The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.<\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
Between October 2014 and March 2016
\nI studied how the climate movement was mobilizing around the COP21 climate
\nsummit in Paris. Although the focus of this research was academic, I have long
\nwondered whether my research could in any way be useful to those involved in
\nthe movement. Despite several activists\u2019 encouragement, I hesitated to take up
\nthis role. I felt there was little I could teach organizers who seemed
\nperfectly capable of self-reflexion about what could be improved. It is therefore
\nwith the greatest humility that I present some of my main findings, and the
\nlessons that may possibly be learned. I have the greatest respect for the
\ndifficulty of the tasks movement organizers faced in the run up to Paris \u2013 amplified
\nby the terrorist attacks that struck Paris just two weeks before the summit,
\nand by the \u2018state of emergency\u2019 that was subsequently installed. I also realize
\nthis piece comes late. How useful my findings still are for future mobilization
\nis for others to decide. Nonetheless, as Erik Olin Wright puts it,
\n\u201c[emancipatory] social science, rather than simply social criticism or social
\nphilosophy, recognizes the importance (\u2026) of systematic scientific knowledge
\nabout how the world works.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Despite
\nnumerous repeated and widely-shared calls to stop \u2018summit-hopping\u2019, the
\npost-Copenhagen climate movement (a semantic shortcut, that does little justice
\nto the diversity underlying it) gathered its forces once more for the Paris
\nclimate summit. Why were they there again, despite such widely shared
\nscepticism? How did they try to prevent scenarios that were held responsible
\nfor previous failures? Did they effectively manage to prevent these scenarios?
\nAnd how successful were they in proposing and executing alternative strategies?\n<\/p>\n
My
\nmain conclusion is that even though some lessons clearly have been learned from
\nthe Copenhagen experience, and despite its drive for tactical innovation, the
\nmovement has been unable to find a solution to the challenges that lead to the \u2018Copenhagen-hangover\u2019.
\nThis is not the result of any individual or collective failures. Rather, I will
\ntry to show, it is inherent to the context of global summits and to the nature
\nof summit mobilizations. Summits do not allow their momentum to be used without
\npaying a tribute of full attention to the summit in return. Popular strategies around
\nCOP21 that aimed to use the momentum of the summit whilst increasing their distance from the official negotiation process<\/i>,
\nwere constricted by this effect. To demonstrate this point, let\u2019s look at the
\nsuccess of some of the main strategies that were proposed to prevent the
\nCopenhagen-hangover.<\/p>\nAn alternative party<\/h2>\n
A
\nfirst common response to preventing the Copenhagen scenario was to organize actions
\nthat would ignore COP21 and target alternative, arguably more powerful actors
\ninstead. Several successful actions did take place: the False Solutions COP21
\nactions effectively disrupted the rather corporate Solutions COP21 fair; the
\nGlobal Village of Alternatives showed opportunities to address climate change
\noutside the international policy making process; and La Via Campesina
\nhighlighted the responsibility of big corporations by painting a big Red Line
\nin from of the office of Danone. But none of these actions engaged a
\nparticularly large number of participants in radical action, and so did not
\nmaterialize the goal of using the COP21 momentum to mobilize the masses into a
\nradical and lasting climate movement. <\/p>\n
While Conclusion: It is very difficult to <\/i><\/p>\n A As This However, But Conclusion: It is very difficult to <\/i><\/p>\n Another However, Let Climate Justice Action did With Maybe Conclusion: Summit mobilizations So But This Finally, Nevertheless, Conclusion: The Paris mobilization All photos by\u00a0Joost de Moor. Used with author's permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n How to cite:<\/strong> The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles. Between October 2014 and March 2016 I studied how the climate movement was mobilizing around the COP21 climate summit in Paris. Although the focus of this research was academic, I have long wondered whether my research could…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthis may have been due in part to the complex and uncertain context that was created
\nby the state of emergency, it already became increasingly clear throughout the
