Protest 2.0: online interactions and Aboriginal activists

Social movements, like every other aspect of life, have become increasingly reliant on the internet for networking, information sharing and coalition building. This is the case even for disadvantaged groups with few resources and less capacity for utilizing computers and the internet. Aboriginal activists in Townsville have been slow to exert their presence on the web, but are gradually becoming savvy in the use of electronic networking in furthering their cause. They rely on listservs, blogs and, more recently, social networking sites to make their struggle known to a wide audience. In addition to the use of Web 2.0 to supplement 'offline' activism, there is a new form of 'virtual' activism emerging. The rise in 'push-button activism' increases the opportunities for everyday engagement with the state by social movement participants. However, it also changes the notion of participation as marches and demonstrations give way to electronic petitions and Facebook fan pages

Where are criteria of human significance in climate change assessment?

How important are humanistic principles in assessments of climate change? Do we judge in terms of all the valued impacts on all people? The chapter identifies how interests of vulnerable poor people are often marginalized, even when assessments are made by agencies supposedly accountable within the United Nations system with its commitments to universal human rights and human security. A major case considered is the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014). A second example taken is the debate on climate change’s impacts on human health. The burden of proof in climate change politics has been placed on the side of those who warn of dangers, and the precautionary principle often becomes configured in favour of not risking disturbance to the privileged. The chapter generates a typology of ways in which vulnerable poor people are marginalized or excluded in climate change analyses. It then discusses how this marginalization and exclusion might be countered, including looking at the 2015 Papal encyclical on the environment, and asks whether attention to the excluded requires ontological reorientations of sorts that are not yet standard in human development discourse. It concludes by pointing towards how human rights and human security frameworks can contribute here