世界范围内的环境保护主义:在市民运动和政府决策之间
这似乎是当代环境保护主义的中心问题:即在你的脑海中可能将自然视为一个整体,但是实际的行动却需要限定一定的目标。目前,似乎缺乏对这一问题的最终解决办法,只能一步一步地解决。也许,环境史能对解决这一问题发挥一点作用——环境政治需要历史的意识,一个历史经验的知识。我的老朋友理查德·伍伯郝斯特(Reinhard Ueberhorst)是1979/1980年德国联邦议院“未来能源政策”咨询委员会的领导,他一次又一次地解释说,为了赢得环境政策的胜利,我们需要一种新的政治风格。德国前总理威利·白瑞德(Willy Brandt)在他的《创造民主》一书中写道,我们需要创造政策制定的新程序,而不是那种有着固定的位置、固定的对立界限、固定的朋友和敌人概念的旧政策。
今天,我们不应该忘记环境意识的早期版本:环境保护主义之前的环境保护主义。在1930年代和1940年代,几乎全世界都出现了对土壤侵蚀的恐惧和土壤保护运动,在美国部分是对沙尘暴现象的反映。今天,这种类型的环境保护主义几乎被遗忘了,至少在西方是如此(俄罗斯与此不同)。但是在将来,土壤退化也许会再一次成为最严重的环境问题。环境史永远没有终点,我们不能预测未来,因此我们不得不保持谨慎。人类史与自然史一样充满惊奇,我想这是历史中最重要的一课。
在特殊的时刻和地点,环境意识与工业利益经常发生冲突,但是长远来讲,经济和生态是没有矛盾的,这就是历史学家的任务,即从长时间的历史出发来看待这个问题。历史证明,那些经济强大的国家,无论是15世纪的威尼斯还是19世纪的日本或近代以来的一些西方国家,都以较大的精力来保护他们的自然资源。整体来讲,正确地理解历史教训对环境保护主义来说似乎是令人鼓舞的。环境史并不仅仅是一个失败的历史,它还是一个具有很多胜利的历史(正如弗兰克·奥古特反复指出的那样),尽管目前仍然没有最终的解决办法。我想,历史告诉我们,如果我们谨慎地、明智地并且始终保持小心地来学习新的教训的话,我们并不会被责难为衰败和腐朽。
Environmentalism Worldwide:Between Civic Movements and Bureaucratic Strategies
Abstract:There are different environmentalism in different country.The models and ideals of them are often contradictory. In my opinion, one of the practical tasks of environmental history is the mediation between these conflicting tendencies. In the same time, diverse scientific disciplines generate diverse conceptions of environmentalism. All these conceptions of environmentalism, however, have some truth. History has the chance to combine and to integrate these conceptions. In the course of history, environmentalism was in one period more a strategy of state administration, but in another period more a popular movement opposing state politics. We should not be deceived by the term "environment" and by an all too much "global" outlook:Seen from the near, there exist many different environmentalism all over the world; and it is important to realize this diversity. In one region, water protection is on the top of the agenda;in the other, soil protection; in the third, bird protection, and in other cases, the fight against air pollution. Pay special attention to the elites of environmentalism everywhere — whether within the bureaucracy or within the civic movements —;pay attention to the strong passions, to the Charisma of the leaders, to the characteristic human types and to their lifestyle, to spiritual and religious elements, but at the same time to processes of rationalization and to co- incidence with economic trends。Environmentalism is on the whole and from a worldwide perspective not a "movement" in the classic sense, hut rather a network of networks. Again the question: What was really new with the new environmentalism? There are three answers: (1) the big network between all these until than single and isolated initiatives; (2) the new worldwide context with a global outlook upon the earth, partly influenced by the space—travel and the space—photographs of the1960ies and promoted by the UNESCO, (3) the mass movement and widespread public interest which gave environmental issues a political power unknown until to that time.
Key words:Environmentalism; Environmental History; civic movements; bureaucratic strategies