The Importance of Contexts in Strategies of Environmental Organizations with Regard to Climate Change
/ The purpose of the study was to investigate the extent to which strategies of environmental organizations depend on contexts. I examined this dependence by analyzing the strategies of five environmental organizations in the Netherlands with regard to climate change. These strategies were investigated over time and compared with the strategies these organizations had used in relation to ozone depletion and acidification. The results indicate that several of the organizations changed their strategies with respect to climate change over time. Furthermore, different strategies were used simultaneously in relation to the three problems. The findings suggest that strategies concerning climate change were to a considerable extent determined by the dominant framing of the problem in society. This framing was defined mainly by actors other than environmental organizations. The initial framing of climate change as a CO2 problem, which brought the issue into the energy debate, as well as the more general definition of the problem in the late 1980s as a greenhouse problem, were very important for determining the strategies of the organizations. It can be concluded that strategies of Dutch environmental organizations with regard to climate change were strongly dependent on the context.KEY WORDS: Environmental organization; Strategy; Climate change; Man-nature relationship; Problem definition; Context
Pleune
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Department of Science, Technology and Society Utrecht University Padualaan 14 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands