Climate Action in a Globalizing World ─ Comparative Perspectives on Environmental Movements in the Global North

The existence and urgency of global climate change is a matter of scientific consensus. Yet the global politics of climate change have been anything but consensual. In this context, a wave of global climate activism has emerged in the last decade in response to the perceived failure of the political negotiations.

Drawing on over 100 interviews that have been conducted with key activists representing a total of 70 organizations, this book provides a unique comparative study of environmental movements in Denmark, Japan, Sweden, and the USA, analyzing their interaction with the international climate institutions of the United Nations, with national governments, and with currents in the global climate movement. It documents how and why the movement evolved between the Copenhagen Summit of 2009 and the Paris Summit of 2015, altering its strategies and tactics while attracting new actors to the issue area. Further, it demonstrates how the development of global environmental networks has increased contact between environmental movements in the Global North and those from the Global South, resulting in the establishment of ‘climate justice’ as a political cause and unifying frame for global climate activism.

Carl Cassegard is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg. He is currently researching Japanese social movements with a focus on the precarity movement and the environmental movement. He is the author of Youth Movements, Trauma and Alternative Space in Contemporary Japan (2013) and Shock and Naturalization in Contemporary Japanese Literature (2007).

Linda Soneryd is Lecturer and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg. She is co-author of Transboundary Risk Governance (2010) and has published in journals such as Environment & Planning A, Science, Technology and Human Values, and Environmental Politics. Her research currently focuses on environmental movements and climate change, transboundary governance and water management, and stakeholder involvement in spatial planning.

Hakan Thorn is Full Professor of Sociology, based at the Department of Sociology and Work Science, and the Centre of Globalization and Development (GCGD) at the University of Gothenburg. He is also the coordinator for Forum for Civil Society and Social Movement Research (CSM). His research focuses on globalization, social movements and civil society, and he has published a number of and books and articles in international journals on these topics. His books include Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (2006), The Politics of AIDS: Globalization, the State and Civil Society (2008) and Transformations of the Swedish Welfare State: From Social Engineering to Governance? (2012).

Asa Wettergren is Associate Professor in Sociology in the?Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg. Her main research area is the role of emotions in social life, organizations, and social movements. Wettergren is currently heading a research project on ‘Emotions in Swedish Courts’ and she is a participant researcher in the project ‘Environmental Movements in a Globalising World’.