Environmental non-governmental organizations and global environmental discourse

Abstract

Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) exist worldwide, and since the 1980s they have increasingly influenced global environmental politics and environmental discourse. We analyze an original dataset of 679 ENGOs participating in global environmental conventions in the mid-2010s, and we apply quantitative content analysis to ENGO mission statements to produce an inductive typology of global environmental discourse. Discourse categories are combined with ENGO attribute data to visualize the political topology of this globally-networked ENGO sector. Our results confirm some common assertions and provide new insights. ENGOs are more diverse than conventionally recognized. Quantitative evidence confirms strong North-South disparities in human and financial resources. Four primary discourses are identified: Environmental Management, Climate Politics, Environmental Justice, and Ecological Modernization. We compare our typology to existing literature, where Climate Politics and Environmental Justice are under-appreciated, and we discuss ways to expand on the data and methods of this study. Synoptic empirical ENGO research is essential to accurately understanding the ENGO sector and global environmental politics.

Adapted to Climate Change? Issue Portfolios of Environmental Nongovernmental Organizations in the Americas

“…The same holds true for the covariate gauging the age of an ENGO: The marginal effects become insignificant when country dummies are included. This is plausible given that U.S.-based ENGOs are among the oldest (see also Partelow et al, 2020). Interestingly, when controlling for the countries in which the ENGOs are based, we obtain significant marginal effects for collaboration with government agencies.…”

“…The empirical scope of this study comprises ENGOs that work on conservation issues and are affiliated with the IUCN and based in North, Central, or South America. The composition of the country sample results from our deliberate choice to vary the country context as much as possible to include countries in which ENGOs have existed for a very long time and benefit from favorable political opportunity structures (e.g., Canada and the United States) alongside countries where ENGOs are more recent additions to the institutional landscape and must cope with comparatively less favorable political opportunity structures permanently or temporarily (e.g., several countries in Central and South America; see Partelow et al, 2020). Compared with ENGOs in Canada or the United States, ENGOs based in Central or South America also depend to a stronger degree on foreign funding (Hoogesteger, 2016, p. 170), which could make them more likely to tackle climate change issues simply because their donors or sponsors are in favor of climate action (see Dupuy et al, 2015).…”

“…From this, it follows that governments or international organizations can influence ENGOs’ issue portfolios by providing corresponding financial incentives (e.g., Brulle, 2014; Dupuy et al, 2015; Fraussen, 2014). While it would have been desirable to include information on the individual ENGOs’ membership, staff, and budget (see, for example, Partelow et al, 2020), this information was not available for the full set of ENGOs analyzed here. The IUCN does not disclose this information, at least not publicly, and only 50 out of the 293 ENGOs included in this analysis are registered with inventories such as the Yearbook of International Organizations.…”

“…This holds even more true for the small body of research investigating how ENGOs position themselves on climate change (see, for example, Boscarino, 2015; Love-Nichols, 2020). An exception is the study by Partelow et al (2020) which does provide regional comparative insights into different environmental discourses of ENGOs.…”

Patterning Conservation Flows

“…In other words, the sectoral conditions of conservation NGOs (Brockington and Scholfield 2010a,b), and the organisational chains in which they are embedded (Heyman 2009;Wahlén 2014), matter. Although scholars have tended to oversimplify the practices of conservation NGOs (Larsen 2016), these are in fact highly diverse and dynamic entities (Partelow et al 2020), often consisting of a loosely constituted portfolio of projects, and best thought of as "boundary organisations" that are porous and malleable (Brockington et al 2018). The practices of conservation NGOs are thus highly contested and diverse.…”