How different is citizen environmental advocacy from governmental environmental advocacy?

December 10, 2021

How different is citizen environmental advocacy from governmental environmental advocacy?

Today, because of climate change, it is possible to see that environmental advocacy is happening more and more in the different spheres of our society. The main reason why this type of advocacy is gaining in popularity would be because people in many spheres of our society are starting to ask for change and, in some cases, they are bringing their communities towards it themselves. This paper will look at how citizens advocate for change in regard to climate change and how the governments advocate for change through their policies. In the citizens section, this paper will look at the different ways citizens advocate for the environment. The next section of this paper will look at how governments advocate for the environment in countries such as Finland. The reason why Finland has been chosen is because they seem to have a good approach on environmental advocacy in politics. Through these different points, this text will answer to the following question: How citizens are approaching environmental advocacy and how governments are also approaching it.

Today, when people talk about environmental advocacy in regards to climate change, the first aspect of this type of advocacy that would often come to their minds would be the youths. The main reason for this would be that kids are constantly surrounded by images of the impacts of climate change on the environment. Because of all these images, young people are seeing it more and more that their involvement to stop the destruction of nature by humans is a pressing issue that must be delt with. Some examples of things that would bring young people to act on climate change would be; “[it] is talked about in school, they’re seeing images related to Hurricane Katrina, they’ve heard of Al Gore and seen his movies, it is being taught in school, they’ve seen landmarks events in their own lifetimes” (Sasser, 2014a, p. 107).

Young people are a big part of the solution in the case of the climate crisis. This is why NGOs are trying as much as they can to get these kids involved. They need to be given the tools necessary so that they can make the environment a better and cleaner one. The environment, the adults are destroying now, will be the environment in which they will have to grow up and live in the future.

One way it is possible to see that youth leadership is very important in the fight against climate change, would be by looking at a speech a young activist did in 2010 in Washington D.C. during an NGO-led national youth summit (Sasser, 2014a, p. 108).

We represent over half of the global population. leaders of today as well as tomorrow. Older people playing catch up, whereas we 'get' the modern world. We're replacing signs and protests with individual action. We're part of the action; we're the 'me' generation. actions and local solutions to local problems are best. understand the world and are well versed in issues. The older generations need us; they need to ask for our input. The global movement is turning international development on its head, including those most affected by it in the planning process. This is our civil rights movement (Sasser, 2014a, p.108).

It is not just young people who have started to advocate for the environment, but students of all levels as well. When looking at the implications of students in the fight against climate change, it is possible to see that they advocate for change in many different ways and their reason for doing so is that they feel that it is essential that they do something about this issue. The three main aspects would be how useful is learning about climate change, how useful is advocating for climate change mitigation, and how useful is climate change adaptation (Wodika and Midleton, 2020, p. 1216). Between male and female students, the points of view vary when looking at the following graphs.

Figure 1a: Usefulness of learning about climate change

Figure 1b: usefulness of advocating for climate change mitigation

Figure 1c: usefulness of advocating for climate change adaptation

These graphs that come from a survey, explain that female students are more prone to thinking that something can be done about climate change. Looking at the United-States of America, which the previous graphs are based upon, it is possible to see that among college students, climate change (environment and sustainability) advocacy had the highest levels of civil engagement (Wodika and Midleton, 2020, p. 1219).

Figure 2: Civil engagement levels of American college students

When it comes to getting things done and to get the message out there about the urgency on acting on climate change, American college students will most of the time choose to communicate with others on the subject so that the information gets around (Wodika and Midleton, 2020, p. 1220).

Figure 3: frequency of advocacy methods for climate change and sustainability for American students.

Looking at figure three, it is possible to see that even though communication is a big part of advocating for climate change and sustainability for college students, protests, marches as well as rallies still send out a more powerful message because of the number of attendees.

Other than students and teenagers in general, other community members also have a role to play in climate change advocacy. Some of the ways that people tend to communicate about environmental advocacy would be by talking to people directly face to face or by communicating online (through technology) (Kang, 2018, p.341).