\nmonths of preparation before COP21 that it would be very difficult to draw
\nattention away from the official negotiations. As some of the people who
\ninitially advocated alternative targets increasingly concluded as the summit
\ndrew closer: there are a lot of other games in town, but not during COP21. <\/strong>Indeed, the question \u2018how to tell the
\nmasses to come to Paris during COP21 whilst asking them to ignore COP21?\u2019
\nremained largely unanswered. With absolutely no lack of organizational experience
\nor expertise united in this mobilization, it seemed there was ultimately no
\nsimple answer to this question.<\/p>\n
\ndevelop strategies that can mobilize the masses around summits, whilst getting
\nthese masses to engage in actions that are not oriented towards these summits<\/i>.<\/p>\nCrashing the party<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nsecond strategy focused on the disruption of the summit. It was expected that
\ngovernment leaders would come out celebrating a death sentence for the planet,
\nand so the movement prepared to disrupt the party. Although the goal of
\ndisruption sounds legit, the (potential) effectiveness of such a strategy is
\nquestionable. <\/p>\n
\nCarl Death described in his article on \u2018summit theatres\u2019 (Environmental
\nPolitics, 2011<\/i>), even strong
\nopposition to summits contributes to the image of summits as places where
\nglobal governance is taking problems very serious. Resistance contributes to
\nthe performed image of seriousness. \u00a0Whether the general public really picks up
\nmore than this general picture is questionable (see below). Some online media
\nreported on the Red Lines action\u2019s critical message, but the mainstream media
\ndid not. Take the Guardian, which had already been reporting on the plans for
\nthe Red Lines action. If anyone should have brought the Red Lines message to
\nthe masses, unfortunately, not even the Guardian gave proper coverage of the
\nRed Lines action, or of the \u2018last word\u2019 action that was held afterwards at the
\nEiffel Tower. In the Guardian\u2019s live feed there was brief mentioning of the Red
\nLines action, but it was framed as \u201810,000 people on the streets calling for a
\nstrong climate deal\u2019 \u2013 precisely the type of framing that organizers had aimed
\nto prevent. The rest of the day, the live feed was filled mainly with celebratory
\ncoverage of the signed deal. No actual article was dedicated to the Red Lines action.<\/p>\n
\nwas not the result of any individual or collective failure. Part of this outcome
\nwas the result of some bad luck, with the final negotiation text being released
\nat about the same time that the Red Lines action began, thus overshadowing the latter.
\nMoreover, the State of Emergency also made the organization of a radical action
\nso much more complicated. With greatly increased uncertainty, organizers were
\nforced to opt for the safe side of things, thereby losing an important radical
\nedge. Had the Red Lines action indeed taken place according to the original
\nplans \u2013 including the building of (symbolic) barricades around the conference
\ncentre \u2013 it might have had a more profound disrupting effect. <\/p>\n
\nbeyond these unfortunate circumstances, the inability to disrupt has a more fundamental
\ncause: climate summits do not allow themselves to be disrupted. There are historic
\ncounter-examples, like the Battle of Seattle, in which movements have shut down
\nsummits, but this is an exceptional case. What is more, climate activists are
\nlimited with regard to \u2018shutting down\u2019 COPs. While the WTO clearly advances a
\nneoliberalism that global justice activists oppose, the UNFCCC and the climate
\nmovement in principle share the basic goal of mitigating climate change. Shutting
\ndown a COP therefore sends a very ambiguous and problematic message. Offering a
\ncritical note to the summit outcome therefore seems a more reasonable
\nalternative, yet Paris has proven that COPs\u2019 momentum \u2013 the one that allows the
\nmovement to mobilize its resources in the first place \u2013\u00a0seems too strong to
\nallow for much disruption from the streets. <\/p>\n
\nwhat would have happened if circumstances had been more favourable, and the Red
\nLines action had <\/i>managed to place a
\ncritical note to the celebratory newsfeed, or if it had even properly
\novershadowed it? Would the general public have become more critical, and would
\nthey have realized that it was time for immediate climate action? A recent
\nstudy by Zorzeta Bakaki and Thomas Bernauer (Environmental
\nPolitics, 2016<\/i>) suggests that
\nno, such coverage would have made little difference to people\u2019s public opinion.
