued by human agency via the activities of formally constituted voluntary organizations. (An increasing amount of environmentally oriented collective action is also undertaken through ‘disorganizations’, but these are not surveyed in this chapter because they do not meet our defining criterion of formality (see Chapter 1).) This is to interpret ‘rights’ not in the conventional human sense, but in terms of protecting the Earth from what would otherwise be the (potentially) adverse consequences of economic activities. The development of human rights as the ultimate ends of voluntary action involves the encouragement of a supportive discourse, the promotion of legal instruments, and activities geared towards their enforcement (Klug, 2000). Analogously, the ends we are considering here include the encouragement of an ‘environmental sensibility’ (Wapner, 1996), the introduction and elaboration of domestic law and international treaties and conventions internationally, and efforts to change or police the legal framework for the benefit of the environment. Environmental voluntary organizations also protect natural resources by other means. For example, as Table 9.1 shows, charities alone now own some 6 per cent of forested land in Britain – almost as much as the public sector (apart from the Forestry Commission). Much land has been acquired specifically to conserve the environment.1
