Environmental Nationalism

The outlook that treats a nation's environment, resources and landscapes as national inheritance, to be protected and controlled by the nation for its own people, and that resists international authority over them. It ranges from resource nationalism and independence movements built on environmental protest to the "green nationalism" of some parties today.

Key figures: Jane I. Dawson (as analyst of eco-nationalism), Daniele Conversi (as analyst of green nationalism), resource-nationalist governments, national conservation movements
Related: Green Conservatism, Decolonial Ecology, Ecofascism, Sustainable Development, Planetary Stewardship

Where it stands

Economic PhilosophyGreen GrowthPost-Growth
Resource OwnershipPrivate StewardshipCommons Governance
Environmental AuthorityCentralized AuthorityLocal Autonomy
Environmental JusticeAggregate OutcomesDistributive Justice
Conservation StrategySustainable UseStrict Protection
Global ResponsibilityNational SovereigntyInternational Ecological Obligation
Ecological Political PriorityIncremental ReformTransformative Change

Environmental nationalism is a stance on sovereignty and on who the environment belongs to, not a programme; its one firm position is on international obligation.

Definition

Environmental nationalism holds that a nation’s land, waters, forests, minerals, wildlife and climate are its own inheritance. The national state should govern them in the interest of its people, and international institutions, foreign capital and outside conservation groups have no authority over them.

It takes several forms. Resource nationalism asserts state ownership and control of oil, minerals and water against foreign companies. Eco-nationalism uses environmental protest as a vehicle for national self-assertion, as in the anti-nuclear movements of the Baltic states and Ukraine in the last years of the Soviet Union. Patriotic conservation protects national landscapes and species as symbols of identity. And some parties practise a “green nationalism” that presents climate and environmental policy as national renewal.

It should be kept separate from ecofascism, which adds racial exclusion and authoritarian rule, although the line has sometimes been crossed.

Historical development

National parks were tools of nation-building from the start, in the United States, Canada and Australia and later across the countries emerging from colonial rule. Resource nationalism rose with decolonisation and the nationalisation of oil and minerals between the 1950s and the 1970s, and again in Latin America during the commodity boom of the 2000s. Jane Dawson’s Eco-Nationalism (1996) showed how anti-nuclear activism in Lithuania, Ukraine and elsewhere served the cause of national independence.

In the 2010s and 2020s, populist and nationalist governments in Brazil and Indonesia asserted sovereignty over their forests against international pressure. Some left nationalist parties in Europe have framed climate action in national terms.

Principal claims

A nation’s environmental resources belong to the nation and its people. They do not belong to the world or to foreign interests.
The national state is the legitimate authority over the national environment.
International environmental governance infringes sovereignty and often serves richer countries.
National landscapes, species and places are part of national identity and deserve protection for that reason.

Policy implications

Environmental nationalists favour state ownership or control of strategic resources, and limits on foreign ownership of land and on foreign mining and drilling concessions. They protect emblematic landscapes and species. They resist binding international targets, conservation paid for from abroad and conditions attached to trade. Some versions present national climate or energy programmes as a matter of self-sufficiency.

Internal disagreements

Environmental nationalists disagree about whether sovereignty over resources means extracting them or protecting them. Resource nationalism and patriotic conservation point in opposite directions here. They differ on Indigenous nations inside the state, whose own claims to sovereignty the outlook often denies, and on how hostile to be toward international cooperation.

Criticisms and controversies

Critics argue that climate change and biodiversity loss are global problems that nationalism cannot solve. They say resource nationalism has often meant extraction led by the state with weak environmental protection, that eco-nationalist rhetoric can slide into xenophobia, and that national sovereignty is often used to override local and Indigenous rights.

Supporters point to the colonial history of international conservation and to the doubtful legitimacy of global governance.

Relationships to other traditions

Environmental nationalism shares green conservatism’s defence of sovereignty. It overlaps with the opposition to extraction when it resists foreign mining and drilling, while disagreeing about extraction at home. It is the opposite of planetary stewardship, the internationalism of climate justice and the cooperative framework of sustainable development. Ecofascism is its authoritarian, racialised extreme.

References and further reading

Dawson, J. I. (1996). Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Duke University Press.
Conversi, D. and Hau, M. F. (2021). “Green nationalism: Climate action and environmentalism in left nationalist parties.” Environmental Politics 30(7), 1089–1110.
Dalby, S. (2002). Environmental Security. University of Minnesota Press.
Bramwell, A. (1989). Ecology in the 20th Century: A History. Yale University Press.