\nUsing an experimental design, they find that coverage of climate summits does
\nraise audiences\u2019 awareness about the issue, but it does not change their
\nopinion about the issue \u2013 regardless of whether they are served positive or
\nnegative coverage of the event. In quoting Bernard Cohen, they conclude that
\n\u201cthe mass media may not often be successful in telling people what to think,
\nbut they are successful in telling readers what to think about.\u201d So it seems
\nthat whether or not disruptive protest is included, media coverage of climate
\nsummits will at best increase awareness about climate change. And here we are
\nback at what Carl Death warned against: even the most disruptive protest
\nfunctions to underscore how serious this global governance event is taking the
\nissue at hand. It is very hard to really disrupt that image. <\/p>\n
\ndisrupt the mainstream media story of climate summits through mass actions that
\npromote an alternative story. And even if media coverage can be altered, this
\narguably has limited consequences for public opinion and the general public\u2019s
\nengagement.<\/i><\/p>\nThe after-party<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nfrequently mentioned goal was that the COP21 mobilization was not (just) about
\nParis, but about using the momentum the summit would generate to build a
\nmovement for the long climate struggle that would come after Paris. Indeed, the
\nentire framing and strategy of the mobilization was designed to manage
\nunrealistic hopes about a positive outcome and to prevent hangovers and
\ndepressions by building a movement on the basis of realistic expectations. <\/p>\n
\nthroughout 2015, most of the movement\u2019s energy seems to have been invested in
\ncoming up with strategies that allowed the movement to ignore COP21 while in
\nParis. Taking the movement into 2016 and beyond was an often-quoted aim, but
\nreceived much less attention than the COP21 strategy, and was generally not
\noperationalized in very concrete terms. It is therefore unsurprising that the main
\ncoalition that was built up towards COP21 did not seem to have profoundly
\nshaped a global climate movement of 2016.<\/p>\n
\nus consider first the organizational level. Certainly, the mobilization for
\nCOP21 stood out for its unseen ability to bring together organizations who had
\nuntil recently been in sometimes open conflict with each other. Actors from
\nboth sides of the climate justice divide managed to join in a diverse coalition
\n(Coalition Climat 21) to
\ncoordinate their mobilization \u2013 albeit at times in a precarious way and along
\nnew cleavages. And they coordinated actions with the more radical, grassroots
\naction groups united in Climate Justice Action. But as remarkable as this
\nunification of the climate movement was, as quick was its dissolution. Indeed,
\nwithout the common goal of the COP21 mobilization, Coalition Climat 21 quickly
\nfell apart \u2013 despite considerable efforts of some to keep it together. <\/p>\n
\nmanage to stay together. This is probably because it is geographically
\n(European), organizationally (grassroots) and politically (anti-capitalist)
\nmore homogenous, which by extension means that it has limited influence on the
\nconstruction of a broad global climate movement. Efforts to keep the coalition
\ntogether may have started too late (only during COP21, except for a small
\nmeeting during a CC21 meeting in Paris in June). However, taking into account
\nhow packed the preparation meetings for COP21 had already been, shifting more
\nattention to what came after COP21 could have been hard to pull off. In a sense
\nthen, this situation also suggests that COPs do not allow that too much
\nattention is payed to business that diverts attention away from it. <\/p>\n
\nregard to the individuals the movement had managed to mobilize into the
\nmovement around Paris, it is really very difficult to draw precise conclusions.
