Mobilization and Participation of Citizens Groups in Improving the Quality of Water Resources Environments

Abstract

The ecology movement has the same general characteristics of segmentary, polycentric, reticulate organization as such other movements as the Black Power Movement and the Pentecostal Movement. The diverse groups concerned with environmental issues can be arranged on a continuum from established and routinized to new and radical. These groups proliferated rapidly from about 1969-1972. The ecology movement functions as a whole because of the way its different segments interweave in a network. There is considerable overlap between ecology groups and various "counter-culture" segments. Recruitment to ecology groups in characteristically through face-to-face contact instead of via large scale advertising. Commitment to the ecology movement was not accomplished as dramatically as with Black Power or Pentecostalism. The opposition to the ecology movement was real and often powerful but environmentalists often perceived it to be more sinister and powerful than was the case. Common ideology concepts of the ecology movement are: doomsday them, share guilt for environmental degradation, finite resources leading to a zero sum game, closed system and spaceship earth, need for recycling, need to control or limit growth, ecosystem and interdependence, need for significant change, and system change means lifestyle change.