Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel

Chapter Sixteen: Nature Knows No Boundaries?: Notes Toward a Future History of Regional Environmentalism

334 Work toward Arab-Israeli peace in the 1990s involved activities at dual levels. While there were formal negotiations, there was also work to build popular support for peace through projects that would show the benefits of cooperative rather than hostile relations. formal negotiations led to agreements between israel and the Palestinian authority (Pa), and to the Peace treaty between israel and Jordan. Work to build cooperative projects with mutual benefits took a variety of forms, including building links between civil society groups and creating new settings to bring israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians , and others together. environmental issues—water, energy, pollution, biodiversity, and habitat protection—were acknowledged at both the formal and civil society levels. formal agreements included sections on these topics. Cooperative projects not only addressed environmental issues, but also involved the creation of a small civil society network to promote regional environmental research and policy formulation. This chapter describes initiatives that have fostered regional environmentalism in the eastern mediterranean at both the formal and civil society levels . it is not history written in hindsight with perspective, but, rather, notes toward a future history of an initiative whose outcome is still very much uncertain . The uncertainly comes not only from inherent limits of forecasting, but also from the awareness of, on the one hand, frustration and failure, and, on the other hand, the perseverance and commitment of those who are working to make environmental initiatives ultimately a success. CHAPTER SIxTEEN NATURE kNOWS NO BOUNDARIES? Notes Toward a Future History of Regional Environmentalism Stuart Schoenfeld NATURE KNOwS NO bOUNDARIES? 335 formal peacemaking has yet to be successful. The promise of robust official environmental cooperation is still unfulfilled. some environmental civil society efforts faltered, but some work continues. Their continuation and promise is the primary focus of this chapter. The chapter is partly a historical narrative, but it also asks how some organizations have continued to do environmental peace-building for well over a decade, despite the official frustrations and the failure of other initiatives. The concept of “resource mobilization ,” taken from the study of social movements, provides an analytical framework through which to account for the perseverance of environmental cooperation. There are various kinds of resources that social movements need in order to survive and work toward their goals (edwards and mcCarthy 2004). Understanding how environmental groups working toward regional cooperation were able to mobilize the resources needed to persevere may be useful to understanding how other groups may sustain their efforts to work toward peaceful cooperation when formal peacemaking has stalled. How, then, was the idea of promoting regional environmental cooperation initiated? What role did it play in regional negotiations and treaties? What were the civil society aspects of this initiative? What happened when regional environmentalism was challenged by intensified hostilities? How have some environmental civil society initiatives persevered? INTRODUCINg THE FRAME OF REgIONAL ENVIRONMENTALISM1 The 1980s and early 1990s were a period of high visibility for global environmentalism . Dramatic events—bhopal, Chernobyl, the discovery of the depletion of the ozone layer and anthropogenic global warming, fires in the amazon, the exxon valdez oil spill, and the collapse of the atlantic cod fisheries —were framed by activists and the media not as idiosyncratic individual occurrences, but as iconic markers of the human degradation of the planet. many grassroots organizations emerged to address local issues. national governments , including those in the eastern mediterranean, established ministries of the environment. transnational environmental nGos—notably the World Wildlife fund, Greenpeace, and friends of the earth—extended their reach by developing international centers that coordinated the work of national chapters (Wapner 1995). international diplomacy addressed environmental issues through conferences and treaties. The United nations brought “development” and “environment” agendas together by promoting “sustainable development” and was gearing up for the 1992 earth summit (international institute for sustainable Development 2007). This extensive activity around environmental concerns was in the background as a major diplomatic initiative in the middle east was under way. in the aftermath of the fall of the berlin Wall, the first Gulf War and the ap- 336 STUART SCHOENfELD parent emergence of the United states as “the world’s only remaining superpower ,” the United states worked with its allies to convene peace negotiations in madrid in 1992 involving israel, syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinians (israel ministry of foreign affairs 2007). The madrid framework discussions for middle east peace included multilateral negotiations in five tracks: refugees, water, regional security, environment, and...