Abstract
Research seeking to explain how environmental threats and conflicts are publicly articulated faces a major challenge. In a social movement where the very notion of leadership is sometimes contested and often hidden, how are we to understand the role of environmental leaders in shaping political and public-issue agendas? Why are some leaders more influential than others? How do the sometimes conflicting interests of environmental leaders, Greens politicians and protest groups influence the way environmental concerns are negotiated? How do leaders and media interact in constructing environmental issues, and how has this changed with the major changes affecting media platforms, practices and technologies? This chapter introduces Leadership and the Construction of Environmental Concerns, providing an overview of key issues, related scholarship and the methods used for gathering and analysing the data on which this book is based.
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Profile: Alec Marr
Profile: Alec Marr
Australian Rainforest Conservation Society ; Formerly Executive Director of The Wilderness Society
I grew up in what was the farthest, most remote suburb of Newcastle, in a place outside Swansea called Caves Beach. We lived on the very last street of that area, on the border of about 50 miles of completely undeveloped coast. That meant my brother, sister and I effectively lived in the bush, and our recreation was doing all the stuff that kids do—bushwalking and bird-watching and those types of thing. I was very lucky with my family: my parents’ idea of a family holiday was to go to the remotest parts of the outback—Central Australia, the Kimberley , the Gulf of Carpentaria. We’d go out there hunting and fishing, and getting to know the locals. I grew up watching nature documentaries, and my main interest in life became adventure travel. I decided I wanted a job with no career involvement, where I could make a lot of money quickly and go off on the next trip. So I became a bricklayer. In the ’70s and ’80s you could make a lot of money as a bricklayer. In 1975, as a 20-year-old, I was making $1,000 a week after tax.
Before I got involved with The Wilderness Society I would work for six months and then travel for six months. After a year hitching around South America in 1980, I came back with a view to becoming an adventure documentary maker. My original plan was to train myself to make films. I’d then illegally cross the border between Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya and climb Carstensz Pyramid, which is a 17,000-foot mountain with its own glaciers right on the Equator, surrounded by Dani tribesmen with penis gourds and the whole thing. I’d use the money I’d make from a film about that to then cross illegally into Burma, where they’ve got another 20,000-foot mountain. That was going to be my lifestyle. So I went down to Tasmania to train for climbing on big rock walls, but instead I drifted into vertical caving and white-water rafting and bushwalking. And everywhere I went in Tasmania to get to these fabulous wilderness areas I had to drive through miles and miles of forest totally destroyed by the woodchip industry and be chased by log trucks. I got so sick of watching places that I really liked being destroyed that I decided to join The Wilderness Society as a volunteer. And that was the beginning of what some people would look back on and call a career, though a career was never my plan.
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Tranter, B., Lester, L., McGaurr, L. (2017). Introduction: Environmental Leadership in Transition. In: Leadership and the Construction of Environmental Concern. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56584-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56584-6_1
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