Investigating Fridays for Future Italy Between Climate Global Crisis and Local Environmental Struggles

2019 saw the disruptive re-emergence of a global environmental movement characterized by the wide participation of young people and aimed to face climate emergency as denounced by scientific community. With the rise of Fridays for Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), the environment is becoming again pivotal in social conflict: millions of people take the streets to expose institutional inaction and claiming for climate justice. In this global panorama, Italy results one of the most engaged country in the new environmental protests in both European Union and in the world, second only to Germany (https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/statistics/graph). In just a few months there were hundreds organized groups of FFF that spread in the country. At the same time, the country has a strong tradition of environmental struggles involving both national (such as the referendum on nuclear or on water) and local dimensions (against high-speed trains, pipelines, etc.). These last one, conventionally named Locally unwanted Land Use (LULU) conflicts, have represented in the last decades a spreading phenomenon all over the country with the increase of contentious from 130 in 2004 to 359 in 2017 (Nimby Forum 2017). These mobilizations proved pivotal in politicizing the defence of the land and of the environment from large infrastructures and, often, in connecting their local protests with global claims as those for another model of growth, for democracy or for climate justice. In this sense, the new environmental movements spread in a country – as Italy – in which ecology and networks mobilizing around such topic were in part sedimented – although these challengers have been often described by media and institutions as egoistic actors affected by the NIMBY (Not in By Back Yard) syndrome. Against such background, our research would investigate on one hand actors, frames and repertoires of action that characterize Fridays for Future and, on the other hand, the relationship between this one and LULU campaigns by observing the consequences in terms of contamination in resources, frames, forms of action between these actors. Simultaneously, we are interested in exploring through our investigation the reasons of FFF success in involving people – in particular youth – in grassroots participation by looking also to the supranational events as the failure of climate governance based on COPs (Conference of the Parties) and the spreading of an ecological movement at global scale. The research is conducted by using a mixed qualitative-quantitative method based on protest survey data collected during FFF strikes, in-depth interview with Italian FFF activists and with LULU campaigns activists, and data produced by both the actors as assembly reports, leaflets and other documents.