Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

While protests attract scholarly attention, environmental protests remain less examined. This study explores environmental protest outcomes in Bangladesh, arguing that state-led environmental injustice can escalate protests, and highlights that the recent regime change has a link with such protests.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental protests have emerged as key social events addressing rapid environmental degradation. Using two case studies from Bangladesh—the Phulbari movement and the Rampal movement against coal-based energy projects, this paper examines why and how environmental protest outcomes vary. Findings, based on both primary and secondary data, reveal that the Phulbari movement succeeded because local resistance successfully turned into a collective action and the nature of the political regime was such that the government was bound to adopt a concessionary approach due to a credible threat to its ruling position. In contrast, the Rampal movement failed as the local resistance partially turned into collective action and the regime did not face a credible threat to its ruling position, allowing it to remain firm on project implementation. Here, we argue that the key to local resistance essentially depends on whether the impacts of the project were perceivable by the protesters for the short or long term—what we clarify under the novel concept of ‘anticipated externality’. Overall, we contend that the variation in the environmental protest outcomes can be better understood by paying closer attention to the complex interaction between anticipated externality—protesters’ perceptions of the externality of an environmentally detrimental project and the nature of the existing political regime.

As concern over critical minerals and rapid ecological breakdown grows, environmental protests are becoming frequent. Therefore, understanding why such protests succeed or fail is crucial. Anticipated externality might help analyse environmental protest outcomes in diverse political contexts, guiding future protests towards sustainable environmental governance.