Climate Change or Social Change? Environmental and Leftist Praxis and Participatory Action Research

Abstract

This work seeks to advance and synthesize leftist political and environmental theory and enhance historical and contemporary understanding of environmental activism, especially related to the movement to halt climate change. We share findings from our participatory action research (PAR) on the internal dynamics and debates among the three main climate activist networks mobilizing at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings in Copenhagen in 2009, those of the reformist Climate Action Network (CAN), the more marxian-inspired Climate Justice Now! (CJN), and the autonomist and anarchistic Climate Justice Action (CJA). We elucidate how leftist reformist and especially the more radical currents are engaging with non- or anti-Western indigenous praxis to forge the contemporary transnational environmental movement.

Este trabajo busca avanzar y sintetizar la teoría política izquierdista y la medioambiental y enriquecer el entendimiento histórico y contemporáneo del activismo medioambiental, especialmente relacionado al movimiento para detener el cambio climático. Compartimos los resultados de nuestra acción de investigación participativa (PAR, por sus siglas en inglés) sobre las dinámicas internas y los debates entre las tres principales redes activistas del cambio climático, movilizadas en reuniones dentro de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el cambio climático en Copenhague en 2009, en aquellas reformistas de la Red de Acción Climática (CAN, por sus siglas en inglés), las de mayor inspiración marxiana de ¡Justicia Climática Ahora! (CJN, por sus siglas en inglés) y la autonomista y anarquista Acción por la Justicia Climática (CJA, por sus siglas en inglés). Dilucidamos cómo las corrientes reformistas de izquierda y especialmente las más radicales, están colaborando con las prácticas indígenas no-o-anti-occidentales para crear el movimiento medioambiental trasnacional.

本文旨在推进和综合左派政治理论和环境理论研究，并加强对环境行动主义，特别是涉及遏制气候变化运动的历史理解和当代理解。本文分享了我们对内部动态的参与行动研究（PAR）和关于2009年联合国气候变化框架公约哥本哈根会议上活跃的三个主要气候问题活动网络间争论的研究发现。三个网络分别是改革派的气候变化行动网络（CAN）、更具马克思主义倾向的气候正义现在就要！（CJN）和自治的无政府主义的气候正义行动（CJA）。我们阐述了左倾改革派、特别是更激进的派别是如何参与到非西方或反西方的本地实践中以推进当代跨国环保运动的。

이 논문은 좌파 정치이론과 환경 이론을 발전시키고 종합하고자 하며 또한 기후변화를 막기 위한 운동과 관련된 환경운동의 역사적 그리고 현재적 이해를 높이고자 한다. 우리는 2009년 코펜하게에서 개최된 기후변화에 관한 UN회의에서 동원된 3개의 주된 기후변화 반대 운동가 네트워크들 간의 내적인 동학과 논쟁에 대한 참영행동연구(PAR) 결과른 공유한다. 이들 3개 기후변화 반대 운동은 개혁주의적인 기후행동네트워크(CAN), 자율주의자와 무정부주의 기후정의행동(CJA)이다. 우리는 좌파 개혁주의자와 특히 더 급진적인 흐름들이 현대 초국적 환경운동을 만들기 위하여 어떻게 비서구 혹은 반서구 원주민 운동에 관련하였는지를 보여준다.

Keywords:

• alter-globalization
• anarchism
• autonomism
• climate justice
• COP15
• ecology
• environmental movement
• global justice
• green movement
• indigenous
• marxism
• NGOs
• transnational social movement
• United Nations
• UNFCCC

Notes

We refer to ‘marxism’ in the lower case to signify that the intellectual and activist lineage inspired by Karl Marx now transcends one man's ideas and texts.

It is important to note, however, that some of the earliest proponents of nature conservation in the US and Europe were game hunters, a concern that continues to this day (Rootes, 2007, p. 612). And on historical and contemporary ecological fascism in the West, see Staudenmaier and Biehl (2011).

For an elaboration of these three strands in the context of the Alter-Globalization Movement, see Reitan (this volume).

This resurgence can be partially explained by climate change being perceived as a zero-sum game, akin to forest preservation and halting nuclear power, which have provoked similarly transgressive praxis. See Rootes (2007, p. 620).

On the development of the environmental justice and racism frames, see Agyeman and Evans (2004), Brulle (2000, pp. 207–8), Cole and Foster (2001), Dawson (2010), and Rootes (2007, p. 615).

Curran (2007) notes a similar move by deep ecologists toward post-autonomists and post-marxists, by taking up the fight against environmental racism and embracing the view that environmental concerns are as well social concerns.

For example, there is an ongoing debate between various climate activists over email listservs on the preferred temperature cap. Many reformist NGOs subscribe to the 2°C standard issued by the IPCC and accepted by most Kyoto parties. Since 2008 however, more radical groups and those from the South and impacted communities have begun to challenge this target from both a scientific and justice perspective and have issued a call for a 1.5 or even 1°C cap.

A number of scholars, such as Brand et al. (2009), Curran (2007, p. 59), Hadden (2011), Klein (2009), and Reitan (2009), have identified climate change as the newest bellwether issue galvanizing the broader AGM by serving as the most salient mobilizing threat and opportunity following the 2005 and 2007 G8 summits and 2003 US-led attacks on Iraq.

Accompaniment refers to collaboration based on trust, common understanding and analysis of the problem, and a commitment to solidarity and equality (see Lynd, forthcoming; Whitmore and Wilson, 1999). For a fuller explication of our PAR approach and its strengths and limitations, see Reitan (2007, pp. 32–9). Combining PAR with expressive auto-ethnography and feminist praxis is central to Reitan's current research.

In accordance with the University of Miami's Institutional Review Board, all interviews required informed consent and were coded anonymously to protect those who may have been involved in or were planning to participate in events that had the potential to elicit reaction from police or security officials. Interviews are analyzed and presented in Gibson (2011).

The membership and structure of, along with contentious relations between, these two networks are explored at length in Gibson (2011) and Hadden (2011).

CJN furthermore strongly supported the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) countries' spokesman Evo Morales in his call for 49% emissions reductions. And the Third World Network, a prominent CJN member, provided expertise to a number of Southern governments, working with their under-staffed delegations long into the night to come up with negotiating positions.

Müller was arrested upon his exit by plainclothes police and held on charges of incitement to riot for the summit's duration.

We largely accept the post-structuralist position that ‘we’ (the authors, that is ‘I’ and ‘I’) are not modern(ist), autonomous, ‘free subjects’, but are rather constructed by, and thus subject(ed) to, discourse. That said, we have some capacity—or limited agency—to choose between ‘subject positions’, and we adopt the critical, marxist notion that the current conjuncture grants an opportunity to choose a more active, engaged, dialogical, and egalitarian relationship with those who the modernist scientific discourse would deem ‘objects’ of inquiry to be analyzed and explained, not understood or accompanied.