Environmental contention in South European nations feeling the dramatic impacts of the recent deep recession is receiving less attention than the imperative economic and political struggles. This paper aims to highlight the importance of environmental repertoires of claims and actions by professional environmental organizations as well as grassroots activists under the crisis of the past three years. These civil society groups voice grave concerns related to the endangerment of the environment under austerity, structural adjustment and neo-liberal policies, as reflected in networking activities of the former (e.g. 10-sister common actions, 4 NGOs network on waste management) and intense struggles of the later (e.g. Keratea waste conflict, Halkidiki’s antigoldgreece actions, Pancretan Network against industrial renewable sources of energy).
Given the more recent concerns regarding increased energy and growth needs, significant environmental dilemmas and issues are becoming of rising concern for the ecosystem, but especially for the involved communities and areas chosen to host them. The paper will aim to address these issues from a social movements perspective by delineating the conceptual, theoretical and empirical aspects raised. It will first offer an empirical background profile of the character of environmental activism against energy, waste and resource extracting facilities and infrastructures in selected Southern European regions.
The ultimate aim is to link environmental contention to economic programs under structural adjustment and neo-liberal policies on the one hand, and EU environmental policies on the other. In doing do it will offer a critical discussion concerning development trajectories that would assure the preservation of an already fragile Southern European environment, while simultaneously rescuing eurozone regions from the negative consequences of the crisis.
