Ecologists in Action

Ecologistas en Acción is a confederation of environmental groups in Spain. Its unification took place in December 1998.

With an assembly structure, it is part of social environmentalism, which understands that environmental problems have their origin in an increasingly globalized and unsustainable model of production and consumption (productivism and consumerism), from which other social problems also derive; model that they consider necessary to transform if the ecological crisis is to be avoided. They also intend to recover awareness of the limits of the biosphere.

To this end, it carries out awareness campaigns as well as public complaints against actions that harm the environment.

Ecologistas en Acción also publishes the magazine Ecologista, taking over from Gaia in 1999.

History

In 1978, the year of the third and last meeting of the Federation of the Ecologist Movement, there was a disintegration of the state's environmental groups. In the 1990s, evidence of the limited capacity of the environmental movement to generate responses, began to promote a current favorable to the federation of the different groups. Thus, in 1998 Ecologistas en Acción was created from a multitude of local and regional environmental groups, many of which had already grouped together in Aedenat ('Asociación Ecologista de Defensa de la Naturaleza' 39;) and the CODA ('Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Defensa Ambiental'), as well as other environmental groups linked to the left. Among the founding members, historical figures of Spanish environmentalism such as Ladislao Martínez or José Luis García Cano stand out.

The goal was to create a networked environmental confederation with a common name that would enhance its presence in society, so that activism in small groups could have an impact comparable to that of Greenpeace, WWF/Adena, Friends of the Earth or SEO/Birdlife. In any case, some large groups such as the GOB, in the Balearic Islands, or Acció Ecologista - Agró, in the Valencian Community, as well as most of the Catalan groups, were excluded from the unification of their own free will. The latter would constitute, in 2002, the Federation of Ecologists of Catalonia.

The Ecologist Magazine

The magazine El Ecologista began to be published in 1979 following a countercultural line. Years later, after his disappearance, Gaia was created in 1993 as an organ for the dissemination of CODA, which became Ecologista again in 1999 after the founding of the confederation Ecologists in Action, which currently publishes it.

Ideology

The organization is made up of members from diverse political backgrounds and is not affiliated with any political movement. The only common denominator of its activists and partners is the defense of the environment framed in social ecology. According to his ideological principles:

"Ecologists in Action is a plural social organization where different ways of living ecologism fit, and where we understand that the destiny of human societies is inseparable from natural ecosystems.

This development is part of the conception of our planet as an intricate conjunction of subtle balances between different ecosystems and different species, the human included. Their actions and their structures are closely related, forming part of what we call nature.

Our relationship with nature cannot continue to be based on the idea of exploitation and domination. We must urgently face the global ecological crisis that unevenly affects people in the world. We want to prevent the systematic violation of human and environmental rights of most of humanity because of the continued operation of our current production and consumption model that promotes the privatization and commodification of all goods and resources, thus increasing poverty and misery. "...

"The cultures derived from productivism have, throughout history, had insensitive and insensitive relationships with the Earth. Nature was considered an inexhaustible source of resources and an infinite sink where to deposit all kinds of waste. Now we know that human actions and social structures are seriously disrupting the balances of the biosphere and that it is not possible to safeguard the common environment without taking into account human societies, or the reverse, to work for a just and harmonious society that allows the personal development of their individuals, without the search for relationships with nature that do not brutally disturb their cycles and balances.

Ecology gives us the awareness of the limit."

It focuses on developing viable alternatives in all areas in which it works.

Its operation by internal direct democracy, however, could condition its preferential follow-up by certain sectors of the population.

Structure

Manifestation convened by Ben Magec - Ecologists in Action

The organizational base is the local groups, which manage the bulk of the budget, decide their campaigns and how to carry them out. Likewise, they also have autonomy to decide their organizational format (although most of them work as an assembly).

Territorially, the confederation is structured into different federations, organized according to the autonomous division of the Spanish State. However, not all the autonomous communities are represented, since the implementation of the organization varies according to the territory. In those autonomies whose administrative division consists of several provinces, and where Ecologistas en Acción is represented, the federation at the autonomic level is subdivided into provincial federations.

Each federation is made up of local groups, which consist, regardless of their number of members and/or activists, of individual vote in the Confederal Assembly of the organization, held annually. In it, the master lines of work for the year are decided, as well as common general themes.

The organization is represented in the autonomous communities of Andalusia (the largest in terms of local groups that make it up, more than 100), Aragon, Asturias, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Community of Madrid, Galicia, the Basque Country, Extremadura, La Rioja, Navarra, the Valencian Community and the Region of Murcia, as well as in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, but not in the Balearic Islands.

Functionally, it is also structured into different work areas, depending on the environmental ills that are intended to be treated. Depending on the size of the groups, the distribution of the areas is made between different commissions that assume different areas; obviously, the smaller groups do not need to structure themselves into committees. The work areas are also important for the organization of the Confederal Assemblies.

Budgets and financing

Work areas

The areas of action, often overlapping, are the following:

• Agroecology: fight against GMOs and promote organic farming.
• Water: sustainable use of water resources, especially in the continental waters; campaigns against the National Hydrological Plan stand out.
• Animals: denouncing activities that consider to involve cruelty to animals, favouring the abolition of bullfighting.
• Antiglobalization: campaigns against economic globalization and any international action.
• Climate change: warning campaigns against global warming and combustion.
• Consumption: denunciation of the waste caused by the productivist economy. In this area the Consume HastaMorir collective is particularly dedicated, often with satirical campaigns.
• Pollution: denunciation of different forms of pollution, from atmospheric to light, among many others.
• Ecofeminism: ecology from a gender perspective.
• Education: denounces the anti-environmental content of numerous educational texts and organizes environmental awareness campaigns.
• Energy: denounces the environmental impacts caused by different forms of energy extraction; obviously linked to the area of climate change and hazardous waste, such as nuclear.
• Marine environment: promotes the sustainable exploitation of the marine environment and denounces episodes of danger of marine pollution, such as in the case of oil tankers, or coastal attacks.
• Nature: promotes the protection of natural spaces, including the livestock roads, and denounces attacks on protected spaces.
• Heritage: dedicated to denounce the aggressions against the historical heritage.
• Waste: promotes waste reduction in modern production systems and denounces bad practices in waste management, including disinterest in recycling or uncontrolled dumping of hazardous waste.
• Transport: denounces the unsustainability of the current transport system, based on private transport (car) and the construction of high-speed infrastructures or airports, and promotes more sustainable uses such as public transport loaded with renewable electricity, bicycle, and walk.
• Urbanism: denounces urban abuses and the unsustainability of the modern urban model.
• Legal defense: dedicated to supporting different groups in complaints of environmental aggression, as well as to developing policy proposals and to forming members of the organization.

On the Internet

On the Internet, he collaborates with Nodo50 and develops the Ecologistas TV, EcoSpip and Ecowiki projects, among others.

Posts

In addition to the quarterly magazine Ecologista already mentioned, the organization has a publishing house for the publication of numerous texts on social environmental issues: Libros en Acción.