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Topic: Collective Climate Action

Collective Climate Action (origin: collective and Elinor Ostrom)

Collective action refers to action taken by a group of people to achieve a shared goal. In the case of collective climate action, the goal can be mitigation of the effects of climate change, adaptation of systems or infrastructure in anticipation of climate risk, or a deeper transformation of the conditions driving the climate crisis. Oftentimes, collective climate action is conceptualized as a grassroots social movement, composed of citizens working for change at the community scale. Examples of this sort of collective climate action include the School Strike for Climate demonstrations, community action days for tree planting, beach clean-ups, or teach-ins. The concept of collective action is often juxtaposed with individual action, which focuses on the individual choices, decisions, and actions people make in the name of environmentally responsible behavior.

Conventional collective action theory questions the efficacy of collective action, positing that individuals will not work toward the common good without the presence of externally imposed regulations (see: tragedy of the commons). Economist Elinor Ostrom challenged this perspective, contending that in the case of climate change, collective action can be achieved via a polycentric approach where individual families, communities, non-governmental organizations, and sub-national and national governments work to combat climate change within their own spheres of influence.

©2024 ClimateLit (Neela Nandyal)

Related terms: individual action, mitigation, tragedy of the commons, transformation

Looking for more? Check these resources:

Ostrom, Elinor. “Polycentric Systems for Coping with Collective Action and Global Environmental Change.” Global Environmental Change, vol. 20, no. 4, 2010, pp. 550–57, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.07.004.

Tosun, Jale, and Jonas J. Schoenefeld. “Collective climate action and networked climate governance.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 8.1 (2017): e440.

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