The global ecology movement is one of several new social movements that supported the formation of Green parties in many democratic countries beginning at the end of the 1970s. Its views on people, behaviors and events center around the political and lifestyle implications of the science of ecology, and the idea of nature as value in itself. The "ecology movement" is an umbrella term for different groups. An older predecessor of the ecology movement is the "Conservation Movement," going back to the beginning of the 20th century. The borderline to the environmental movement is, however, blurry. Many people confuse the ecology movement as a whole with political Greens-who have social justice concerns beyond ecology.
Today the term "ecology movement" is associated often with the more moral, more confrontational, and more rigorous stance taken by "Greenpeace" and other, even more radical NGOs, (which are Non-governmental Organizations,) for example: Earth First, Earth Action, Sea Shepherd (in favor of the "Precautionary Principle" and strong fundamental preventive measures for biosafety, biosecurity and biodiversity.) The methods of these groups often involve the idea of direct action; and this direct action is often in the form of violence.
A radical wing of the ecology movement opposes-and actually sabotages or destroys-infrastructural capital of what they deem to be "earth rapist" activities. This includes the "Anarchist Golfing Association" and the "Earth Liberation Front," which are sometimes accused of terrorism. These urban ecological terrorist groups have inflicted large economic losses on many economies. Their terrorist acts include fire-bombing a forest service installation in Erie, Pennsylvania. Very few in the ecology movement would accept doing bodily harm by non-legal means to achieve their goals.
They have no organized presence and are rejected by almost all players in the ecology movement. Some who hold property damage and bodily harm in moral equivalence, may reject this distinction, for instance, the US FBI, which has labelled the Earth Liberation Front as a "terrorist group." On the other side of the spectrum, there are individuals and groups that believe in either a more political-lobbyist or more scientific than activist approach.
At least since the Rio World Summit in 1992, that discussion about sustainable development and sustainability has surfaced and partly replaced older ecological oriented ideologies. This, and the establishment of a global anti-globalization movement in the late 1990s, can be seen as follow-ups to the ecological movement.
Before the widespread use of the term sustainable industries, the terms sustainable economy and sustainable development were prevalent. Their popularization started with the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development, known more commonly as "The Earth Summit," in 1992. The conference was prompted by the report "Our Common Future" released in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development-also known as the "Brundtland Commission"-which called for strategies to strengthen efforts to promote sustainable and environmentally sound development. A series of seven UN conferences followed on environment and development. They coined the most widely used definition of sustainable development as, "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It contains within it two key concepts: The concept of "needs," in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment ability to meet present and future needs."
