By Jim Montavalli Women's contributions to the environmental movement have and continue to take many forms. W omen's contributions to the environmental movement have and continue to take many forms. Women serve as front-line leaders at grassroots actions around the world. They contribute amply to the thinking that guides the movement's agenda.
Modern environmentalism rests on a philosophical base that women have had a firm hand in shaping.
One such movement mentor is British-born futurist Hazel Henderson, who's spend 30 years pointing the way toward a more sustainable economic model. Since co-founding New York's Citizens for Clean Air in 1964, Henderson, through her writing, lecturing and constant activism, has worked to reform world financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, helped build support for the United Nations, and argued for corporate social responsibility and a tax policy that recognizes environmental factors as part of the real cost of doing business. It's a matter of looking at the global commons and all the commercial uses that we make of it. Our environmental impact is not really included in the cost of doing business of calculating the gross national product. Social and environmental costs have traditionally been externalized, which is why the industrial economies have gone so far off course.