Tuesday, 13 October 2015

Power of Collective Action

Over the past few decades, civil movements for global climate change are rapidly growing in number and scale. Perhaps, it follows the unprecedented rate of development in information technology that allows people to share their personal experiences relevant to climate change. Extreme weather, sea level rises, and increasing atmospheric temperature are some of the classic examples in the contemporary history of climate change.

As a result, people nowadays voice their opinions about climate change more easily and frequently on internet. This essentially has led to a rapid development of collective power, which goes beyond geographical boundaries that used to be a barrier to international/global actions for their common struggle.

Similarly, there has been a major shift in how people react to climate change at regional level. For instance, an increasing number of people now feel a sense of responsibility for potential consequences of their socio-economic activity that is being conducted in their home land. Among them is the emergence of community power where people assemble to take action for mitigating the effect of climate change. Hertford Energy Now is a good example of these. It is a non-profit organization that has promoted the development of community-owned energy generation in East Herts, England. They successfully installed solar PV panels in Mill Mead School, and they are currently on track to expand so-called 'HertsSolarSchools' across the region within the Phase 2 Project. This kind of community actions from the bottom is vital to practice a central government's policy such as Feed-in Tariff programme.

On the other hand, community power / collective action can also be politically active in mobilizing public opinion. Aizu Natural Energy Foundation, based in Fukushima, Japan, for instance, was launched in May 2013 two years after the Great East Japan Earthquake by a member of local inhabitants such as the representative partner of Yamatogawa Sake Brewery. In his interview, he criticizes Japanese government for leading the region to be economically dependent on surrounding cities:

"Before the earthquake, Fukushima had the food resources ten times more than the necessary amount in the prefecture, at about 1000%. And we had several GW electric facilities except nuclear power plants. There is an enormous potential of renewables available in Fukushima. However, almost all the energy produced in the region was distributed to the city areas, and then we bought it back by our selves. Fukushima was in a situation as if it is a colony of big city areas. Then, after the nuclear disaster, the strong will to overcome the situation grew inside myself, and I decided to pursue Fukushima's autonomous development" (Energy Democracy).

Their vision is to establish the local autonomy of energy and their micro-economy by introducing renewable energy into their region, mainly solar PV panels. Currently, the capacity of energy production running under this initiative exceeds 2.54MW. What is significant about this programme is that they are run by local people as well as being financially supported mainly by local banks and institutions (Energy Democracy). In other word, the regions is now moving forward to the rearrangement of local economy in structure by managing their demand-supply relationship by themeselves. Although their primary vision is not to mitigate climate change in regional level, their community action has certainly visualized recent political crisis in monopolized energy production in Japan. In this sense, community power can also play as a political power in civil society in whatever context.

Despite these successful stories, however, some argue that community power itself is no guarantee of success (Carter, et al., 1993). Particularly in less economically developed countries, there are a number of constrains associated with community action. For instance, many attempts have been made on installing water supply and sanitation programme in sub-Saharan Africa over the past few decades. However, they often ended up breaking down and being abandoned a few years after construction began. Carter, et al. reports on their paper that this is mainly because of the following three factors: local's unclear understanding of the existing problems with water supply and sanitation; their lack of awareness over beneficial impacts of the programme; and little understanding of factors that sustain their programme. The first two are summarized as lack of knowledge and awareness, and the third factor points out the fact that once a new system is introduced, investors often leave it to locals without developing maintenance programme ahead. Thus, governmental intervention in education and training as well as financial assistance are essential to some extent in order to sustainably manage a long-term local development still in many parts of the world.

To summarize above, although community power plays some key roles in mobilizing society, it is not always practically successful, depending on the socio-economic and political status of the region.

From next posts, therefore, I will explore many more cases of community power to discuss on this complex system, particularly by looking into roles it plays in shifting attitude and perspective of people towards global climate change. See you all next week!



Reference not to be hyper-linked:

Carter, R, Tyrrel S & Howsam P (1999) 'Impact and sustainability of community water supply and sanitation programmmes in developing countries', Journal of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, 13: 292-296.

2 comments:

  1. I'm looking forward to seeing how the blog develops. Would be a good opportunity to cover some of the community events leading up to, and during COP21 too...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment, Anson! Yes, I definitely will look into the role of community events in relation to the upcoming COP21 in Paris. I am still not sure to what extent it can help mitigate global climate change overall, but it certainly has a power to change the attitude of people towards this common struggle.

      Delete