NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) protests are often criticized as parochial and short-lived, generating no lasting influence on broader processes related to environmental politics.  This volume offers a different perspective.  Drawing on cases from around the globe, it demonstrates that NIMBY protests, although always arising from a local concern in a particular community, often result in broader political, social, and technological change. Chapters include cases from Europe, North America, and Asia, engaging with the full political spectrum from established democracies to non-democratic countries. Regardless of political setting, NIMBY movements can have a positive and proactive role in generating innovative solutions to local as well as transnational environmental issues. Furthermore, those solutions are now serving as models for communities and countries around the world.

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) protests are often criticized as parochial and short-lived, generating no lasting influence on broader processes related to environmental politics.  This volume offers a different perspective.  Drawing on cases from around the globe, it demonstrates that NIMBY protests, although always arising from a local concern in a particular community, often result in broader political, social, and technological change. Chapters include cases from Europe, North America, and Asia, engaging with the full political spectrum from established democracies to non-democratic countries. Regardless of political setting, NIMBY movements can have a positive and proactive role in generating innovative solutions to local as well as transnational environmental issues. Furthermore, those solutions are now serving as models for communities and countries around the world.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface and Acknowledgments
Contributors

Introduction: A New Look at NIMBY
Carol Hager

Chapter 1. How Do Grassroots Environmental Protests Incite Innovation?
Helen M. Poulos

Chapter 2. From NIMBY to Networks:  Protest and Innovation in German Energy Politics
Carol Hager

Chapter 3. NIMBY and YIMBY:  Movements For and Against Renewable Energy in Germany and the United States
Miranda Schreurs and Dörte Ohlhorst

Chapter 4. Hell No We Won't Glow!  How Targeted Communities Deployed an Injustice Frame to Shed the NIMBY Label and Defeat Low-Level Radioactive Waste Facilities in the United States
Daniel J. Sherman

Chapter 5. Protecting Cultural Heritage:  Unexpected Successes for Environmental Movements in China and Russia
Elizabeth Plantan

Chapter 6. The Dalian Chemical Plant Protest, Environmental Activism, and China's Developing Civil Society
Michael M. Gunter, Jr.

Chapter 7. Local Activism and Environmental Innovation in Japan
Takashi Kanatsu

Chapter 8. From Backyard Environmental Advocacy to National Democratization: The Cases of South Korea and Taiwan
Mary Alice Haddad

Conclusion: NIMBY is Beautiful:  How Local Environmental Protests Are Changing the World
Mary Alice Haddad

Index