BY NINA HALL, HANS PETER SCHMITZ, AND J. MICHAEL DEDMON
Nina Hall is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS. She is currently writing a book on transnational advocacy in the digital era and is a co-founder of the New Zealand Alternative. She tweets @Ninawth.
Hans Peter Schmitz teaches at the University of San Diego. He studies the nature and impact of transnational NGOs. He tweets @HansPSchmitz.
J. Michael Dedmon is a doctoral candidate in political science at Syracuse University. His dissertation research focuses on the politics of financial crises. His other research interests include European and EU politics, transnational advocacy, and digital activism. He tweets @dedmon.
On September 20 and 27, 2019, there were impressive worldwide General Climate Strikes as over four million elementary school, high-school, and university students, as well as adults, protested for stronger action on climate change. Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage protestor who was almost unheard of just 12 months ago, took a sailboat from Europe to New York to speak to world leaders at the UN Climate Summit. Thunberg and her co-leaders of the worldwide movement “Fridays For Future” have called for politicians to act with urgency and cut carbon emissions, as Greta has pointed out to world leaders: “Our house is on fire … but we’re not acting like it.”
This is not the first global climate action: In the lead-up to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, 350.org led a global day of action. Thousands of people in hundreds of countries organized local demonstrations, from Ukraine to the Great Barrier Reef, and urged world leaders to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to below 350 parts per million (it was then 400 parts per million). In 2009, 350.org was a disruptive newcomer in the environmental movement, founded by university students with the backing of author Bill McKibben. They organized distributed global actions, with a tiny budget, and used the internet to coordinate volunteers around the world. By connecting discrete local events in small towns, cities, and capitals around the world, 350.org gained mass media attention – if not a binding, fair, and ambitious climate deal.
350.org’s digitally facilitated global movement triggered a profound shift in how other traditional non-governmental organizations conceive their role. Traditional environmental NGOs like Greenpeace realized that they had “lagged in the digital revolution” and had not kept up with how social media could be employed to build a global movement. In 2011, they started the Mobilization Lab, designed to build up people power on and off-line through digital platforms. And then in 2015, in the lead-up to the Paris Climate Summit, climate activists organized another global day of action with 600,000 participants, in over 175 countries. Legacy NGOs were on board alongside ‘netroots’ NGOs (which were born in the internet era) such as MoveOn and Campact.
Fast-forward to today: While global climate days of action are not new, the idea of global rolling strikes, where students walk out of class, certainly are. In less than a year we have seen thousands out on the streets marching, from India to Sweden, Australia to Afghanistan. These students are using word of mouth, backed up by Instagram and WhatsApp, to coordinate these protests. And most impressively, they’re getting traction, even though they don’t have the resources, expertise, or professional organizing structures of major NGOs. Greta Thunberg has been an invited speaker at the EU parliament, at the Davos World Economic Forum, in the UK parliament, and in the US Congress. But it’s not only about Greta, as new spokespeople are stepping forward in countries around the world: Luisa Neubauer, for instance, has become a sought after spokesperson on climate change in Germany. And politicians are starting to acknowledge that these advocates have made a difference: Chancellor Angela Merkel has credited Fridays for Future with “driving an acceleration” of the government’s actions on climate change, saying the protests meant climate was being dealt with “more decisively” amid “extraordinary weather conditions”, which showed “what damage is done by not acting on climate policy.”
Meanwhile, the traditional NGOs, from Greenpeace to 350.org, are trying to figure out their role in this energized, young, global movement where kids are teaching their parents how to protest. Although many marched in solidarity on Sept 20 and 27, they are cautious and have made commitments not to take over, or undermine, the Fridays for Future demonstrations with their banners, branding, or spokespeople. Instead, they will ‘lead from behind.’ NGOs have not been major drivers of social movements for some time as Occupy, the Arab Spring, the movement for Black lives, and anti-austerity protests in Europe all emerged without NGOs. Yet the missions of NGOs suggest they should be leaders, or at least facilitators, of these social movements. During the past decades, many NGOs may have become global brands with increased elite access, while losing touch with grassroots and local needs. Younger generations no longer see traditional NGOs as the key vehicle for political and social change.
Fridays for Future represent a broader challenge for NGOs: Should they try to replicate what these young protesters have done and/or should they stand back and play a background role in a new wave of social movements? Should they also try to mobilize people using the latest digital technology, or is their energy better spent on insider lobbying based on their professional expertise? And does it make sense to use Fridays for Future’s tactics in other areas – e.g. human rights or disarmament – which may not have the same levels of perceived urgency? At a minimum, NGOs need to become more literate about digital technologies and understand how they can generate ‘networked power’ and mobilize individuals around the world. They have to consider the transformative effects of these technologies working in unison with peer to peer organizing, not only for society, but also for their own organization, its internal governance, leadership, and decision-making. Some NGOs may decide to listen more to their members and those they claim to help. Others will take further steps to increase movement power by sharing control over campaign issues and strategies. To be successful in the future, NGOs will have to abandon their traditional claim to speaking on behalf of others and become much more flexible and responsive to changing political opportunities.
PHOTO CREDIT: © Jörg Farys / Fridays for Future; licensed under CC BY 2.0.