Nonviolent activism is an incredibly powerful means of transforming the world, writes Robert J. Burrowes. But to harness that power, we must understand that it works by inspiring others to join in a just and noble cause, while communicating the actions they can take in their own lives. Its essential modes are thus political and psychological - and victory can result from apparent failure.
Last week's decision by the Romanian government to seek UNESCO World Heritage status for Rosia Montana, a historic Carpathian mountain village under threat of gold mining, is a massive victory for campaigners after a hard 15-year struggle, writes Alexandru Predoiu - one that has united farmers, city-dwellers and new-age protestors against cultural and ecological destruction.
Australian politicians are putting the Great Barrier Reef at risk by approving one of the world's largest coal mines, say activists and marine scientists. MAXINE NEWLANDS reports
A Lancashire grandmother is to appear in a Preston court tomorrow to defend a £55,000 claim pressed by fracking company Cuadrilla and its CEO Francis Egan for the costs of an eviction that never even took place, writes Oliver Tickell. Now a campaign calling on Cuadrilla to drop its unjust and oppressive legal action is gaining momentum - and its Egan who's on the defensive.
In becoming the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Bob Dylan is in esteemed company; many previous recipients have also been voices for social protest and change, all of whom have borne witness to their life and times writes HARRIET GRIFFEY
Campaigners fighting a development for an 18-hole golf course on a pristine part of the Moray Firth are planning to launch a legal challenge against the plans with £10,000 they have sourced through crowdfunding. LAURA BRIGGS reports
The alternatives to neoliberalism - including a new community type of agriculture and community-owned green energy, local currencies, peer-to-peer networks and a sharing economy - are already here and unfolding right now. All we need is a revolution writes NICK MEYNEN
Knitting Nannas Against Gas (KNAG), an anti-fracking group held their national gathering in the heart of Australia's Coal Seam Gas (CSG) industry where the ‘Nannas' workshopped ways of evading arrest, media strategies, avoiding defaming energy companies, lawful protest, successful campaigns, protest songs and nanna naps. MAXINE NEWLANDS joined them for the gathering
Marmite. Barry Manilow, Nigel Farage and wind turbines. People either love them or hate them with rarely anyone on the fence. But Deon Reynolds' atmospheric turbine photographs might just buck that trend and persuade even rabid climate deniers to acknowledge their beauty, writes
GARY COOK
They may have wanted to leave Europe behind but Brexiteers still want the same - if not higher levels of environmental protection - for the UK's wild bee populations and natural wild places says a new report commissioned by Friends of the Earth and published today
With the 5th International Degrowth Conference taking place next week Spanish Ecologists Professor Joan Martinez Alier and Federico Demaria - both working at the Environmental Science and Technology Institute (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) - explain why we need a 'less is more' alternative economic model and how the burgeoning Global Environmental Justice movement is a key concept in achieving the only goal that will halt Climate Change.
Do we need big solutions to big problems? Charles Eisenstein challenges the logic of 'bigness' and looks for answers in the principles of 'interbeing'.
Instead of leaching the world's resources to support out-of-control consumerism, EU leaders could do worse than ponder novelist Victor Hugo's claim that whilst "you can kill people, you can't kill an idea whose time has come", writes NICK MEYNEN
Illegal logging accounts for between 30 and 50 percent of wood harvested in Romania. Horatio Morpurgo reports on the destruction of Romanian forests, post communism, and looks at what we can learn.
Cara is one of the Ecologist's New Voices contributors. An Irish-American environmental scientist and climate communicator living in Ireland, she lectures in climate change at University College Dublin and blogs and vlogs as ‘The Verdant Yank'. Here she challenges all environmental scientists to demand action on Climate Change from the politicians still turning a blind eye
