Mobilize, Radicalize, Build Networks: Reflections from Italian Climate Activism

In Italy, from 2018 onwards, social movements have played an important role in spreading awareness about the climate crisis. However they have not achieved the desired results at the political level: in the 2022 national election, the environmentalist party Alleanza Verdi-Sinistra (AVS), garnered only 3.6% of the vote. Over the past two years, the center-right government has radicalized its repression of social movements, particularly those using civil disobedience tactics. This has not, however, stopped climate activism. On the contrary, at least three processes of network construction have been launched: 1) the States General of Climate Action (SGCA), a nationwide call for associations, NGOa, and climate movements; 2) the World Congress for Climate Justice, an international appeal addressed to anti-capitalist climate movements; 3) the States General of Climate and Social Justice, addressing both environmental and social groups at a national level.

The present research questions the role that networking can play in supporting the climate cause, using the SGCA as a case study. I make explicit that my positioning is militant, since I myself participate in this network. This places the study in the groove of militant ethnography, which involves the choice of participant observation as the main method of inquiry for the purpose of an embodied understanding of social phenomena. From what I observed - and practiced - over the course of a year, it seems that the creation of the network has had a first result at the political level: in the 2024 European elections, a mobilization was created in a very short time that led to two young AVS candidates entering the European Parliament. A critical element, however, concerns collaboration with the other two networks mentioned above: each addresses, to date, distinct niches and seem to lack an attempt at convergence.