As environmental issues and the communities that confront them increasingly transcend borders, environmentalists in the North (wealthier countries) and the South (poorer countries) face the challenges of effective communication and collaboration. Acknowledging differences in how environmentalists culturally construct the environment is an important starting point; particularly given the tendency on the part of Northern environmentalists to assume (a) that environmentalism is essentially the same in different cultures i.e., it is all like Northern environmentalism; and (b) that environmentalism is more developed in the North. This study examines and compares the constructed environments of a sample of Mexican and Canadian environmentalists. Some significant differences are identified. The environmentalists in the two countries constructed the environment differently as a result of their distinct histories, economies and use of technology. Cultural constructions of the physical environment overlap with and cannot be separated from constructions of the social, cultural, political and economic environment.

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