Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany

Hardy Survivors in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

William T. Markham

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780857450302
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

German environmental organizations have doggedly pursued environmental protection through difficult times: hyperinflation and war, National Socialist rule, postwar devastation, state socialism in the GDR, and confrontation with the authorities during the 1970s and 1980s. The author recounts the fascinating and sometimes dramatic story of these organizations from their origins at the end of the nineteenth century to the present, not only describing how they reacted to powerful social movements, including the homeland protection and socialist movements in the early years of the twentieth century, the Nazi movement, and the anti-nuclear and new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, but also examining strategies for survival in periods like the current one, when environmental concerns are not at the top of the national agenda. Previous analyses of environmental organizations have almost invariably viewed them as parts of larger social structures, that is, as components of social movements, as interest groups within a political system, or as contributors to civil society. This book, by contrast, starts from the premise that through the use of theories developed specifically to analyze the behavior of organizations and NGOs we can gain additional insight into why environmental organizations behave as they do.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

This book combines a sociological analysis of the history of German environmental organizations in the twentieth century with an analysis of the dilemmas and strategy decisions that confronted them as they entered the twenty-first. The history is a fascinating and sometimes dramatic story of organizations that have doggedly pursued environmental protection through difficult times—times of hyperinflation and war, National Socialist rule, postwar devastation, state socialism, and confrontations with the authorities during the 1970s and 1980s. It is also a history punctuated by the organizations' encounters with powerful social movements from across the political spectrum—homeland protection and socialism in the early years of the twentieth century, the Nazi movement, the antinuclear and new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, and the movement that brought down the German Democratic Republic and led to reunification.

But turbulent times and confrontational social movements are far from the whole story here. Of almost equal interest are the environmental organizations' struggles to remain relevant and continue their work in periods, like the current one, when environmental concerns were not at the top of the national agenda. For whether in turbulent times or quiescent, environmental organizations must obtain the resources they need, structure themselves effectively, and adapt their programs and goals to the world around them. This is seldom easy. Their organizational environments are complex, and the social actors on which they depend for their survival and legitimacy are rarely in agreement about what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. Strategy formulation in such circumstances becomes a balancing act, interesting in its own right, impressive when executed well, and worthy of scholarly attention to understand how it works.

Four organizations are the focus of my analysis of present-day German environmental organizations. They are the German chapters of Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), the German League for Environment and Nature Protection (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland: BUND), and the German Nature Protection League (Naturschutzbund Deutschland: NABU)—formerly the League for Bird Protection (Bund für Vogelschutz: BfV). The last two are the German counterparts of well known British and US organizations, such as the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Friends of the Earth. I selected these organizations because they share several specific characteristics. All pursue multiple environmental goals. And except for Greenpeace's opposition to military conflict—a borderline case in any event—they do not have non-environmental goals. All are mass membership organizations, whose supporters are individuals, not other organizations, and their memberships far exceed those of other organizations with similar characteristics. All operate on the national level and are formally organized, with bylaws, formally elected or appointed officers, and formalized procedures.

I have also used these characteristics as a guideline for selecting organizations to include in the historical analysis, although it was sometimes necessary to bend the rules a bit to fit historical circumstances. Environmentalism, conceptualized by both contemporary scholars and environmental organizations as a combination of efforts to protect nature, human health and well-being, and natural resources (Markham and van Koppen, 2007), is not yet four decades old. Before that, these objectives were typically pursued by different groups, and only nature protection advocates showed much propensity to form large formalized organizations of national scope.

Consequently, the history of German “environmental” organizations before the 1970s is perforce mainly a history of nature protection organizations. A few of these, such as the League for Bird Protection, pursued nature protection in relatively “pure” form, but I have also included some that gave nature protection a high priority but combined it with other goals. Also included is the Bavarian League for Nature Protection (Bund Naturschutz in Bayern: BN), a regional organization that occupies a key role in the history of German environmentalism and was the predecessor organization to BUND.

