Publications

Organizational and civic organizing resources provide critical inputs to communities in need. The skills and know-how of climate action tend to be concentrated with scientific experts and in research institutions. In order to reach broader segments of the population in terms of access and participation in climate action, expertise needs to be shared beyond academic and specialized organizational settings.  This study examines the correlates of organizational resource sharing via the participation in climate action planning by members of a research university located in a disinvested region – the San Joaquin Valley of California. We consider the organizational, civic engagement, and ideational elements of individual participation in climate action in environmental justice communities with a large-scale census survey. Organizational members with civic capacity experience, environmental identities, and shared lived experience were found to be the most willing to participate in public meetings to address climate change and equity in frontline communities.

Involving residents in meaningful participation in heavily polluted regions faces many obstacles. This study focuses on the conditions that enhance individual involvement in civic initiatives against environmental hazards in one of the largest cities in the United States facing chronic and heightened air pollution exposure. The work is based on a large-scale representative survey of 1,950 residents in Fresno, California. The survey was carried out by a multiracial coalition of community-based organizations. The findings suggest that those individuals with ties to capacity-building organizations and with civic engagement experience were the most willing to attend local meetings about air pollution. In addition, days with higher levels of air pollution also acted as an environmental threat, motivating civic action. The study suggests that increasing public participation in pollution mitigation begins with investing in the types of civic organizations that specialize in capacity building for public engagement in order to advance the environmental justice principles of procedural justice.

This chapter examines the most promising gains of multiple forms of climate action and the most pressing challenges to future advancements. While significant climate action advances have occurred over the past 30 years, the current impediments to further expansion of efforts are substantial. In terms of institutional climate action, city-level climate planning, green energy transitions, and the expansion of nature-based climate solutions represent major gains in addressing the climate crisis. On the noninstitutional front, both the global climate social movement and local antiextraction struggles made substantial progress in raising awareness and influencing policy outcomes. Major obstacles remain for expanding climate action in the areas of civic engagement, climate financing, carbon reductionism, climate denialism, and growing authoritarian populism.

As human and ecological systems face an existential threat from planetary warming, institutions and collectivities are implementing multiple forms of climate action to address the escalating crisis. Examples of major institutional climate action strategies include climate action planning, nature-based climate solutions, carbon markets and taxes, expansion of green and renewable energy, carbon capture, storage and management technologies, climate public education, litigation and referendums, climate reparations, and a variety of non-institutional mobilizations involving climate protest and anti-extraction actions. Most modes of climate action appear to be driven by various strands of environmental threat—the specter of deteriorating ecological conditions in the face of nonaction. This chapter examines the ways environmental threats motivate multiple types of climate action covered in this Handbook.

The environmental justice and climate justice movements have differing histories and trajectories. One of the promising developments in recent years is a growing alignment between the two movements and recognition of how the previous struggles over environmental justice contribute to the climate justice movement. This chapter describes the driving forces behind the development of the environmental justice movement, including history, goals, and outcomes. It also links the environmental justice movement to current climate advocacy efforts and the most promising forms of practicing climate justice in the contemporary era.

Collective action against extraction tends to occur at the local level at the sites where nearby ecological damage takes place. In Panama in 2023, protests reached a national level against copper mining by a transnational corporation and successfully terminated operations. The protests endured for a month and acted as the largest outpouring of protests in Panamanian history. This study details how a massive campaign against extraction with a successful outcome builds from multi-sectoral alliances attained in previous struggles. The lessons learned from the mobilizations provide strategies for other regions in the search for equitable environmental policies that avoid threatening ecological sustainability.

Research on individual participation in climate action largely focuses on middle class environmental activism around protest events. To better understand the expansion of civic engagement on climate issues, more work needs to be carried out on wider sectors of the population. This study examines the drivers associated with involvement in climate action at the individual level with a survey sample of working-class youth of color. The findings suggest that youth embedded in pro-climate social networks, a history of civic engagement, and an equity belief system increase willingness to participate in several forms of climate action, including climate meetings, demonstrations, and inviting others to participate. For larger climate action initiatives to overcome the barriers of participation, linking to specific pools of sympathy in civil society that value economic equality may provide a mass base of support for policies consistent with just transition perspectives.