Figure 4: Communication methods for sustainable urban development

Communities may come together to talk about environmental advocacy, this may mean that behaviors of sustainable urban development may come out of these discussions. People who engage in sustainable urban development behavior tend to prefer to speak with their pears face to face to get information on environmental issues rather than getting their information from online sources. Members of the BIPOC community in the U.S. tend to be more prone to be involved in sustainable urban development activities than Caucasian Americans (Kang, 2018, p.345). One of the reasons why BIPOC communities may be more open than the Caucasian community to talk about environmental issues and injustices, is that it affects their communities. BIPOC members are also more inclined to have one on one conversations on major issues with their peers (Kang, 2018, p.345). It is important that the government pays attention to these communities, because they could give insights on how to deal with issues such as pollution management, energy conservation, land use and access to public services (Kang, 2018, p.345).

Another example of the importance of the BIPOC community in the environmental advocacy movement can be represented by the post-World War II period in the United States (Sasser, 2014b, p.1243). During this period, it was possible to witness the appearance of an environmental narrative. This narrative stated that the population growth that was happening in the south of the country at the time was putting the ecological stability in danger and was a reason why global environmental change was happening (Sasser, 2014b, p.1243). Because this type of environmental advocacy was based on racism that was going against the BIPOC community, some NGO’s saw a need to step in and change the narrative. To do so, they changed the conversation so that instead of being about controversies, it would be based on progressive policy advocacy (Sasser, 2014b, p.1254).

To get the awareness of environmental issues raised within populations such as in the United Sates, researchers think that city governments and local environmental groups should utilise social media and other forms of communication to broadcast the information that they want to share with the population.

For successful SUD, online discussion and announcements need to be conveyed to offline meetings and activities. This study suggests that local governments and civic groups need to devise ways to draw citizens' offline meeting participation through online connectivity. For example, city websites or social media pages can be used as a hub for organizing, scheduling, announcing, and promoting local meetings at the community level. Residents should be able to use the interfaces for the information on scheduled meetings, partake in the meetings, and eventually take actions (Kang, 2018, p.345).

Citizens do not always advocate for the environment on their own. It can happen that they join their forces with other likeminded and create environmental groups to get their message more easily across to governments or populations. The main ways that these organisations would get their information out to the public would be by using the Internet. By Internet it is meant that they use tools such as e-mails, web sites and blogs (Dreiling et al., 2008, p. 422). What explains why environmental groups would be using these different tools to get their message available to everyone would be that they wanted to "facilitate movement reflexivity and engender a structure to communication that reflects the network features of social movements themselves and the democratic institutions they aspire to create" (Dreiling et al., 2008, p. 422).

Until now this essay has mostly presented the fact that citizens may put matters into their own hands to advocate for the environment. Another group of people that may do that as well would be the academics and the scientist. A good example of these academics and scientists would be the ones that Evelyne Fox Keller writes about in her essay titled "Climate science, truth, and democracy" (Keller, 2017, p.114). Keller explains that around 2007, the United States were failing to protect the environment and to fight back against climate change (Keller, 2017, p.106). Because of the failure of the country, academics and scientists had to start to advocate for the environment the same way other non scientist American citizens were doing (Keller, 2017, p.114). These scientists and academics are still doing that today.

A country that would have environmental advocacy system that is well-placed is Finland. The environmental advocacy groups in this country are placed into coalitions that are often linked in some way to the federal government. In the country there are three main coalitions that form the Finnish climate change policy network (Gronow and Ylä-Anttila, 2019, p.862). These three coalitions are the treadmill coalition, the ENGO coalition and the Government and research Coalition (Gronow and Ylä-Anttila, 2019, p.862).

To understand in more details how governments implement environmental advocacy in their decision making, It is possible to use Finland as an example of what is done. One of the reasons that Finland has been chosen as an example for this paper is that this country has done well on planning a more environment friendly future for its population.

One of the main reasons that can explain why Finland is doing so well in advocating for the environment would be because it put together laws that promoted the environment and pushed people to protect it. One such law was created in 1961 and was named the Water Act (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4). The main lines of this law were that municipalities, corporates and communities were brought together “in watershed areas to voluntarily monitor and act on water quality” (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4). This law was the starting point of the environmental pollical movement in the country.