Environmental organizations like the ones described in this book are among the most persistent, adaptable, and influential forms of environmental action in Western democracies (Bammerlin, 1998; Rawcliffe, 1998; Bosso, 2005). All three of the largest environmental organizations operating in Germany on the eve of World War I still exist today, and organizations like the Sierra Club and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have equally long pedigrees. The number of supporters of the four largest German environmental organizations ranges today from over a quarter million to more than a half million, many times the Green Party's 44,000 members, and their combined membership far exceeds that of either of Germany's two largest political parties (Deutscher Bundestag, 2006). Indeed, in a survey conducted for the German Ministry for Families, Seniors, Women, and Youth, 82 percent of those who reported doing volunteer work for the environment or animal protection said they did so in the context of an environmental or animal protection organization (Gensicke, Picot, and Geiss, 2005). This situation is not unique to Germany. Elsewhere in Europe (Dalton, 2005; Bozonnet, 2004, 2005) and in the US (Bosso, 2005) environmental groups attract large memberships.

Unlike political parties, environmental organizations are free to focus all of their attention on environmental issues. Their professional staffs and financial resources equip them especially well to educate the public about environmental problems, develop proposals for policy change, monitor legislation and administrative actions, offer expert testimony, and lobby national and regional governments. Indeed, they play key roles in each of these areas (Oswald von Nell Breuning Insitut, 1996; Rat von Sachverständigen für Umweltfragen, 1996; Bammerlin, 1998). Their large memberships and budgets also make them “keystone organizations” (Bosso, 2005) in the overall structure of environmental activism. That is, they play a disproportionate role in setting the environmental agenda, and other environmental groups must take them into account. Rucht and Roose (2001a, 2001b, 2001c), for example, found that BUND, NABU, Greenpeace, and the WWF generally ranked at the top when other environmental groups, both large and small, were asked to name the groups with which they exchanged information or formed partnerships for joint campaigns.

The four organizations' activities have earned them a positive reputation and a great deal of public trust. A 1989 Allensbacher Institute poll showed that environmental organizations enjoyed more public trust than government environmental offices (Voss, 1990), and a 1995 survey (INRA (Europe) - ECO, 1995) showed that the German public placed far more faith in them to tell the truth about the environment than political parties, trade unions, the government, industry, scientists and teachers, or the media. More recent surveys (European Opinion Research Group, 2002; Bundesministerium für Umwelt, 2002, 2004; Gruneberg and Kuckartz, 2003; Directorate General Environment, 2005; Kuckartz and Rheingans-Heintze, 2006) show that the public both trusts them more and ranks their capacity to solve environmental problems higher than government bureaus, churches, labor unions, scientists, business, and all political parties—including the Green Party—and that confidence in the environmental organizations has remained high even as public confidence in the other actors declined.

Large, national environmental organizations have, nevertheless, come in for criticism. The critics, in Germany and elsewhere (e.g., Jordan and Maloney, 1997; Brulle, 2000; Blühdorn, 2000; Bergstedt, 2002), typically charge that the organizations have proved unable to induce societies to solve environmental problems and are unwilling to take the lead in social movements or confront core environmental problems and powerful social actors. They are also accused of propagating “checkbook environmentalism,” which merely soothes the conscience of their middle-class supporters, whose lifestyles are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the continuing environmental damage. Finally, critics accuse them of ignoring social movements of the poor, who suffer most from environmental degradation. Yet for all of this, it is hard to imagine the environmental scene without them and hard to imagine that things would be better without them (Bosso, 2005; Markham, 2005a).

With a few exceptions (e.g., Rucht, 1989; Mitchell, Mertig, and Dunlap, 1992; Ingram, Colnic, and Mann, 1995), social scientists before the late 1990s seemed content to leave the investigation of environmental organizations to activists and journalists (e.g., Sale, 1993; Dowie, 1995; Bergstedt, 1998). This pattern ended in the late 1990s, when researchers in the US (e.g., Shaiko, 1999; Bosso, 2005) and the UK (e.g., Jordan and Maloney, 1997; Rawcliffe, 1998) began to produce detailed analyses of environmental organizations; however, very little information is available in English about environmental organizations elsewhere. The only recent information about German environmental organizations comes from three short articles (Rucht, 1989; Blühdorn, 1995; Foljanty-Jost, 2004), two of them rather dated. In the German literature, only a little-known book by Bammerlin (1998), now almost a decade old, offers an extended analysis of the German environmental organizations.

