Understanding Environmental NGOs’ Inclusiveness: A Comparative Analysis of Two Australian Climate Action Groups

1.1 Why Inclusiveness Matters?

Higher inclusiveness helps to achieve more robust and representative advocacy. This is particularly important when climate change is affecting individuals’ physical and mental health, incomes, and many other different aspects (Boeckmann and Zeeb 2016; Gergis et al. 2023; Verlie 2022a). While scholars and activists often have different understandings and meanings towards climate justice, Mikulewicz et al. (2023) and other scholars have highlighted climate justice recognises the disproportional negative impacts climate change have on poor and marginalised communities. Strategies are needed to dismantle structural exploitation, marginalisation, and oppression towards these social and political groups (Jafry, Mikulewicz, and Helwig 2018; Meikle, Wilson, and Jafry 2016).

However, Australian climate politics are more divided and volatile than ever (McDonald 2016, 1,060; Turner and Skarbek 2023). Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, mainstream national ENGOs have been regarded as ‘insiders’ willing to work closely with political parties (particularly the Australian Labor Party [ALP] and the Greens), government departments and business groups (McDonald 2016; Warhurst 1994). These established ENGOs have relatively sufficient donations and revenues to sustain advocacy. Some scholars indirectly argue that bureaucracy and professionalisation help ENGOs to utilise resources effectively and efficiently, thus further sustaining volunteers’ participation (Staggenborg 1988, 2020). However, to appeal to state actors or major financial donors, these ENGOs also seem to become increasingly disconnected from grassroots public support.

In the last two decades, more recently established groups such as Extinction Rebellion Australia, GetUp!, School Strike for Climate, Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC), 350.org, Change.org, Move Beyond Coal, Lock the Gate, are seemingly more aggressive, radical, visible, and persistent in mobilising large number of activities to create changes than mainstream large ENGOs (Bennett and Segerberg 2012; Westwell and Bunting 2020). Their organising structures are less hierarchical and bureaucratic (Rosewarne, Goodman, and Pearse 2014).

In addition, while civil disobedience, nonviolent disruptive action and grassroots organising are not entirely new (Alinsky 1971), these ENGOs try to be more responsive to participants’ interests and feedback by using digital technologies and novel communication mechanisms (Karpf 2017; Vromen, Vaughan, and Halpin 2021). However, evidence remains unclear regarding the extent to which different types of organisational structures could enhance their appeal to different social and political backgrounds (Hustinx 2014, 108).

However, these recently established ENGOs struggle to gather the required resources and support (Berny and Rootes 2018; Rosewarne, Goodman, and Pearse 2014, 38). In responding to broader societal and political changes, many ENGOs adopt a seemingly ‘leaderless’ or egalitarian, horizontal organising approach. Any individual can freely participate in the decision-making processes. Fewer external concerns about partisanship and donors’ interests allow organisations to pursue more diverse repertoires (Staggenborg 2020). However, less resourceful and structured organising could unintentionally exclude minority social and political groups (Castells 2015; Hermes 2020).

Furthermore, civil society actors and organisations often struggle to maintain cohesion and work together under tremendous political pressure, attacks, division, or polarisation (Alexander 1953).^[2] Also, if ENGOs are out of touch or out of step with grassroots communities, other groups may also misconstrue constituents’ sentiments. A failure to properly represent affected social interests may mean that some political groups’ grievances are not adequately addressed by ENGOs’ advocacy and, in turn, by governments’ responses. When members (including major stakeholders) and the public become dissatisfied with advocacy performance (Andrews et al. 2010), then members’ recruitment (Herman and Renz 1997), but also its very existence may be threatened (Blee 2012; Hirschman 1970).

Therefore, presence of minority groups helps to establish and maintain higher inclusiveness, and thereby, pressure for policy changes. In fact, studies show that descriptive representation, formal selection/election, or direct participation could help diverse and marginalised individuals to be ‘making presence again’, and allow their voices to be heard (Guo and Musso 2007; Pitkin 1967, 8). Nevertheless, fair representation cannot be guaranteed in advance by delivering pre-agreed programmes and ideas. Diversity of presence needs to enable participants with greater autonomy instead of simply aggregating preferences and interests (Phillips 1998, 159–160).

