Advocating for the environment in turbulent times: UK environmental organisations in a post-Brexit and pandemic context

This paper aims at exploring how “advocacy organisations” representing diffuse interests (Andrews and Edwards 2004) adapt to a highly uncertain, variable, and potentially threatening, context. It investigates the lobbying choices deployed over a short period (2018-2021) by high-profile environmental organisations in the UK in relation to their members, the decision-makers, the general public and media (Berkhout, 2013). The transformation of party systems and the closure of public space (Matejova et al. 2017) enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic have increased turbulence affecting public policies and their players (Ansell et al. 2017). Experts are losing credibility, while fake news and aggressive politics on the social media are gaining ground (Bömelburg and Gassmann 2021). Although the polarisation of opinions and the lack of trust in science or of actual policy outcomes are genuinely not new, they came to challenge the modus operandi built by environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) over time to shape public policies: building popular support for evidence-based claims in order to pressure government and/or firms (Hilton et al. 2016). The situation experienced by the British environmental organisations is emblematic of the present times. The capacity of charities to engage in political activities has been limited in the recent period (Bolleyer 2018), while the pro Leave media tried to discourage participation by the environmental NGO during the 2016 referendum. Since 2018 the new salience of the environmental crisis coincides with the emergence of new mobilisations such as Extinction Rebellion that developed as a counter-model to the organisational template of mainstream environmental NGOs. The UK context also reflects the current ambivalent recognition of environmental priorities of many European countries. The pandemic delayed the adoption of the Environment Bill in preparation since 2018 to complete the withdrawal of the UK from the EU . Despite the multiple claims made at both national and local levels of an impending climate emergency, legislative proposals supportive of a transition towards a zero carbon economy are jeopardized by policy inertia in many sectors, and the difficulty in convincing the wider public of the scale of change needed. The paper will address the environmental NGOs’ renewed reflective efforts to change both structures and strategies. Organisational change reflects their attempts at adapting to changes affecting policy domains but also, I argue, the wider contemporary socio-political context. The study is based on a comparison of half a dozen ENGOs committed to the shaping of post-Brexit policies (Abbott and Lee 2021). The analysis does not focus exclusively on ENGOs’ formal properties and the policy-making processes they target, but considers the breadth of activities they deploy towards multiple audiences. These different audiences offer various possible choices in terms of both organisational maintenance and campaigning. The empirical investigation will combine documentary analysis and interviews to account for lobbying choices in terms of subjects, narratives and modes of action.