The Politics of Environmental Action

An image of a climate change protest

What happens when you bring together historians, social scientists, and environmental scientists to explore the deep political roots of environmental decision-making? This project brings researchers from these disciplines together in research collective to examine ideas in past and present.

The team led by dr. Frank Gerits focusses on how worldviews impact environmental policies, scientific research, and activism. Outcomes include interdisciplinary workshops, a case study on Dutch environmental NGOs, and a PhD project on environmental politics, fostering collaboration between academia and environmental advocates.

Interdisciplinary approach

International environmental policies on resource management, climate, ozone, soil degradation are seen as the domain of technocrats. The environment often fails to feature prominently in political agendas and environmental damage is deemed solvable through a technical fix or more effective governance. Yet, climate change and the environment are – and always have been – political.

To tackle this challenge historians, social scientists, legal scholars, climate scientists and societal partners need to come together. Worldviews are the product of historical evolution and environmental decisions in the past while climate scientists and geographers have an acute awareness of the current limitations and potential of environmental action.

Impact exploration

Rather than studying how science can shape policy, the ‘Political Environment’ research collective wants to explore the impact of politics on environmental action and science. Scientific knowledge on the environment never emerges in a vacuum but is influenced by history and society. Conversely scientific results are mobilized by political actors. Green (anti-) colonialism, eco-fascism, eco-socialism or liberal environmentalism are discussed in the abstract. Yet, these ideologies subtly shape scientific and political priorities. In politics these worldviews lead to a selective embrace of scientific results. In the realm of scientific research, they determine the funding streams of academic work.

The Political Environment research collective wants to stimulate interdisciplinary research on environmental politics in connection with societal partners by:

  1. bringing together academics, representatives from political party think tanks and environmental NGOs within UU, the Netherlands
  2. stimulating new research on environmental technology and activism.
  3. encouraging interdisciplinarity of historical research, Geosciences, political science and law.

This research collective comprises members from various departments and disciplines at Utrecht University.

Team

  • dr. Jeroen Oomen

    Assistant Professor
    Geosciences - Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development - Urban Futures

  • Yann Robiou du Pont PhD

    Researcher
    Geosciences - Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development - Environmental Sciences

  • dr. Roberta Biasillo

    Assistant Professor
    Humanities - Department of History and Art History - Political History

  • dr. H. (Haomiao) Du

    Assistant Professor
    Law, Economics and Governance - Utrecht University School of Law - International and European Law

  • dr. Frank Gerits

    Assistant Professor
    Humanities - Research Institute for History and Art History - International and Political History
    Humanities - Department of History and Art History - History of International Relations

Non UU-partners