Imagination of the general public was not

Chico Mendes, its leader assassinated in 1988, maintained that "My dream is to see all this forest preserved because I know that it can guarantee the future of all the people who live there." The expansion of the environmental perspective has been so rapid in the last two years that an avalanche of "newcomers" has been unleashed. Under this label, a very diverse set of organizations that previously maintained their concerns in other fields and have recently joined the environmental debate are grouped together.

The clearest examples are some large private academic research centers that have started their environmental areas relatively recently, such as Ibase (Brazil), Fundación Mediterránea (Argentina), etc. The same is expressed by organizations made up of ex-governors Email Lists Database or high-ranking public officials who are now dedicated to these issues, and the most notorious example has been the Commission for the Development and Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean, which, Unity in diversity Beyond this internal heterogeneity, environmentalism points to its unity in respect of diversity. This respect for individuality is evident in the fact that different options are recognized and tolerated and there is no "discipline" to invoke to ensure that all participants follow the same task.

Therefore, seen from the outside, environmentalists seem to be doing a lot of things on multiple fronts. In some countries it has been possible to maintain instances of coordination and concertation, in particular in the form of "networks", but also as "leagues", "confederations", etc. These types of national links exist in several countries (the best known are those of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela). In other countries the movement still appears fragmented (for example, in Costa Rica, where attempts at national coordination have been developed). Likewise, there are continental links, especially associated with specific concerns, such as the network on tropical.