Resource Type: Case Studies

Environmental justice activists that work across a diverse set of issues rank climate justice among their highest priority issues. They overwhelmingly rely on base building, coalitions, and organizing strategies to do their work. In reflecting on the movement’s contemporary approaches, activists articulate the importance of shared frameworks such as climate justice to shift popular narratives and action on climate change. The climate justice frame reflects a critical, intersectional, and reconstructive conceptualization of the climate crisis that requires disrupting the status quo approaches to climate change. This study points to some of the challenges and opportunities ahead for realizing such a contentious and transformative climate justice vision led by EJ activists in a moment of expanding political opportunity and risk.

40 “systems leaders” from across North America and Africa share their insights in this report on the potential and the challenges of advancing systems change. What do we most need, individually and collectively, to really DO the systems change that’s needed? Diverse leaders shared some common experiences and lessons, including: centering equity and inclusion, expanding capabilities, leveraging indigenous wisdom, deepening collaboration, supporting leaders, resourcing systems change, and increasing capacity. Some of their specific conclusions include prioritizing: a diverse range of leaders working at multiple levels and across sectors, a supported and connected field to scale our individual and collective impact, and grounding change in community and centering local voices and expertise. These leaders work in an array of issue areas, such as racial equity, renewable energy, entrepreneurship, local food systems, violence, and more.

A focus on individual actions can distract from the larger climate movement goal of system change. While many activists in the UK-based group Extinction Rebellion (XR) call for “system change,” what is missing is an understanding of what kind of system change is necessary—and how it might be achieved. XR activists still engage in personal pro-environmental behaviors, even though their political goals are aimed at systemic change, and the group continues to argue that blaming and shaming individuals is counterproductive. This article argues that accusations of hypocrisy (based on their personal choices of climate movement activists) are used to discredit, divide, and undermine the climate movement—and those accusations by opponents work, to some degree.