The normative discussion of environmental disobedience as a reaction to institutional failures

Large part of the normative discussion of environmental and climate change activism in political philosophy has discussed protests voicing environmental concerns in light of the normative grounds that can justify these. In particular, the debate has focused on environmental and climate change activism as grounded in generalizable and universalizable claims of intergenerational and international justice. Climate change and environmental issues are global matters that must be tackled collectively by states. Importantly, whereas the anthropogenic origin of climate change has reached scientific consensus and the mitigation of its effects supposedly guide policy design at the international and national level, environmental activists claim that the national and local implementation of international measures and decisions is often either inconsistent with signed international agreements or, more generally, not enough to tackle the climate crisis. If, on one hand, environmental activists seek democratic inclusion in decision-making regarding how to tackle the climate crisis to address the second problem, on the other hand, they want public institutions to be held responsible for the way they put policies and decisions into practice, as a reaction to the first problem. The politico-philosophical debate has generally addressed many of the tactics in which environmental disobedients engage in through the lenses of civil disobedience. The normative assessment of tactics such as eco-sabotage, blockades, sit-ins, and other forms of unauthorized occupation of public and private spaces through such lenses, nevertheless, has led to important criticism. Such tactics, in fact, are often criticized as coercive and undemocratic and thus uncivil and, ultimately, unjustifiable. Whilst such forms of disobedience may be perceived as prima facie coercive and undemocratic, they might, nonetheless, be morally justifiable if they occur in circumstances in which considerations such as necessity and need, parsimony, urgency and importance, and non-reversibility apply. These conditions, I argue in the paper, are generally fulfilled in the case of environmental disobedience in light of the nature and scope of climate change and the environmental crisis and as a response to the failures of public institutions. Importantly, such an analysis of environmental disobedience provides a test case for the general understanding and justification of disobedience. Ultimately, the paper attempts at providing some considerations that are decisive for the normative justification of different tactics of disobedience, regardless of the civility these display.