Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-14 (section)

=== 14.5.3 Civil Society and Social Movements ===

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Transnationally organised civil society actors have had long-standing involvement in international climate policy, with a particular focus on consulting or knowledge-sharing where they are present in transnational climate governance initiatives ( [[#Michaelowa--2017|Michaelowa and Michaelowa 2017]] ). The term ‘civil society’ generally denotes ‘the voluntary association of individuals in the public sphere beyond the realms of the state, the market and the family’ ( [[#de%20Bakker--2013|de Bakker et al. 2013]] , p. 575). Whereas civil society organisations are usually involved in lobbying or advocacy activities in a public arena, social movements focus on mobilisation and action for social change ( [[#Daniel--2019|Daniel and Neubert 2019]] ). Examples of civil society groups involved in international climate policy include non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace International, the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute, Friends of the Earth and Earthjustice among many others, as well as NGO networks such as the Climate Action Network, which has over 1300 NGO members in more than 130 countries, working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels ( [[#Climate%20Action%20Network%20International--2020|Climate Action Network International 2020]] ). The influence of civil society engagement in global climate governance is well acknowledged, with these organisations’ globally dispersed constituencies and non-state status offering perspectives that differ in significant ways from those of many negotiating states (Derman 2014).

Historically, the issue of climate change did not give rise to intense, organised transnational protest characteristic of social movements ( [[#McAdam--2017|McAdam 2017]] ). During the 1990s and early 2000s, the activities of the global climate movement were concentrated in developed countries and largely sought to exercise influence through participation in UNFCCC COPs and side events ( [[#Almeida--2019|Almeida 2019]] ). The mid-2000s onwards, however, saw the beginnings of use of more non-institutionalised tactics, such as simultaneous demonstrations across several countries, focusing on a grassroots call for climate justice that grew out of previous environmental justice movements ( [[#Almeida--2019|Almeida 2019]] ). Groups representing indigenous peoples, youth, women, and labour rights brought to the fore new tools of contention and new issues in the UNFCCC, such as questions of a just transition and gender equity ( [[#Allan--2020|Allan 2020]] ).

Climate justice has been variously defined, but centres on addressing the disproportionate impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable populations and calls for community sovereignty and functioning ( [[#Schlosberg--2014|Schlosberg and Collins 2014]] ; [[#Tramel--2016|Tramel 2016]] ). Contemporary climate justice groups mobilise multiple strands of environmental justice movements from the Global North and South, as well as from distinct indigenous rights and peasant rights movements, and are organised as a decentralised network of semiautonomous, coordinated units ( [[#Claeys--2017|Claeys and Delgado Pugley 2017]] ; [[#Tormos-Aponte--2018|Tormos-Aponte and García-López 2018]] ). The climate justice movement held global days of protest in most of the world’s countries in 2014 and 2015, and mobilised another large campaign in 2018 ( [[#Almeida--2019|Almeida 2019]] ). The polycentric arrangement of the global climate movement allows simultaneous influence on multiple sites of climate governance, from the local to the global levels ( [[#Tormos-Aponte--2018|Tormos-Aponte and García-López 2018]] ).

Prominent examples of new climate social movements that operate transnationally are Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future, which collectively held hundreds of coordinated protests across the globe in 2019–2021, marking out ‘the transnational climate justice movement as one of the most extensive social movements on the planet’ ( [[#Almeida--2019|Almeida 2019]] ). Fridays for Future is a children’s and youth movement that began in August 2018, inspired by the actions of then 15-year old Greta Thunberg who pledged to strike in front of the Swedish parliament every Friday to protest against a lack of action on climate change in line with the Paris Agreement targets ( [[#Fridays%20for%20Future--2019|Fridays for Future 2019]] ). Fridays for Future events worldwide encompass more than 200 countries and millions of strikers. The movement is unusual for its focus on children and the rights of future generations, with children’s resistance having received little previous attention in the literature. Fridays for Future is regarded as a progressive resistance movement that has quickly achieved global prominence (for example, Thunberg was invited to address governments at the UN Climate Summit in New York in September 2019) and is credited with helping to support the discourse about the responsibility of humanity as a whole for climate change ( [[#Holmberg--2019|Holmberg and Alvinius 2019]] ). Whereas Fridays for Future has focused on periodic protest action, Extinction Rebellion has pursued a campaign based on sustained non-violent direct citizen action that is focused on three key demands: declaration of a ‘climate emergency’, acting now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025, and creation of a citizen’s assembly on climate and ecological justice ( [[#Booth--2019|Booth 2019]] ; [[#Extinction%20Rebellion--2019|Extinction Rebellion 2019]] ). The movement first arose in the United Kingdom– where it claimed credit for adoption of a climate emergency declaration by the UK government – but now has a presence in 45 countries with some 650 groups having formed globally ( [[#Gunningham--2019|Gunningham 2019]] ).

The Paris Agreement’s preamble explicitly recognises the importance of engaging ‘various actors’ in addressing climate change, and the decision adopting the Agreement created the Non-state Actor Zone for Climate Action platform to aid in scaling up these efforts. Specific initiatives have also been taken to facilitate participation of particular groups, such as the UNFCCC’s Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, which commenced work in Katowice in 2019. Climate movements based in the Global South, as well as in indigenous territories, are playing an increasingly important role in transnational negotiations through networks such as the Indigenous Peoples Platform. These groups highlight the voices and perspectives of communities and peoples particularly affected by climate change. For instance, the Pacific Climate Warriors is a grassroots network of young people from various countries in the Pacific Islands region whose activities focus on resisting narratives of future inevitability of their Pacific homelands disappearing, and re-envisioning islanders as warriors defending rights to homeland and culture ( [[#McNamara--2017|McNamara and Farbotko 2017]] ). Youth global climate activism, particularly involving young indigenous climate activists, is another notable recent development. Although there remains little published literature on indigenous youth climate activism ( [[#MacKay--2020|MacKay et al. 2020]] ), analysis of online sources indicates the emergence of several such groups, including the Pacific Climate Warriors and Te Ara Whatu from Aotearoa New Zealand ( [[#Ritchie--2021|Ritchie 2021]] ), as well as Seed Mob in Australia.

