ABSTRACT
Local campaigns are the most persistent and ubiquitous forms of environmental contention. National and transnational mobilisations come and go and the attention they receive from mass media ebbs and flows, but local campaigns are persistently recurrent. Indeed, in periods in which national environmental movements are in abeyance or, more often, are neglected by the media, it is local campaigns that serve as reminders that environmental issues have not been quietly absorbed by bureaucratic administration and representative democratic politics but remain as matters of fundamental contention. The recurrence of local campaigns is also a reminder that it remains possible to mobilise people around environmental issues, and they have often served as sources of innovation in and re-invigoration of national organisations that have allegedly been co-opted by the powerful and incorporated into established political and administrative systems.
