HuK-Forum: Climate justice movements and the EU

Cooperation between the HuK Cluster “Media and Social Movements” and the “Political Sociology” Section of the Austrian Sociological Association (ÖGS)

Talk by Louisa Parks (University of Trento)

Social movement cycles have long been explored as sources of change in how we govern our societies, but they have been discussed more rarely with reference to transnational governance organisations like the European Union. This talk will explore how successive cycles of protest from the turn of the millennium to the climate justice cycle that peaked around 2018-19 shaped new attention to democratic participation in the European Green Deal. Yet the responsiveness to these claims appears to have serious limitations new democratic spaces leave little room for fundamental challenges to business as usual approaches, while spaces for climate justice movements in both member states and in EU level debates have been squeezed. Where might we find spaces of transformation in the current landscape, and move towards a transformative EU environmental governance and a model of climate democracy by turning towards civil society?

Warm invitation!