In this regard, ENGOs need to provide members with ease of access to decision-making. Such mechanisms could help to create shared identities, empathy, solidarity, common views, or even consensus (Phillips 1998). Not only that, but studies have shown that higher equity allows NGOs to better operate as transmission belts, listening to members and talk to policymakers (Albareda 2018).

Still, it is not guaranteed that representatives could always ‘act in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them’ (Phillips 1998; Phillips and Hans 2023; Pitkin 1967, 209). Here, this paper argues that inclusiveness is best understood to incorporate procedural justice as a third dimension to strengthen ENGOs’ capacity to manage internal tensions, disagreements and conflicts. Such mechanisms or platforms are essential to provide safe, open, respectful, and regenerative space and time for ENGOs’ participants to acknowledge, recognise and discuss their concerns or differences. To do so, higher inclusiveness could help ENGOs to better sustain minority groups’ participation and help to maintain greater public support, organisational sustainability, and policy deliberation outcomes (Bächtiger et al. 2018; Dryzek and Lo 2015; Perkins 2018).

2.1 Diversity

In this regard, seminal studies critically discuss, in democratic settings, the importance of including diverse, marginalised, or minority social and political groups (Dahl 1961; Truman 1951). Nevertheless, diversity in numbers is insufficient to fully consider diverse interests in collective action, as minority groups’ representation could become symbolic (Guo and Musso 2007; Pitkin 1967; Strolovitch 2007; Weldon 2011). Some scholars argue persuasively that even mechanisms or quotas for proportional representation could lead to unequal or discriminative outcomes, either intentionally or unintentionally (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008).

Matters could be more complicated as different groups could have conflicting interests among each other. For instance, a black working-class woman has overlapping identities in female, ethnic, and lower socio-economic groups (Crenshaw 1989). Due to limited resources, advocacy groups might overlook subgroups’ interests within minority groups. Therefore, it is crucial to be aware of the tension that exists between different values, ideas and even the physical presence of multiple constituents (Phillips 1998, 25; Phillips and Hans 2023). Without sufficient attention and management, such tension could hinder ENGOs’ capacity to establish and maintain higher inclusiveness.

In this regard, an intersectional understanding is essential to ‘amplify historically excluded voices, and to approach environmental education, policy, and activism’ (Thomas 2022, 40). Perhaps, to achieve that, it would be useful to adopt a dynamic, relational, and thicker approach that considers the interconnections across minorities’ presence, identities, ideas, and different institutional environments (Evers and von Essen 2024; Mackay 2008; Saward 2010; Tarrow 2013). Because of that, inclusiveness also needs to encompass equity and procedural justice.

2.2 Equity

Equity is defined as ease of access to decision-making process. Such mechanisms allow individuals’ values, beliefs, preferences, ideas, rhetoric, and narratives to engage with others and develop mutual understanding and collective decisions (Dryzek 2010; Dryzek and Niemeyer 2006). Here, it is important to know while diversity allows ENGOs to encompass different groups’ ideas and interests, they might be inadequate to capture individuals’ experiences, which could differ vastly within their groups. In addition, minorities’ interests and needs are often uncrystallised on complex, uncertain, emerging issues (Mansbridge 1999). In this regard, higher equity allows the ‘vigorous pursuit’ of other ‘possibilities so far silenced and ideas one had to struggle to express’ (Phillips 1998, 70). Such participation assumes that actors allow themselves to be persuaded by others, using ideational elements, reasoning, and arguments (Carstensen and Schmidt 2016; Dryzek 2010, 329; Schmidt 2017).

