Litigation as a Strategy for Environmental Movements Questioned: An Examination of Bergama and Artvin-Cerattepe Struggles

Defne Gönenç

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2022, vol. 24, issue 2, 303-322

Abstract: Litigation is being increasingly used by environmental movements in pursuit of justice as a last resort. The environmentally harmful actions of transnational corporations in addition to the incapability of international organizations and the unresponsiveness of states to inhibit this damage are pushing citizens to courts. However, courts’ ability to address environmental injustices remains dubious. This article problematizes the efficacy of litigation for environmental movements to achieve long-term justice by examining Bergama and Artvin-Cerattepe movements from Turkey, through a case-study approach and borrowing from grounded theory. It discusses the reasons why litigation may provide short-term gains for environmental movements but is of limited effectiveness for pursuing change in the long-term, such as non-implementation of court decisions, policy changes impacting the execution of judgements, insufficient sentences not offering enough deterrence for future, and power imbalances between litigants impacting the courtroom etc.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19448953.2021.2006004 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjsbxx:v:24:y:2022:i:2:p:303-322

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjsb20

DOI: 10.1080/19448953.2021.2006004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies is currently edited by Professor Vassilis Fouskas

More articles in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().