What does "environmentalism" mean?

A theory that views environment, rather than heredity or culture, as the important factor in the development of an individual or group.

Environmentalism

noun

noun ·7 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A theory that views environment, rather than heredity or culture, as the important factor in the development of an individual or group. countable, uncountable
"The first is that the present work in no sense represents a relapse toward the old environmentalism which believed it could find the causes of culture in environment."
2
the activity of protecting the environment from pollution or destruction wordnet
3
A political and social ideology that seeks to prevent the environment from degradation by human activity. countable, uncountable
"The need for environmentalisms engaged with the commons rather than relegated to the individual consumer or tied to the middle-class principles of private property."
4
the philosophical doctrine that environment is more important than heredity in determining intellectual growth wordnet

"I would like to put special emphasis on the concept that social ecology is the second school of contemporary environmentalism."

From environmental + -ism.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.