The German case is especially interesting for several reasons. Germany has the largest population and the largest economy in Europe, and it has exerted considerable influence on European Union environmental policy (Sbragia, 2000; Schreuers, 2002). Numerous studies have shown a relatively high level of environmental consciousness and willingness to act to protect the environment in Germany (e.g., Commission of the European Communities, 1992; Worcester, 1993; INRA (Europe) - ECO, 1995; Brand, 1997; European Commission, 1999; Wurzel, 2002; Bozonnet, 2005), although several recent studies suggest that Germany may be losing its lead (Bozonnet, 2004; European Commission, 2005; Directorate General Environment, 2005). The German environmental movement in the 1990s achieved what, by some estimates, was the highest level of mobilization in Europe (Blühdorn, 1995; Rucht and Roose, 1999), and German rates of membership, financial contributions, and active participation in environmental organizations today are well above the European average (Bozonnet, 2004, 2005).

Germany also has the most successful Green Party in Europe, and German environmentalists have enjoyed enviable success in institutionalizing their agenda in government regulations, industrial practice, and public education (Rucht and Roose, 1999; Brand, 1999a; Schreuers, 2002; Foljanty-Jost, 2004). Germany is a leader in the percentage of its GNP spent on environmental protection, in energy efficiency, in reductions of greenhouse gases, and in exports of pollution reduction technologies (Jänicke and Weidner, 1996; Brand, Eder, and Poferl, 1997).

Although Germany's reputation as an environmental leader is well deserved, environmentalists and environmental experts (e.g., Jänicke and Weidner, 1996; Pehle, 1997; Jänicke, Kunig, and Stitzel, 1999; Bick and Obermann, 2000; DNR Deutschland Rundbrief, 2001g; Schreuers, 2002; Berliner Zeitung, 2004; Bundesministerium für Umwelt, 2004) can also cite a long list of unresolved problems. Among them are lack of follow-through in enforcing environmental laws, the high and increasing number of endangered species, slow progress in identifying nature reserves, weak provisions for protecting soil from contamination through pesticides or toxic wastes, slow progress in cleaning up waste dumps, rapid loss of scarce open space to development, and the country's strong support of its auto industry and growing reliance on automobile and airline transportation. Failure to impose autobahn speed limits to save energy and reduce pollution is a long-running embarrassment for Germany in international environmental politics, and it recently temporarily blocked an EU effort to require recycling of automobiles. Germany's commitment to environmental protection has historically varied with the degree of economic prosperity, and the country's focus on the problems of reunification and on maintaining economic competitiveness in the face of a weak economy appear to have moved it away from its earlier role as a leader in pressing for higher EU environmental standards (Pehle, 1997, 1998; Sbragia, 2000; Wurzel, 2002).

Nevertheless, the successes of German environmentalism have received a great deal of press attention (Rucht and Roose, 1999), and Germany is sometimes held up as a model for other nations (e.g., Weidner, 1991b; Dowie, 1995). The Greens, in particular, have attracted enormous attention from the popular press and scholars (e.g., O'Neill, 1997; Blühdorn, 2002; Hoffman, 2002), and a good bit has been written in English about German environmental politics and policy (e.g., Blühdorn, Krause, and Scharf, 1995; Jänicke and Weidner, 1996; Pehle, 1997; Wurzel, 2002). Yet despite their high membership and key role in environmental action, Germany's large national environmental organizations have been all but ignored. This book undertakes to fill that gap.

Theoretical Perspective and Research Questions

I have purposefully written this book to be accessible to readers whose primary interest is not social science theory but the environmental organizations themselves. Nevertheless, productive sociological analysis is almost invariably guided by theory, and this book is no exception. Although it remains, for the most part, in the background, I have been guided at every turn by theory—and particularly by theories about the behavior of organizations.

