ABSTRACT
The discourse of environmental protection is increasingly being enlisted as part of minority politics. This was certainly evident in the Baltic republics during the last years of the Soviet regime; another case in point is the movement of the Zapatistas in Mexico, which carries a similarly strong undertone of sovereignty and self-determination. Yet less radical national minorities also evidence desires to protect the Earth. Creating bioenergy, environmentally managing biodiversity and homelands, as well as creating grass-roots movements following the ‘think globally, act locally’ mantra are just a few examples of the efforts that mostly territorially defined minorities 1 have embraced for various reasons and ends. Yet history also shows that in cases such as the Baltic states, where sovereignty and self-determination were in focus, the environmental approach was heavily informed by nationalistic (Schwartz 2006, p. 201) and rather opportunistic special-interest politics (Galbreath 2005; Hosking 1992) once independence was won. Minorities who became rulers forgot about protecting the Earth in favor of protecting their newly gained or regained nation (Dawson 1996; Galbreath & Auers 2009). In short, nationalistic politics pushed environmentalism on to the back-burner.