\nThere are for example no survey data that can link participants in the COP21
\nmobilization to participation in some of the climate actions that took place in
\n2016. Hence, we can only guess about the movement\u2019s ability to take the
\nmobilized masses from Paris to the \u2018beyond\u2019. Actions like Ende Gelande in May 2016,
\nas well as the wider Breakfree 2016 campaign, at face value appeared to have
\nbenefited from some of the momentum generated around COP. Yet it is hard to
\nassess how<\/i> important the COP21
\nmobilization was in this regard, or more precisely, whether the investments
\nmade in the COP21 mobilization were an efficient way of getting people into
\nthese actions and the wider movement.<\/p>\n
\nthese are simply the risks involved with complex strategies, yet a clear
\nstrategy to make this link seemed to be missing. Despite claims that \u2018it was
\nnot about Paris\u2019 but about what came beyond, organizers focused mainly on, and
\ninvested most energy and resources, in Paris. Again, I believe this to be an
\nunavoidable consequence of the fact that summits do not allow you to use their
\nmomentum without getting proper attention in return. <\/p>\n
\nrequire full attention. Focusing on the development of strategies to carry the
\nbuilt momentum beyond summits appears limited, thus increasing the risk that
\nbuilt alliances will soon dissolve. Mobilizing people at one moment to call
\nupon their participation at a later stage is hard to control, measure, and
\ntherefore risky. <\/i><\/p>\nConclusion: there is no alternative
\n(yet)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nhow successful was the COP21 mobilization? To the extent that it managed to
\nprevent some of the mistakes made in Copenhagen, one could say it was a
\nsuccess. Important internal conflicts were (temporarily and partially)
\nappeased, expectations were managed, strategies were diversified, and actions
\nwere in place for the movement to focus on after the summit. <\/p>\n
\nhow successful was the mobilization beyond preventing the harmful effects that
\nCopenhagen had had on the movement? Either not very successful, I would argue
\n(disrupting, having the last word, mobilizing to target other actors, bringing
\norganizations together beyond COPs), or very hard to determine (getting people
\nengaged in the long run). What this means for future mobilizations depends on
\nthe function one ascribes to summit mobilizations. For those who see it as a
\nnecessary evil (\u2018we can\u2019t afford not to go\u2019), the COP21 mobilization may have
\nshown a method that at least prevents the potential harmfulness of summit
\nmobilizations that Copenhagen demonstrated. For those seeking to invest their
\nscarce resources in the most effective strategies (i.e. for having substantive
\nimpact on achieving climate justice) summit mobilizations seem inherently
\nlimited.<\/p>\n
\nsombre conclusion should at least in part be attributed to the exceptionally
\nunfavourable context that the state of emergency created. It is hard to tell
\nhow many people would have participated in the original plans for the False
\nSolutions and Red Lines actions, what their experience would have been, and how
\nthe media and politicians would have responded to them. It is probably fair to
\nexpect that both actions would have turned out more effective. Nevertheless,
\nthe core of my argument is that there is a fundamental flaw in the idea of
\nmobilizing around arguably \u2018weak\u2019 summits: even if one develops strategies in
\nrecognition of the limited nature of these summits, the summits still demand
\nattention, and the Paris mobilization has taught us the valuable lesson that
\nthis tension can hardly be overcome. Thus, if Copenhagen showed that there was
\na need for expectation management and a reduced emphasis on the summit outcome
\nitself, then Paris showed that going to a summit with the intention to disrupt
\nor ignore it is unlikely to be successful. By trying to lift off \u2018planet
\nsummit\u2019, its gravity became truly noticeable for the first time \u2013 a necessary
\nbut falsifying experiment.<\/p>\n
\ndoes this piece come too late? Since the election of Trump, it seems we will
\nnot see another high-profile climate summit anytime soon \u2013 especially not one
\nwith a high chance of delivering a substantively meaningful outcome. \u2018To summit
\nor not to summit?\u2019, may therefore be a question of the past. <\/p>\n
\na lesson that can be learned from Paris, and which is perhaps only underscored
\nby Trump, is the importance of finding ways for the climate movement to become
\nglobally coordinated beyond summits. Effectively mitigating climate change
\nrequires a globally coordinated effort, and so does the redistributive
\nprinciple underlying climate justice. This is not a new idea, and attempts have
\nalready been made towards such independent global coordination, such as through
\nthe World Social Forums, or through globally coordinated campaigns like
\nBreakfree 2016. In this sense, my conclusion echoes Bullard and Mueller\u2019s (Development, 2012<\/i>) call for the development of
\nthe movement\u2019s own \u2018globality\u2019.<\/p>\n
\nwas innovative, and explored the margins of summit mobilization, thereby
\nshowing above all, the need for innovative strategies to move beyond summits,
\nand to develop strategies for global coordination in the movement\u2019s own
\n\u2018globality\u2019.<\/i><\/p>\n
De Moor J.(2017) COP21: the climate movement\u2019s last summit?, Open Democracy \/ ISA RC-47: Open Movements, 18 February. https:\/\/opendemocracy.net\/joost-de-moor\/cop21-climate-movement-s-last-summit<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"