My recourse to organization theory represents a departure from most previous analyses of environmental organizations, which have generally viewed them as components of social movements (e.g., Rucht, 1994; Koopmans, 1995), as interest groups attempting to influence the political system (e.g., Leonhard, 1986; Jordan and Maloney, 1997; Bosso, 2005), or—somewhat less often—as actors of civil society (e.g., Brulle, 2000). Such approaches provide useful insights, and I draw on them frequently; however, as tools for analyzing environmental organizations, they have two serious drawbacks.

First, these approaches are primarily theories about social movements, political systems, or civil society, not about environmental organizations. Consequently, using them tends to divert attention away from analyzing environmental organizations themselves and focus it instead on understanding the organizations' roles in the movement, a system of interest groups, or civil society.

Second, none of these theories are adequate for analyzing environmental organizations in the full range of social contexts in which they operate. Viewing environmental organizations as social movement organizations is not very useful for understanding how they function when under tight state supervision, as German environmental organizations were under National Socialism and in the GDR, or in periods like the decade following World War II, when nature protection organizations continued their work but an environmental movement hardly existed. Interest group models and theories of civil society are also poorly suited to understanding environmental organizations under dictatorship, and they have little utility for analyzing environmental organizations so embedded in confrontational protest movements that their participation in the political system is neither welcomed by other participants nor desired by the organizations themselves—a situation that characterized several German environmental organizations during the period of confrontations with the state and business during the 1970s and 1980s.

Rather than viewing environmental organizations primarily as components of larger structures, which then become the main focus of interest, this book places the accent on the organizations themselves. It asks why they adopt the programs and goals, internal structures, and strategies for coping with the outside world that they do and how these programs and goals, internal structures, and strategies influence one another. The inquiry is guided by general theories of organizations that are typically applied to analyze business firms, government agencies, and other NGOs.

I rely primarily on four strands from this literature. First, I use the open system model (e.g., Thompson, 1967; Katz and Kahn, 1978) to examine how environmental organizations are constrained to choose specific objectives and strategies that allow them to procure the financial resources, labor, and legitimacy they need to survive and pursue their general goals. This model also highlights the dilemmas organizations face when the social actors that can provide them with resources and legitimacy differ in their opinions about what they should be doing. Second, the book draws on literature (e.g., Wilson, 1995; Jordan and Maloney, 1997) about how volunteer organizations manage to solve Mancur Olson's (1965) “free rider problem.” That is, how do environmental organizations persuade individuals to support them, even though no single person's contributions have a decisive impact on whether the organization succeeds and even though those who contribute nothing will benefit equally from its successes? Third, the book draws on a line of research and theorizing that can be traced back to Robert Michels' (1949) “iron law of oligarchy.” The focus here is on identifying factors that promote or retard professionalization and centralization in NGOs and the consequences of these trends for organizations (e.g., Rucht, Blattert, and Rink, 1997). Finally, the analysis draws on recent theoretical efforts (e.g., DiMaggio and Powell, 1991a; Perrow, 1993) to analyze organizations as institutions, that is, as social actors that are expected to conform to standard practice and whose goals and strategies are valued and imbued with symbolic meanings by the members.

The institutional perspective, in particular, insists that organizational analysts must take culture and history seriously, and organizational history and traditions are especially important factors in the behavior of NGOs supported by volunteers and donors. Consequently, a historical perspective is key for understanding the present-day problems and strategies of environmental organizations. Moreover, a historical analysis allows us to compare the strategies used by environmental organizations in different historical situations and avoid the myopia that can accompany an exclusive focus on recent history. The German case is especially useful in this respect because of the exceptionally diverse social and political contexts within which environmental organizations there have operated during the twentieth century.

The research questions this theoretical approach suggests are, in the first instance, the classic questions of all organizational analysis. How do environmental organizations acquire the resources they need to survive and move toward their goals, how do they structure themselves internally, and how do they select their goals and the strategies for implementing them? Environmental organizations are, however, not just generic organizations. Like any type of organization, they have their own specific characteristics, and these characteristics raise more specific questions. As NGOs, environmental organizations must acquire financial support from business or government, which...