Climate change is easily the most confounding ‘collective action’ problem we have ever faced. We must act – collectively – in the best interests of not only today’s global population, but also the presumed interests of people yet to be born.
It follows that nurturing a sense of shared identity – what is sometimes called social capital, or the elusive but ubiquitous concept of community – should make people more receptive to appeals for collective global action on climate change.
But a new report from the Fabian Society takes this argument one step further. According to the report’s authors, Natan Doron and Ed Wallis, people instinctively think of the environment not in terms of carbon emissions and climate change, but in terms of the place where they live and the people who live there.
For most people, protecting the environment starts at their front door, not with an internationally binding global agreement on dangerous climate change. Anti-social behaviour is the biggest concern, with climate change ranking alongside dog-fouling and littering. People feel that citizenship has declined, and that opportunities for working together are limited.
However, the report argues that if people feel they are able to participate in and improve their local environment, they are more likely to support the global aims of environmental campaigns. If they think they can change things in their own back yard, they are more likely to think they can change the world.
Their findings echo other research which suggests that people’s sense of “place attachment” (which is as much about the local community and social cohesion as it is about physical geography) is a key influence on their views about climate change and other environmental issues. It has also long been recognised that reducing the psychological distance between people and climate change is an important challenge. So long as climate change remains a remote and abstract issue, it is easy to close our eyes and wish it away.
Doron and Wallis make some bold recommendations for overhauling the way in which climate change campaigners operate. They suggest that the quickest way to get support for ambitious action on climate change globally is for campaigners to switch a proportion of their budgets away from lobbying international negotiations and towards supporting community organising to improve local environments.
To build a popular environmentalism, they argue, global issues such as climate change must be brought back to the doorsteps of ordinary people, where tangible, local action on the environment can be seen to be working. They even propose a new bank holiday, to be held in the middle of the working week, which would focus national attention on community action and “provide a focal point for campaigners to highlight local environmental projects on a large scale and generate widespread media attention, as well as an opportunity to reach out beyond the ‘usual suspects’.”
The basic logic of the recommendations – that climate change begins at home – is reflected in the newly launched For the Love Of campaign (which my colleagues and I at COIN worked on). Our research found that people from a range of different backgrounds (including conservatives and trade union members) responded positively to a narrative about climate change that focused on standing up for the “things people love” that are threatened by climate change.
The video for the campaign shows a diverse range of people and the issues they are passionate about, from football, to gardening, to summertime. Flooded football pitches, disrupted growing seasons and increased summer rainstorms provide a direct link between climate change and people’s passion. It’s a powerful demonstration of the principle that global change has local effects.
Clearly there are potential hazards in the “go local” approach. For a start, there is a risk of trivialising world-wide problems like climate change by homing in on individuals’ everyday concerns. Wouldn’t it be better to get people thinking about the big issues – the poverty and malnourishment that climate change will bring – rather than the minutiae of the issue?
But, for better or for worse, these issues are not top of mind for most of us, most of the time. This doesn’t mean that people are oblivious to them, but that a conversation about climate change must build a bridge between concerns about the local environment (or the everyday things that people love) and the global dimensions of environmental change.
The lesson from the Fabian Society report is that building community cohesion, nurturing a sense of collective action around local environmental issues, and supporting micro rather than macro concerns can be a portal through which a more global sense of citizenship can be achieved.
Groups such as the Transition Towns network have been saying this for quite a long time, but have not yet been able to break into the mainstream. Perhaps a new bank holiday to celebrate the virtues of linking local community action to global campaigns would do the trick: confronting climate change, ‘for the love of’ a day off…
Originally published by Guardian Sustainable Business 28.07.14