Taking climate advocacy beyond the usual audience: an interview with Jang Eun-suk

Through mass protests, viral campaigns, and policy lobbying, climate movements have often spoken to people who are already paying attention. However, a durable change may depend on reaching people who are indifferent, which starts with approaching their communities, social media feeds, and even across the political aisle. In this interview, climate organization Together for Our Homeland's Media Director Jang Eun-suk discussed the group's grassroots approach to climate action and the significance of utilizing social media to rais civic participation.

First of all, could you explain what kind of organization Our Common Home is?

To start with, Our Common Home is an international organization based in Switzerland that focuses on the climate crisis and climate change. The organization I work for, which collaborates with Our Common Home, is a civic group called Together for Our Homeland. So we’re essentially the Korean branch of Our Common Home—but you can think of us as a somewhat independent organization.

The climate crisis and climate change are global challenges that are, in a way, very closely and significantly related to our lives—not just for our generation but also for future generations. While people are gradually becoming aware of this issue, overall, there are still a great many people who aren’t fully aware of the problem or don’t pay much attention to it. So, you can think of us as an organization that works to educate these people about the climate crisis and climate change, and to convey the message that even small actions can help us respond to and adapt to these challenges effectively. 

Could you explain an activity or project you consider most meaningful among the ones you’ve carried out recently?

Speaking of meaningful activities, we’re currently running a program called “Climate Scouts” this year in collaboration with an organization called “Our Future.” This was originally a competition program for college students organized by “Our Future” that focused on climate change and the climate crisis. We’ve been running it for a year, but this year, in collaboration with “Our Future,” we’ve taken a slightly different approach: we’ve selected three regions across the country—Uiseong in North Gyeongsang Province, Goesan in North Chungcheong Province, and Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province—areas where climate change impacts are particularly severe. We’ve formed teams primarily composed of students from those regions to investigate local climate risks. The young participants are drawing climate risk maps themselves and then working together to develop policies that will help local residents adapt to climate change and the climate crisis.

This is a somewhat long-term project that began in May and will continue through the end of October. About 37 college students have been divided into six teams, with two teams currently active in each region. Through this project, young people are gaining firsthand knowledge of climate risks, meeting with local experts and citizens to hear their perspectives, and then developing region-specific strategies to adapt to the climate crisis and climate change. We’re then delivering policy briefs to the National Assembly and local governments in the hope that this will lead to actual policy changes.

It seems you’re making efforts to encourage youth participation. Especially when it comes to environmental issues, even though people are becoming increasingly aware of the severity of the problem and have access to more information, it’s not easy to translate that into actual action. In your opinion, what do you think is the most important step needed to foster this kind of civic participation?

That’s a very difficult question, and we’re actually putting a lot of effort into figuring out what the best approach is. So, we’re currently planning to explore this from multiple angles. In the past, climate-related issues and agendas were often addressed through a top-down approach, where decisions were made at the highest levels and trickled down. In other words, at the very top, there’s the UN and national consultative bodies; once they set a global agenda, regulations are passed down to governments, various organizations within each country, international NGOs, and global corporations. However, it seems that these measures didn’t actually trickle down effectively to the general public—the citizens living in each country.

That’s why, at Together for Our Homeland, our goal is to focus on grassroots movements. In other words, we’re taking a bottom-up approach. The reason we’re launching the “Climate Scouts” program is to instill this awareness in college students across different regions so they can become active in their local communities. Beyond the university community, we’re also targeting rural areas, as climate change is closely tied to these communities as well.

Farmers, for instance, suffer significant losses due to extreme weather events like heat waves and frost damage, so we’re planning to launch grassroots campaigns in collaboration with them. Additionally, mothers raising children are concerned about climate change and the future their children will face as they grow up. So, we’re currently preparing to launch grassroots campaigns—such as simple initiatives that mothers with children can easily participate in—as part of this effort. What sets us apart from previous civic groups or organizations is that we’re working with the goal of spreading climate action through a bottom-up, grassroots movement.

I recall learning that even the first Earth Day movement in the US used the exact term “grassroots” to describe itself. So, hearing you say the same thing makes it seem even more fascinating and significant. Moving on, as the Media Director, do you think the growing popularity of social media and digital platforms has brought about changes in the way environmental activism is conducted?

That’s right. It’s different from legacy media, isn’t it? With social media, for example, we’ve been paying close attention to how people are using it to organize—like groups picking up trash. I see. So, they’ll post something like, “We’re going to pick up trash in this neighborhood today—if you’re available, please come join us.” Then young people who happen to have free time at that moment go there, pick up trash together, clean up cigarette butts and things like that, and post a short video saying, “We worked hard today on environmental protection and climate issues.” They meet up again the next day to do the same thing—there are quite a few people doing this.

Since those people have a huge number of followers, and as I mentioned earlier, this approach is different from the past—it’s taken at the grassroots level—I think social media is incredibly effective for spreading the message that ordinary citizens don’t have to take drastic climate action, but can instead join in these small, collective efforts to adapt to the climate crisis and climate change together. In a way, perhaps creating a sense of fear by showing overly dramatic footage to grab people’s attention, I think social media is much more efficient at encouraging others to participate in direct, simple actions like these. That’s why we’re taking a lot of cues from that approach.

I think this applies to the recent reforms on the Carbon Neutrality Framework Act as well—even if people’s awareness of the climate crisis changes, I believe there are still new, different challenges to overcome before that translates into actual policy. In your opinion, why do you think it’s still important to change public awareness of the climate crisis?

I actually wanted to bring up the topic of reforms as well. For now, our goal is to reach people who aren’t very familiar with climate-related issues—or perhaps those who have been somewhat marginalized when it comes to the climate agenda. We’re now targeting those people as our audience and running the “Full Moon” campaign to broaden their understanding of climate issues. And as I mentioned earlier, for real change to happen in Korea—whether in national policy or local ordinances—we need legislative procedures like amending laws.

But if we think about why legislative procedures haven’t gone smoothly so far, it’s because—to put it simply—legislation is driven by political logic. As a result, when these matters reach the legislative process, they often fail to be enacted into law; in other words, there’s a tendency for the process to be swayed by political logic. That’s why we believe we need to proactively educate everyone, regardless of political beliefs, about the climate crisis and climate change and encourage them to take an interest in these issues. We are actively engaged in these efforts and plan to continue doing so in the future.