Crowding in: Why and How Indian Civil Society Organizations Began Mobilizing on Climate Change

In this paper, we argue that a process of crowding in of civil society organizations (CSOs) into the field of climate change advocacy has occurred in India since around 2007. Both the number and the diversity of CSOs involved in this field of advocacy has greatly increased. Drawing on the Dynamics of Contention approach, We identify five mechanisms that explain why and how this process has unfolded: (1) The expansion of discursive opportunities in the global public sphere, (2) the event effect of Copenhagen COP 15 in 2009, (3) the network effects of expanding global civil society networks of climate change advocacy and the resulting flows of discourses and funding, (4) adoption and innovation of new action repertoires, and (5) the global political pressure effect leading to development of national climate policies and corresponding opportunities for CSOs to influence their formulation and implementation.