Citizen climate assemblies: Scale mismatch, national-level NGOs and local-level climate adaptation

• In Event: NGOs and CSOs in climate adaptation

Abstract

The climate crisis is probably the most concerning global issue of our times, and its destructive effects on humanity are unprecedented. To date, we witness growing discussions about government policy and market solutions to the crisis, but this convention has not sufficiently dissipated to the public or translated into action at the community level. One of the challenges that climate advocates face is the question of how to translate a crisis at the global scale into actionable and clearly understood local plans. The euphemism ‘think global, act local’ is oftentimes easier said than done because people tend to disregard what is not immediately impacting them, or what they don’t see or experience in their daily lives. We borrow the term scale mismatch (Cumming, Cumming, & Reedman, 2006) to describe a gap between a global issue and a local action. Scale is a concept that transcends disciplinary boundaries and is used in sociological theory to capture spatial, temporal, representational, and organizational dimensions of a phenomenon (ibid). Participatory governance is one mechanism used in public policy to address scale mismatches (Few, Brown & Tompkins, 2007), and NGOs can play important roles in facilitating participatory models (Greenspan, Cohen-Blankshtain & Geva, 2022) but their contribution has not been sufficiently considered. Our research seeks to address the question of how national-level ENGOs contribute to the translation of a global crisis to the local level. We address this question by looking at the case of participatory climate assemblies organized by national-level environmental NGOs in Israel. We ask whether these climate assemblies are instrumental in overcoming the scale mismatch of bringing global issues through national-level NGOs to the local level.
Participatory climate assemblies are regional assemblies organized by a coalition of national-level ENGOs and local actors, aiming to develop adaptation tools to the climate crisis at the local level. Fourteen regional assemblies were held in 2021-2022 to offer a participatory space for citizens and local actors to share, express, and present their views on how to bring the climate crisis to the local level. These assemblies allow us to address questions such as: how do NGOs help overcome the scale mismatch? How are cross-sector collaborations employed in these climate assemblies effective for translating global issues into local action? And under what conditions are ENGOs able to work with local municipalities and other nonprofits on climate-related issues?
Method: We rely on qualitative, policy-driven research methods including participant observations of assembly meetings, in-depth interviews with organizers and participants, and content analysis of documents and meeting recordings. Drawing on case study research methods (Yin, 2014) and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Deterding & Waters, 2018), the collected data are analyzed to trace the discourse, barriers, and practical solutions around scale mismatch and climate adaptation at the local level. Results: we will discuss in our presentation four main mechanisms in addressing the scale mismatch in the climate assemblies: (1) localization of topics and problems, (2) localization of tools; (3) localization of actors; and (4) localization of knowledge.

References

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77-101.
Cumming, G.S., Cumming, D.H., & Redman, C.L. (2006). Scale mismatches in social-ecological systems: Causes, consequences, and solutions. Ecology and Society, 11(1).‏
Deterding, N. M., & Waters, M. C. (2018). Flexible coding of in-depth interviews: A twenty-first-century approach. Sociological Methods & Research, 1–32.
Few, R., Brown, K., & Tompkins, E. L. (2007). Public participation and climate change adaptation: avoiding the illusion of inclusion. Climate policy, 7(1), 46-59.‏
Greenspan, I., Cohen-Blankshtain, G., & Geva, Y. (2021). NGO roles and anticipated outcomes in environmental participatory processes: A typology. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.
Yin, R. K. (2014). Case study research (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Authors

• Itay Greenspan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Galit Cohen-Blankshtain, Hebrew University of Jerusalem