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Spiritual ecology explores the interface of religions and spiritualities on the one hand, and environments, ecologies, and environmentalisms on the other. As an international environmental movement, spiritual ecology involves a multitude of diverse leaders, organizations, and initiatives. They share a common concern and commitment to pursuing the vital role of religion and spirituality in environmentalism to complement secular approaches to environmental problems and issues from the local to the global levels. Here, after some background, spiritual ecology as a component of the phenomena of international environmental movements is exemplified through three cases: the Green Belt Movement beginning in Kenya, the Green Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation affiliate of the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund).

This chapter expresses the need for an increase or reforestation of Black scholarship and examines the complexity of race in a White privileged institution of higher education. It is written with an understanding of Critical Race Theory's counter-narrative benefits and models the power of voice in the classroom of a Black student and a White teacher and their roles in creating a “safe space for race talk” in the classroom.

Wangari Maathai – environmentalist, political activist, human rights champion, and international spokesperson for environmental justice – combined scientific expertise with traditional African respect for the land and compassion for individual persons. She was thus able to build a movement to preserve the land, foster citizen empowerment, and inspire activism to effect systemic change. Her legacy is both local and international, with more than 5,000 active citizen networks in Kenya having planted more than 51 million trees.

As a child, Maathai was taught to revere the earth as infused with divine presence. Through study, she added knowledge of scientific principles that govern the natural world, as well as complex interactions between humans and earth. What she saw was the delicate and essential interdependence of environmental and social needs.

Over the course of 45 years of activism, in Kenya and on the world stage, she learned to address individual human suffering and challenge the systems responsible for the pain, including political and economic corruption. Maathai was, in many ways, a prototypical grassroots leader in the heroic vein. She insistently rebuffed attempts to romanticize poverty or consider it inevitable; she refused to surrender to oppression and exploitation – sometimes at significant personal risk.

Maathai left rich resources – a memoir and handbook, essays, speeches, papers, editorials – plus an active Movement. Emphasis in this essay, which draws on those resources plus insights of scholars, journalists, filmmakers, family, friends, and critics, some through personal interview, is what her strategies and achievements suggest for ongoing leadership for Africa.

In the years following the 2009 recession, local governments in the US have struggled to adequately maintain and manage infrastructure projects. As a result, community organizations are using new tactics to increase social and financial support for specific projects in the hopes of capturing local government attention and motivating infrastructure project delivery. This chapter explores how one community organization initiated a consensus movement by using civic crowdfunding to mobilize resources for a specific infrastructure project. Based on a matched pairs case study with two protected bike lane (PBL) projects in Denver, CO, USA (one that used consensus movement tactics and one that did not), this analysis focuses on the emergence of a consensus movement and its implications for project stakeholders. As a consensus movement supporting infrastructure, I argue that the project-based nature is important in defining movement success. Additionally, I argue that the relationship between the social movement organization and the state is more important than a typical consensus movement because infrastructure delivery requires a high level of state coordination and resources. The implications of using a consensus movement to support a specific infrastructure project point to shifting roles between social movement organization and the state.

This beginning chapter offers a comprehensive overview of community development, tracing its historical roots and societal implications. It underscores community development’s role in fostering social cohesion and positive change. Beginning with its foundational principles of collective action, participation, and empowerment, the chapter delves into its evolution in response to industrialization and urbanization. It explores diverse scales, contexts, tools, and strategies used in community development and its broader societal impact. The chapter advocates for inclusivity and active engagement of community members, emphasizing tailored solutions that address unique challenges. It acknowledges complexities like ethical dilemmas, power imbalances, and cultural sensitivities, underscoring the importance of integrity and local context understanding in community development.

This paper focuses on differences in resource mobilization opportunities among environmental social movement organizations (ESMOs), with empirical focus on ESMOs from five European Union countries – two Northwest European countries (Sweden, Germany) and three post-communist countries (Poland, Croatia, and Slovenia). Whereas mass-membership mobilization is a reality in the Northwest European context, ESMOs from post-communist countries fundamentally rely on international support and project-based funding. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate and discuss what implications this difference has for domestic capacity building among ESMOs.

The paper draws theoretically and empirically on literature on social movements, including environmental movements. It uses a qualitative methodology with figures, field observations, and interview data from ESMO representatives. The empirical material is based on field studies of ESMOs from the five focused countries.

The findings demonstrate strong pessimism regarding the possibilities for mass-membership mobilization in the post-communist context, and indicate a set of challenges related to the strong reliance on project funding and international sources. Issues such as short-termism, lack of independence, critical distance, and learning potential are discussed. The findings also indicate avenues for creativity and how various buffers can help to cope with challenges, and that ESMOs from the Northwest European context also face pressures relating to resource mobilization that can negatively affect their critical edge.

By the chosen focus and comparative approach, the paper contributes to our understanding if and how ESMOs can work as powerful and critical political actors in various contexts. The paper thus contributes theoretically and empirically to literature on social movements, and specifically environmental movements.

Purpose: Since the middle of the 20th century, much of the literature on conflict resolution has focused on ways to manage and diffuse conflicts, but there have been recent efforts to include peacebuilding and sustaining processes in these studies. The discussions on peace have, inevitably, raised questions about the definition of violence: there are dissenting ideas about the boundary between violence and peace. Traditionally, the literature on violence focuses on ethnic conflicts, wars, terrorism, and the results of such armed conflicts. This chapter illustrates other “debates” about violence and peace, by focusing on the discourse and explicit activism “in the field.”

Method: The chapter draws on archival sources for examples of protests, discursive politics, and human rights activism.

Findings: The chapter highlights, the ways in which more conventional ideas about violence, and the boundaries between peace and violence have been challenged. It focuses on women's and women-dominated activism to highlight the role of actors whose explicit and unobtrusive actions are not systematically recognized as we study efforts to build and sustain peace.