However, without genuine contestation or debates of ideas, discussions could be limited to like-minded individuals, groups with similar worldviews, or the so-called ‘tyranny of the majority’ or even ‘tyranny of consensus’ (Vráblíková 2016). Sometimes, deliberation might even result in awkward silence, extensive but perceivably unproductive meetings, frustration, or burnout. Nevertheless, that should not preclude the usefulness of ‘enclave deliberation’ that allows smaller groups to develop their ideas, positions and arguments before joining large groups (Bächtiger et al. 2018, 15–16). Ultimately, ENGOs could establish and maintain higher equity when organisations allow members to participate in decision-making process directly, which helps to sustain the relationship between organisations and participants with appropriate authorisation or accountability (Phillips 1998; Young 2002).

2.3 Procedural Justice

In addition, equitable mechanisms need to allow different voices to be heard and resolve potential disagreements (de Moor 2018). Here, this research uses the term ‘procedural justice’ to capture the ways that organisations manage disagreements, divisions, conflicts and the perceived sense of fairness. Different contexts could lead to different interpretations of activism strategies, communication practices, and advocacy directions. Tensions emerge not just between leadership, staff, and volunteers but also across different social and political groups and urban/rural communities (Blee 2012; Castells 2015; Hustinx 2014; Hustinx et al. 2022; Lichterman 2006; Schroering and Staggenborg 2021; Staggenborg 1988, 2020).

Therefore, mechanisms to manage disagreements and tensions among activists and volunteers could be crucial. As Young (2002, 110) suggests, fairness involves co-ordinating diverse interests rather than coming up with a definitive conclusion. Moreover, confrontation of multiple perspectives, interests, and cultural meanings helps to correct individuals’ biases and shifts in policy preference. She further highlights the use of narrative and storytelling to convey the history behind marginalised social and political groups, while other scholars also point out that rhetoric, such as analogy or parallel cases, is useful to bridge diverse worldviews (Dryzek and Lo 2015).

3.1 Case Backgrounds: Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and Extinction Rebellion Australia (XR Aus)

ACF is the oldest ENGO in Australia since the 1950s, with a clear goal to advocate for strong climate action, including carbon reduction and sustainable renewable energies. Its membership grew significantly since the 1990s, with more than 700,000 supporters as of today (ACF 2021; Warhurst 1994). During the research period, ACF has 43 local community groups in Australia. Nonetheless, it is relatively conservative in its strategies and tactics for achieving said goals (Burgmann and Baer 2012; McDonald 2016).

In contrast, started in 2018, Extinction Rebellion Australia (XR Aus) is part of an international movement Extinction Rebellion (XR). During the research period, 63 local groups across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, ACT, and the Northern Territory were listed on its official website (XR Aus 2023c). There were also 110 groups setting up Facebook pages. XR International and XR Aus are more aggressive and radical in terms of strategies and tactics. It strives in helping to achieve very strong climate action targets, including declaring climate and ecological emergency and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2025. Compared with ACF, XR Aus is vastly different in that it has loose organising structures without central leaders.

4.1 Data Collection and Coding

In total, this research utilised 22 interviews with 20 interviewees (see Appendix 2). Nevertheless, interview results could be subjective or imbalanced due to a relatively small sampling size. There is also a lack of representative statistical figures provided by the two ENGOs to comprehensively assess the levels of diversity in ENGOs. Prior desktop research and content analysis help to mitigate these limitations by identifying and consolidating up to 120 keywords or phrases about inclusiveness, emergency, climate change, energy, fossil fuel, government and so forth (see Appendix 3 to 6). In terms of coding, this research adopted a reflexive and interpretative approach to tease out meanings in the data instead of simply using NVivo to auto-code the data mechanically (Braun and Clarke 2006) (Appendix 7).

More specifically, the data collection period lasted from 01 January 2018 to 15 September 2022 (including both semi-structured interviews and archival data). After an initial discussion, an ACF representative helped to refer and contact five more staff to be interviewed. Two are leaders (including the representative) at the managerial level, and three are leaders at the community organising level. At the latter stage, the interviewer also successfully contacted and interviewed another ACF community volunteer through LinkedIn.

In terms of XR Aus, this research was able to contact and interview 13 XR activists in all states and territories except Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory using snowball sampling. More than one interview was conducted with some interviewees to gather more information. Nevertheless, this research stopped interviewing other activists when keywords reached saturation level; that is, at the latter stage of the data collection process, interviewees began to repeat similar keywords or experiences.

