Visions of Iranian Environmental Activism Inside and Outside of the Country.

Abstract

This paper examines the perspectives of Iranian environmental activists residing both inside the country and in the diaspora to shed light on the current state of environmental activism in Iran under an oppressive regime whose intolerance of independent and organized activities have forced activists to adopt new forms of engagement, particularly through social media. This led to the emergence of non-organized but motivated actors in the environmental activism landscape. The paper argues that the traditional framework of activism fails to capture the relationships between these various groups and introduces the concept of “non-activism” in order to include a diverse group of motivated but unorganized groups that further the cause of activists while lowering the risk of government retribution and enabling resident and diasporic activists who were separated to communicate and collaborate in the same space.