In a faculty research seminar at the School of Public Policy (SPP) on March 26, Visiting Professor Elena Krumova presented her research on organizational change within environmental NGOs in Bulgaria over the past 25 years. “I’m asking questions about how environmental NGOs have changed including diversifying funding sources, types of projects, targets, relations with other organizations, and tactics,” she stated.
Krumova’s interest in environmental NGOs in Bulgaria is two-fold. First, as she explained, it makes sense to study this NGO sector in Bulgaria since environmental NGOs predate the fall of the Berlin Wall and are among the most active in the country. Second, she is interested in the theoretical side of environmentalism as a movement.
Outlining the history of environmental movements, Krumova pointed to “political ecology” from the 1960s as the beginning of a wave of criticism against states and markets for their failures to control environmental impacts. By the 1980s, the Berlin School of Ecological Modernization had emerged and proposed that environmental issues should be complementary to innovation and technology. Krumova said that this highlights a challenge for governance today: “how to eat and talk at the same time,” i.e. how to reconcile the tension between capitalism and democracy.
Krumova plans to conduct interviews with key stakeholders in Bulgaria as she continues her research. “I’m trying to think about the learning processes of environmental NGOs over the last 25 years, a period during which they have faced large fluctuations in funding and have had to deal with the changing needs and shifting positions of government officials.”