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ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS, SOCIAL RESPONSES 95
The NIMBY concept
It is well-known that people dislike hazardous or allegedly dangerous economic
activity in their neighborhood or in close proximity to their homes. This is
identified as the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon. Though as citizens,
people agree in general that certain factories, power plants, military installations
and landfills must be based in the country, they usually disagree with having them
close to where they live. This is taken to the extreme when people explicitly question
the legitimacy of a planned installation and reject it on principle. This might be
labeled the BANANA attitude (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near
Anybody). The NIMBY reaction may appear as individuals’ personal concern and
personal risk which materializes in the forms of protest and rejection. Rejection
channeled into collective action usually refuses compromises until eventually the
investor moves out or offers compensation in due time and measure. The amount
of compensation is generally calculated in terms of economics after input-profit
analysis. Several factors are taken into account, such as the financial conditions of
the development site, its natural endowments and infrastructural situation, and
the living circumstances of the local population. Adding all this up, the investor
offers realistic compensation, which he finds sufficient to eliminate the inhabitants’
presumed resistance. Michael O’Hare (1977) warns that the calculations do not
lay as much emphasis on psychological effects as on financial solutions. Decisive
elements can be the upgrading of the potential sacrality of the living space, the
sense of the extended personal sphere which experiences the planned attempt at
changing the environment as an intrusion into the intimate sphere, the enhancement
of risk perceptions, the transformation of the local protest into an uprising, as well
as defiance without any obvious reasons.
O Hare focuses on how apparently rational individual actions turn into irrational
collective action in which the different opinions do not converge as they are not
formed along some collective interest, but instead coalesce into a lot of individual
suggestions. The researcher calls this “the dilemma of collective captivity”. It means
that an unwanted investment may be realized, despite rejection by 90% of those
affected, when the remaining 10% manage to convince the majority with reference
to the community’s interest. This applies even more when the minority includes
the prominent figures of the settlement or neighborhood,or is supported by the
local government.
Main causes of the NIMBY behavior (Kraft—Clary 1991):
— mistrust in the investing firm or its representative,
— lack of information; signs of secret-mongering,
— the advantages and potential negative consequences are not equilibrated,
— proneness to conflict in local traditions,
— negative memory of similar investments.
To understand the NIMBY syndrome, it is worth considering Doug McAdam’s
(1986) theory on movement extension and mobilization, which may shed light
on collective action for environmental issues. The researcher differentiates low-risk
and low-cost activism from high-risk activism, which costs time, money and
sacrifice. The goals of the former are more general: it rejects hazardous, presumably
environment-damaging future investments, e.g., siting a nuclear waste repository
or a cement factory, etc., in a certain settlement, and tries to have this intention