Now that the Water Act (1961) was in place in Finland, concerns about the environment regarding things such as the Anthropocene were no longer only brought up to the attention of leaders at the municipal level but also, now, at the federal level (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4).

This change in the way that environmental issues were delt with also had an impact on the structure of the government itself. The main reason that the innerworkings of the Finnish government had to change so that it could effect positive environmental change more efficiently was that before the 1970’s, the was many problems that could be found in the way the government functioned (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4). These problems included the fact that conflicts would often happen and the politicians were a lot more interested in short-term results instead of looking at long-term effects (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4).

The main reasons why thinking about policy problems on a long-term result may be better than only focusing on short-term results when it comes to the environment would be these problems are covered with uncertainties, if they are acted on now the results can last a least a whole generation, and finally the public is more confident in its future (Hovi and al., 2009, p.1).

During the 1970’s the way of thinking of the Finnish government changed with the appearance of environmental grievances in the agenda of many governments across Europe. These new policies brought the Finnish government to drastically change its politics and to create buffers so that the new politics would not be too damageable. Some of its new policies that needed a buffer were its environmental policies (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4).

To buffer the impact of the environmental policies, the government had to create lines of mutual cooperation that made possible the historical national income policy (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4). This new policy was an agreement between trade unions, peak business organisations and the State (Koskimaa et al., 2021, p.4). With these agreements, it was possible to see the emergence of a consensual spirit because the groups of interest were more working together.

Another way that the Finnish has advocated for the environment would be by other laws in place that promoted the environment. One of these laws was the Environmental Impact Assessment or EIA for short (Sairinen, 2010, p,75). It was put into place because it "entails the institutionalisation of comprehensive environmental analysis as an integral part of the normal planning and decision-making procedures" (Sairinen, 2010, p.89). This law was one of the most important law that the Finnish government created in the 1990’s (Sairinen, 2010, p.89). It also was a major impact on local democracy and on citizen organizations (Sairinen, 2010, p.89).

In conclusion, environmental advocacy can be participated in as much by citizens and by government officials. It is by being loud and by asking for change that citizens will bring their leaders to do what is right and fight environmental issues such as climate change. Whether a person is a student, a community member, a scientists or politicians, all their voices are important and need to be heard. Only when all these people will start working together that real changes in the environment will be seen.

References

Dreiling, M., Lougee, N., Jonna, R., & Nakamura, T. (2008). Environmental

Organizations and Communication Praxis: A Study of Communication

Strategies Among a National Sample of Environmental Organizations. Organization & Environment, 21(4), 420–445. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026608321325

Gronow, A., & Ylä‐Anttila, T. (2019), Cooptation of ENGOs or Treadmill of

Production? Advocacy Coalitions and Climate Change Policy in Finland. Policy

Stud Journal, 47(4), 854-875. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12185

Hovi, J., Sprinz, D., & Underdal, A. (2009). Implementing Long-Term Climate

Policy: Time Inconsistency, Domestic Politics, International Anarchy. Global

Environmental Politics. 9 (3), 20-39. DOI:10.1162/glep.2009.9.3.20

Kang, S. (2018). Communicating sustainable development in the digital age: The

relationship between citizens' storytelling and engagement intention. Sustainable

Development, 27(3), 337– 348. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.1905

Keller, E. F. (2017). Climate science, truth, and democracy. Studies in History and

Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 64, 106-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2017.06.006

Koskimaa, V., Rapeli, L., & Hiedanpää, J. (2021). Governing through strategies: How does

Finland sustain a future-oriented environmental policy for the long term? Futures,

125, 1-12.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2020.102667

Rauno Sairinen (2003) The Politics of Regulatory Reform: 'New' Environmental Policy

Instruments in Finland. Environmental Politics, 12(1), 73-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/714000666

SASSER, J. (2014a). The wave of the future? Youth advocacy at the nexus of population and

climate change. The Geographical Journal, 180(2), 102-110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43868595

Sasser, J. (2014b). From Darkness into Light: Race, Population, and Environmental

Advocacy, Antipode, 46(5), 1240– 1257. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12029

Wodika, A.B. & Middleton, W.K. (2020). Climate change advocacy: exploring links