Aron Buzogány (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences BOKU, Vienna)

Marginal environmentalism: Local environmental activism and global trends in the European neighborhood

One of the main ingredients for ecological transformations is citizen mobilization; citizenmobilization has often been at the core of the transformation of human relationship to nature. At thesame time, the paradox of environmentalism is that it needs to act simultaneously both at the localand the global level as ecological problems are essentially glocal – that is both global and local. Forenvironmental organizations and movements, managing the intersection between local and global intheir daily work is often an intricate exercise that can be mutually reinforcing but also lead tocontradictions and difficult trade-offs. After conceptualizing the role of transnational networks as an opportunity structure, as resource, and a discursive frame used by civil society organizations the presentation will focus on different types of networks in the field of environmental, climate and resource and their local embedding in the European neighborhood.

Jelena Pešić and Jelisaveta Vukelić (University of Belgrade – Faculty of Philosophy)

Europeanization From Below at the Semi-Periphery: Potentials for Transnationalization of Grassroot Environmental Movements in Serbia

This presentation explores the “Europeanization from below” by focusing on local environmental initiatives in Serbia with an overall question of potentials of grassroots activism to create significant environmental impact in a semi-peripheral context. By linking the concepts of environmentalism of the poor/dispossessed and the transnationalization (Europeanization) of environmental protests through the example of the protests against small hydropower plants in Serbia, we will try to show how local grassroot movement that grew out of a tradition of non-politicised everyday environmentalism, transformed into a rebellion of the dispossessed and then tried to organise at national and transnational level, both using assistance from EU institutions and international environmental organisations to leverage national authorities and developers, and remaining critical of certain EU environmental policies and practices.

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Allegati

Locandina Cosmos Talks Spring 2022