4.2 Measuring Organisational Inclusiveness

In terms of measurement, this paper assesses diversity from descriptive to formal and substantial representation. ENGOs could be regarded as less diverse when there is limited descriptive representation of marginalised groups and without sufficient mirroring of the population’s demographics. Formal electoral/selection mechanisms could help to improve diversity when these mechanisms facilitate the presence and voices of marginalised groups and result in more inclusive advocacy agendas. ENGOs could then become highly diverse when there is substantial representation and vigorous advocacy for marginalised voices through designated groups, caucuses, or spaces. More specifically, this research asked interviewees: ‘how representative do you think your organisation has been to local represented communities, in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, ideology etc.? Why?’ etc.

Nevertheless, inclusiveness is fluid, dynamic and relational (Phillips and Hans 2023, 84). This paper measured the levels of equity based on the ease of access to decision-making, ranging from nonparticipation, tokenism, and participatory (Arnstein 1969). Correspondingly, a low level of equity means that participants do not have any access or voices in the decision-making process. ENGOs become moderately equitable when participants are being consulted with some veto powers. ENGOs become highly equitable when participants have ease of access independently and autonomously. Questions include: ‘(h)ow does the organisation ensure diverse representation in leadership across multiple groups?’, ‘(h)ave there been any complaints about equity and accessibility in the organisation?’.

In parallel, ENGOs require procedural justice to ensure other two mechanisms are effective. Procedural justice is low when there are no mechanisms to accommodate disagreements or feedback. Organisations could become moderately just procedurally when there are some formal mechanisms to accommodate disagreements or internal disputes. Such mechanisms become highly useful when they allow bottom-up, transparent, and accountable mechanisms to create a safe environment for participation. Questions include: ‘(a)re there any challenges or constraints in implementing decisions effectively?’, ‘(a)re there any disagreements, confrontations or conflicts regarding decisions being made?’, ‘(h)ave there been any instances where specific individuals or groups have had to be excluded from the organisation, or some activities or types of decision-making? Who? Why?’

5.1 ACF

5.2 XR Aus

5.3 Comparison and Discussion

From the above, while diversity remains a challenge to ACF and XR Aus, XR Aus has higher equity for two main reasons. First, XR Aus does not require formal member registration or compulsory fees. Second, it allows everyone to participate in strategic planning and campaigns, including leading roles shortly after joining. Apart from that, XR Aus allows individuals to share their ideas and concerns with minimal restrictions. On the other hand, while there are relatively more equitable opportunities in ACF community groups, it also tries to manage tensions and insult conflicts without jeopardising the group cohesion, as well as its national objectives and campaigns. To a certain extent, that might be difficult to encourage robust discussions in ACF.

Nevertheless, XR Aus activists seem to find it more difficult to fully adhere to organisational demands and principles than ACF. Many XR Aus groups require tedious and exhaustive discussion sections to resolve disagreements or divisions. To remedy the situations, more experienced activists need to step in and prevent situations from spiralling out of control. That includes expelling certain individuals deemed ‘problematic’ from meetings. Understandably, there seems to be a sense of mistreatment or even unfairness to those who are being excluded, that could impact organising capacity and cohesion. Furthermore, XR Aus’s case seems to resemble similar experiences documented in Staggenborg’s (2020, 170, 195) studies in the U.S. that grassroots activists could remain hesitate ‘to impose their ideas on others out of respect for participatory democracy’, and ‘fear being overly directive’. In addition, certain strategic issues were just complicated to resolve, and it is impractical to do so.

Then, as Verlie (2022b, 14, 101) points out, instead of trying to avoid or resolve every tension in relation to climate issues or concerns, they can be a source of communal motivation and strength through explicit acknowledgement. As la Cour, Hustinx, and Eliasoph (2023, 449) suggest, ‘tensions and ambiguities are not problems to be solved, but are conditions to manage, in which the right approach can fuel excitement, creativity and development’.