Environmental Activism has been around since the nineteenth century. With a deeper scientific understanding on all the ways in which humans are destroying local environments as well as our global climate, along with insufficient action taken by governments, the climate and environmental movement has grown significantly in the past decades. [1] Climate activism across the globe got a big boost in 2015, when Greta Thunberg’s protests set off global environmental youth activism that brought about the international movement Fridays for Future. [2]

The environmental movement is truly global, yet the experience of environmental activism differs greatly in different parts of the world. In this article we will be using the neutral terms “Global North” (GN) for countries which used to be described as developed and “Global South” (GS) for those which used to be described as developing or third world countries. Though it may be problematic to homogenize all countries into two groups and the terms themselves may not be geographically precise, there is still a significant power imbalance and environmental inequality between both groups of countries (at least in part due to countries’ colonial histories). [3]

Environmental inequality stemming from power imbalances caused by colonialism, such as exploitative resource flows from the GS to the GN, have already been explained further in other articles in this brochure. On top of that, the GS is disproportionately affected by climate change in forms of extreme weather occurrences, floods or droughts, though being much less responsible for it than the GN. [4]