Climate Regeneration. New Actors and New Strategies in the Climate Movement

Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 15:00
Location: SJES027 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
Oral Presentation
Benjamin TEJERINA, Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Human activities developed during the Anthropocene are leading the planet to a critical situation that requires urgent collective action. The degradation of living conditions has given rise to various conflicts and social mobilizations. The global justice movement, can be considered precedent and precursor of the discourse and social mobilization in favor of a change in our lifestyle in accordance with the limitations of the planet, which is the focus of today's climate mobilization. Three elements stand out in the social mobilization against the climate emergency: 1) the protagonism of the younger generations; 2) the construction of a new collective identity based on a discourse that integrates the role of nature, animal life and the relationships between human and non-human interactions; and 3) the impact on daily life, the political dimension, governance and global policies.

In any case, there are other previous mobilizations related to the possible reversal of climate change, such as the movements of resistance to neoliberalism (Almeida and Pérez Martín, 2023), mobilizations against extractivism (Bebbington and Bury, 2013), environmental conflicts (Cuenca et al., 2022), alternative movements around “good living” and the philosophy of life of indigenous communities (Acosta, 2012). In addition, collective actions and movements claiming the recognition of legal rights over rivers, plants, animals, which will remain in the background in this communication, are having great visibility.

The objective is twofold: 1) to analyze the different strategies, from the most classic mobilizations to civil disobedience, deployed by organizations such as Fridays for Future, Youth Climate Strike, Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion, Scientist Rebellion, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Gender CC-Women for climate change, Futuro Vegetal, Riposte Alimentaire and Just Stop Oil; and 2) to reconstruct the interpretative frameworks of the aforementioned actors around the diagnosis of the current situation, the Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability and climate change.