Transnational civil society organisations advocating for climate justice in global governance have articulated policy positions around rights protections, responsibility-based approaches to climate finance, and the need for transparency and accountability (Derman 2014). Another recent area of activity, which overlaps with that of emerging investor alliances ( [[#14.5.4|Section 14.5.4]] ), is the sustainability of capital investment in fossil fuel assets. Efforts to shift away from fossil fuels led by civil society include the Beyond Coal Campaign (in the USA and Europe) and the organisation for a Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty. 350.org has supported mobilisation of youth and university students around a campaign of divestment that has grown into a global movement ( [[#Gunningham--2019|Gunningham 2019]] ). As [[#Mormann--2020|Mormann (2020)]] notes, as of November 2020 ‘more than 1,200 institutional investors managing over USD14 trillion of assets around the world have committed to divest some or all of their fossil fuel holdings’. Studies suggest that the direct impacts of the divestment movement have so far been small, given a failure to differentiate between different types of fossil fuel companies, a lack of engagement with retail investors, and a lack of guidance for investors on clean energy re-investment ( [[#Osofsky--2019|Osofsky et al. 2019]] ; [[#Mormann--2020|Mormann 2020]] ). The movement has had a more significant impact on public discourse by raising the profile of climate change as a financial risk for investors ( [[#Bergman--2018|Bergman 2018]] ). [[#Blondeel--2019|Blondeel et al. (2019)]] also find that broader appeal of the divestment norm was achieved when moral arguments were linked to financial ones, through the advocacy of economic actors, such as the Bank of England’s governor.

Climate justice campaigns by transnational civil society organisations increasingly embrace action through the courts. [[IPCC:Wg3:Chapter:Chapter-13|Chapter 13]] discusses the growth and policy impact of such ‘climate litigation’ brought by civil society actors in domestic courts, which is attracting increasing attention in the literature ( [[#Setzer--2019|Setzer and Vanhala 2019]] ; [[#Peel--2020|Peel and Osofsky 2020]] ). Transnational and international court actions focused on climate change, by contrast, have been relatively few in number ( [[#Peel--2019|Peel and Lin 2019]] ). This reflects – at least in part – the procedural hurdles to bringing such claims, as in many international courts and tribunals (outside of the area of human rights or investor–state arbitration) litigation can only be brought by states ( [[#Bruce--2017|Bruce 2017]] ). However, there have been active discussions about seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on states’ international obligations regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions ( [[#Sands--2016|Sands 2016]] ; [[#Wewerinke-Singh--2020|Wewerinke-Singh and Salili 2020]] ), or bringing a case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on marine pollution harms caused by climate change ( [[#Boyle--2019|Boyle 2019]] ). In September 2021 the Government of Vanuatu announced a campaign to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ. The aim of climate litigation more generally is to supplement other regulatory efforts by filling gaps and ensuring that interpretations of laws and policies are aligned with climate mitigation goals ( [[#Osofsky--2010|Osofsky 2010]] ).

The overall impact of transnationally-organised civil society action and social movements for international cooperation on climate change mitigation has not been comprehensively evaluated in the literature. This may reflect the polycentric organisation of the movement, which poses challenges for coordinating between groups operating in different contexts, acting with different strategies and around multiple issues, and lobbying multiple decision-making bodies at various levels of government in a sustainable way ( [[#Tormos-Aponte--2018|Tormos-Aponte and García-López 2018]] ). There is some literature emerging on environmental defenders and their need for protection against violence and repression, particularly in the case of indigenous environmental defenders who face significantly higher rates of violence ( [[#Scheidel--2020|Scheidel et al. 2020]] ). [[#Scheidel--2020|Scheidel et al. (2020)]] also find that combining strategies of preventive mobilisation, protest diversification and litigation can enhance rates of success for environmental defenders in halting environmentally destructive projects. In the area of climate litigation, commentators have noted the potential for activists and even researchers to suffer retaliation through the courts as a result of ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation’ and lawsuits against researchers brought by fossil fuel interests ( [[#Setzer--2019|Setzer and Byrnes 2019]] ; [[#Setzer--2020|Setzer and Benjamin 2020]] ). Influence of social movements may be enhanced through taking advantage of ‘movement spillover’ (the involvement of activists in more than one movement) ( [[#Hadden--2014|Hadden 2014]] ) and coordination of activities with a range of ‘non-state governors’, including cities, sub-national governments, and investor groups ( [[#Gunningham--2019|Gunningham 2019]] ). Studies of general societal change suggest that once 3.5% of the population are mobilised on an issue, far-reaching change becomes possible ( [[#Gladwell--2002|Gladwell 2002]] ; [[#Chenoweth--2019|Chenoweth and Belgioioso 2019]] ) – a tipping point that may be approaching in the case of climate change ( [[#Gunningham--2019|Gunningham 2019]] ). As noted in Chapter 5, in the particular case of low-carbon technologies, ‘if 10–30% of the population were to demonstrate commitment to low-carbon technologies, behaviours, and lifestyles, new social norms would be established’.

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