Related Articles
Delivering sustainable climate action: reframing the sustainable development goals
Globally, climate change represents the most significant threat to the environment and socio-economic development, endangering lives and livelihoods. Within the UN’s current 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate action is explicitly covered under Goal 13, “to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. This perspective considers how to re-frame the SDGs and their successor towards mainstreaming climate action within the targets and indicators of all the development goals.
Theorising unconventional climate advocates and their relationship to the environmental movement
Environmentalist-identified advocates have contributed to high levels of public support for climate action across countries. However, there remain important holdout constituencies that theory and evidence suggest are less likely to be persuaded by environmentalists, especially constituencies associated with resources and economic production, rural and regional areas, masculine norms, and conservative belief systems and politics. Emerging from these holdout constituencies, though, are some novel advocates for climate action. In this paper we theorise ‘unconventional climate advocates’ as those who combine advocacy for climate action with a social identity that departs from the prototypical environmentalist identity. Using social network analysis we show that unconventional climate advocates in Australia are peripheral to the main environmental movement, that is, the conventional advocates for climate action. We contend that unconventional advocates can broaden the social base of support for climate action, and their independence from conventional advocates – environmentalists – may aid in their efforts.
Working-class youth participation in climate action: networks, civic experience, and equity
Research on individual participation in climate action largely focuses on middle class environmental activism around protest events. To better understand the expansion of civic engagement on climate issues, more work needs to be carried out on wider sectors of the population. This study examines the drivers associated with involvement in climate action at the individual level with a survey sample of working-class youth of color. The findings suggest that youth embedded in pro-climate social networks, a history of civic engagement, and an equity belief system increase willingness to participate in several forms of climate action, including climate meetings, demonstrations, and inviting others to participate. For larger climate action initiatives to overcome the barriers of participation, linking to specific pools of sympathy in civil society that value economic equality may provide a mass base of support for policies consistent with just transition perspectives.
Video communication, blue marble awe, and attitudes toward climate change and renewable energy
We conducted a survey experiment to examine how respondents’ attitudes toward climate change and renewable energy are affected by six communication approaches using online videos. Three interventions used single message approaches, which focused on facts about climate change science, facts about solar PV technology, or the emotion of blue marble awe (the feeling of awe for the Earth arising from the realization that we live on a fragile planet). Two interventions used dual message approaches, which combined blue marble awe with either climate change science or solar PV technology facts. One intervention used a dual reinforced message approach, which combined blue marble awe, solar PV technology facts, and a message from an astronaut who is an ambassador for renewable energy. Results show that the dual reinforced message approach has the strongest effects on energy and environmental attitudes. Our findings offer important lessons for scientists and educators interested in energy communication.
Shifting and sharing power in urban climate justice work: experiments in transformative learning in Vancouver, Canada
As the global reckoning with a changing climate increases in urgency, and the real-world consequences of delayed and inadequate action become impossible to ignore, city leadership continues to grow in response. Cities are making significant shifts in policy and regulation, investing in infrastructure, building strong cross-sectoral collaborations, experimenting with solutions, advocating for changes outside their jurisdiction, and taking other important actions. Alongside these activities is a growing critique that climate action is not adequately integrating principles and goals of justice, equity, inclusion, or decoloniality. In this article we argue that transformative learning is an underutilized theory and practice when working toward city-based just climate action. We describe transformative learning approaches and implications in running a Climate Justice Field School in Vancouver, Canada, a response to implementing the first ever Climate Justice Charter for the city. This work resulted in five transformative learning interventions for urban climate researchers and practitioners to engage with as they move toward just, equitable, inclusive, decolonial climate action.
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