Copyright 2001 BBC News
September 5, 2001
By BBC News Online environment correspondent Alex Kirby

British people living on low incomes are among those worst affected by environmental problems.

But government policies sometimes clash with their social and economic well-being, researchers say.

And green campaigners' priorities are often too far removed from their daily lives to matter much.

They have clear ideas about how to improve their surroundings, and link these to the need for fundamental policy changes.

The researchers explored environmental concerns in four areas: a poor neighbourhood in Glasgow; another in London close to busy roads; a former mining village in North Wales with a chemical factory nearby; and a rural area in a national park in Derbyshire.

Local concerns first

Their report, Rainforests are a long way from here: The environmental concerns of disadvantaged groups, is published in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Reconciling Environmental and Social Concerns series.

It is based on a series of focus groups held in the four areas. The title comes from one participant's comment: "Rainforests are a long way from here. They're not affecting me at the moment, so don't tempt fate by thinking about it."

The researchers' findings include:

local issues mattered most, from litter and dog mess to unswept streets

problems obvious to outsiders, like busy roads or a chemical factory, were less worrying to residents, who accepted them as facts of life

some people made the link between local pollution and wider environmental problems, but many felt uninformed and bemused by "the jargon of environmentalism"

many could not manage or afford to adopt "green" habits like recycling household waste

people resented outsiders describing their neighbourhoods in ways that stigmatised them as "polluted", "derelict" or "dirty".

Some residents thought improving the neighbourhood would have a knock-on effect.

One man said: "If you're in a different environment you wouldn't talk the way you talk here, or fight the way you fight here, because the people would be different you know. Folk over here... they've no pride in the environment."

People from the rural area, in an attractive part of the UK, felt tourism gave them little.

They resented the pollution from tourists' vehicles, the rise in house prices because of the demand for commuter and holiday homes, and the switch by village shops to providing for tourists' needs.

Making the connections

They also said public transport and rising fuel costs were problems, so a policy of cutting car use simply ignored their needs.

Many people in all four areas believed small-scale changes could improve their quality of life appreciably. But many also saw small problems as symptoms of more complex underlying issues.

The researchers conclude: "If sustainable solutions to local environmental problems are to be found, these wider issues need to be addressed; cleaning dirty streets and enforcing standards will not alone deliver lasting change.

"This highlights an urgent need for integrated environmental, social and economic policy."

One of the report's authors is Dr Kate Burningham, of the University of Surrey.

Start by listening

She told BBC News Online: "What we found is that things look different from the inside.

"People aren't stupid. They don't separate the environment from everything else going on around them.

"You need to start from where they are. Yet a common refrain was 'There aren't any environmental groups round here'.

"If campaigners are concerned to engage people more broadly, they do need to think about what gets them worked up." Error: Unable to read footer file.