Speaking of a ‘climate crisis’: Fridays for Future's attempts to reframe climate change

Abstract

The paper explores how the Fridays for Future movement (FfF) attempts to reframe climate change as a climate crisis. Adding to the research on the role of climate change communication for inducing behavioural change, we analyse the way in which this reframing is conducted and locally negotiated by FfF groups in Germany and Estonia. The paper thus focuses on the question of how FfF’s global blueprint for a climate strike, which builds on the notion of crisis, is transferred into different societal contexts. Aided by multisite ethnographies, similarities and differences in reframing and protest strategies and the negotiation of the local reception of this message are elaborated by referencing the example of FfF groups in Berlin and Frankfurt (Germany), as well as Tallinn, Tartu and Pärnu (Estonia).

Keywords:

• Climate crisis
• knowledge to action
• frames of reference
• climate change activism
• Fridays for Future

Acknowledgements

The research for this chapter is the result of an international cooperation established with the help of the fellowship programme of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Erkner, Germany. It is also part of the project ‘Human-nature Interactions in the City’ supported by the Tallinn University Research Fund (TF519), which focuses on environmental behaviour from an interdisciplinary perspective. We thank the special issue editors and the anonymous reviewers for their fruitful feedback as well as the research participants in the individual cases. Without their participation, this research would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christian Reichel

Christian Reichel is a social- and cultural anthropologist and geographer. He works as a researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science and is a lecturer at the HMKW – University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Management. He conducted research in six inter- and trans-disciplinary research projects in Europe, Southeast Asia and East Africa on the topics: Participatory conservation strategies, climate adaptation and mitigation, transformative sustainability research.

Bianka Plüschke-Altof

Bianka Plüschke-Altof is a Researcher in Environmental Sociology at Tallinn University and a Lecturer in Qualitative Research at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research tackles questions of socio-spatial and environmental justice in Central-Eastern Europe, with specific focus on rural development, urban nature, and activism. The research presented here was conducted within the research group ‘human-nature interactions in the city’ based at Tallinn University. Together with Joonas Plaan (and others) she co-authors a chapter on ‘climate fear’ in the current Estonian Human Development Report.

Joonas Plaan

Joonas Plaan is a Lecturer in Environmental Anthropology at Tallinn University and Sustainable Fisheries Expert in Estonian Fund for Nature. His research focuses on climate change impacts on small-scale communities, small-scale fisheries, conservation conflicts and human–non-human interactions.