New Book on IrishEco Populist Movements

national | environment | press release Friday July 14, 2006 22:52 by Dr Liam Leonard - NUI Galway NUI Galway

Green Nation -Irish Environmental Movements

This week sees the release of Green Nation: the Irish Environmental Movement from Carnsore Point to the Rossport 5 by Dr Liam Leonard of NUIG. The book places Irish environmental campaigns in the context of a populist 'rural sentiment' which communities under threat from infrastructural projects draw on to mobilise territorial dissent.

Ireland's recent social history has been characterised by a series of environmentally based community challanges to multinational plants or infrastructural projects. These community responses are formulated from a populist sentiment or localised sense of place, that has been mobilised over the decades in which Ireland has undergone a dramatic transformation from a primarily agrarian and rural society to that of an idustrialised economy obsessed by rapid growth and development.

Green Nation: The Irish Environmental Movement from Carnsore Point to the the Rossport Five examines a number of the community-based campaigns that have come to make up a grass-roots environmental movement in a changing Ireland. Starting with the 'No Nukes' protests at Carnsore in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Green Nation traces the emergence a nascent ecopopulist movement that has witnessed a number of campaigns including anti-mining protests at Tynagh, Donegal and Croagh Patrick, anti-toxics activism in Cork, the heritage dispute at Mullaghmore, the campaigns against incineration in Galway, Meath and Cork, the anti-roads protests at the Glen of the Downs, Carrickmines and Tara/Skyrne and the ongoing campaign of 'Shell to Sea' in Mayo which gave rise to the incredible story of the 'Rossport 5', who were imprisoned for seeking justice for their community in North Mayo, Green Nation examines the mobilisation and framing processes undertaken in these dispute, locating them in the the context of a wider rural identity that has shaped grassroots environmentalism in the Irish case. Green Nation was published this week and is available from www.choicepublishing.ie for e 14.99. ISBN 1-905451-11-3