Articulating post-apocalyptic environmentalism: global civil society and the struggle for anti-colonial climate politics in the climate movement

• Published in: Globalizations Vol. 21; no. 5; pp. 839 - 856
• Main Author: Sunnemark, Ludvig
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 03-07-2024; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Civil society; Climate; climate movement; Coalitions; Colonialism; Decolonial thought; Decolonization; discourse; Dominance; Environmentalism; global civil society; Hegemony; Neocolonialism; North and South; Politics; Social movements
• ISSN: 1474-7731; 1474-774X
• DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2023.2288405

This article examines the dynamics of the climate movement's (CM) engagement within global civil society (GCS), focusing on how this relates to its evolving commitment to anti-colonial climate politics and the wider, ongoing tensions between actors from the Global North and South within the movement. Here, this article contributes with a theorization on how counter-hegemonic and anti-colonial social movement alliances can be forged in GCS, building from neo-Gramscian, post- and decolonial concepts. This theorization builds on a study of the COP26 Coalition's efforts in Glasgow in November 2021, exploring how the coalition strategically utilized post-apocalyptic environmentalism to amplify Southern and anti-colonial perspectives within the broader CM and to carve out a space for such perspectives within GCS. However, this study also highlights how GCS spaces are shaped by a neo-colonial global hegemony which fosters structures of Northern epistemic dominance which often function to de-legitimize, exclude, or co-opt non-Western knowledges and movements within GCS.