The world is in crisis, as many Open Global Rights posts suggest. The authors see two main categories for bringing about change: top-down coercive enforcement or working from the bottom up, with ideas coming from multiple sources, many of them previously rejected by numerous citizens and policymakers. Ultimately, only one category of solutions will work: working from the bottom up. That’s true on many global issues, but especially on climate justice and disability rights issues.
Defining and challenging current frameworks and paradigms
The image of a chaotic world needing to be saved by elites representing powerful states dominates the popular discussion of international issues. This framework is tempting today but was particularly common after World War II and earlier, as reflected in Henry Kissinger’s writings and policy-making. Some observers and advocates suggest a liberal-idealist world governance option to restrain states. Bottom-up views emphasizing alternatives to coercive state action are expressed in the writings and actions of Vandana Shiva and others; in media outlets such as Yes! and Democracy Now! in the United States, as well as in a recent OGR post on the importance of cities; and by several speakers at the 2023 FORGE (Future of Rights and Governance) conference, particularly Kathryn Sikkink in “Evidence for Hope” and Ricken Patel in “Reinventing Democracy from the Bottom Up.”
The work of late peace researcher Johan Galtung offers “three realistic approaches to peace,” emphasizing a bottom-up approach with decentralized social and economic structures. Galtung calls for a paradigm shift from coercive state action and institutions to the promotion of peace, emphasizing the need for political, economic, and social institutions to address the root causes of conflict and support local capacity for conflict resolution and sustainable peace.
In particular, Galtung’s focus on the simultaneous use of peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding is essential for establishing enduring peace. Peacekeeping mitigates immediate violence, and peacemaking resolves overt conflicts. Nonetheless, only peacebuilding tackles the underlying causes of violence and establishes the prerequisites for enduring peace.
The contrasting views are readily apparent to the public, policy makers, and advocates on climate change and disability rights.
Top-down or bottom-up?
At a glance, global climate policy may appear statist, formal, and hierarchical. Major elements include a treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose framework parties (states) have pledged to build on. This work has been taking place at a series of Conferences of the Parties, most recently in Dubai (COP28). Next is the 29th Conference of the Parties—the Baku, Azerbaijan Climate Change Conference in November 2024.
However, only considering top-down approaches risks obscuring emerging spontaneous action. Conventional and unconventional strategies, ranging from civil disobedience to popular festivals to court challenges to workplace resistance, are capturing popular attention.
Although governments are tempted to order top-down edicts, they are rarely successful. Writing in The Guardian at the time of the COP28 summit, George Monbiot described it as a farce rigged to fail. Below the surface are important activities of activist organizations like EarthRights International and Greenpeace. Recalcitrant hosts and large states encounter resistance from small island developing states. Government failures to make binding treaty agreements are balanced from below by social movements expressing the urgency of addressing the effects of climate change. And gradually but increasingly, social movements have conceptualized climate change as a human rights issue, particularly as a disability rights issue.
Unlike with most treaties, the drafting and early years of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) reflected a change from below, with a disability rights movement more involved in shaping the CRPD than the eventual states parties. The drafting process involved widespread participation from disabled people’s organizations (DPOs) and human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), among them Human Rights Watch and the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry. The International Disability Alliance also had a central role.
The growing importance of stealth action
Stealth action from below on international issues is increasingly a result of action by “nongovernments.” One example comes from Scottish social scientist Sarah Huque, who has written about disability rights in Malawi in Social Inclusion and the edited volume Research Handbook on Disability Policy. Written in open access sources by a researcher who draws on interviews and participant observation, Huque’s articles reflect how the world has changed from one in which knowledge and progress ostensibly came from Washington, D.C., Geneva, London, Rome, and Paris. This work embodies respect for the lived experience and expertise of the multiply marginalized (disabled women from a periphery country) for whom disability includes much more than a medical diagnosis.
Both arenas of disability rights activism (between and within countries) reflect the morphing of the slogan “nothing about us without us” into “nothing without us.” Originally used in the Polish labor movement, then widely used by disability rights activists, the slogan reflects global elites’ tendency to exclude popular activism on the grounds that the issues are “not about you.” A defining characteristic of modern politics is that climate justice, disability justice, artificial intelligence, war and peace, reproductive justice, economic justice, sustainability, food, energy, and many other issues are becoming the province of humankind.
The authors recognize that our post involves hopeful speculation and expression. However, it encompasses more. Both climate change and disability rights exemplify the reality that while no one is immune to risk, some lives are significantly more at risk than others.
This post itself demonstrates the decentralization of knowledge production. As Trinity is currently based in Vietnam, much of the drafting and editing process took place over email. The initial draft was written with the assistance of another Chapman student who was then in her native Albania. At a time when some media conglomerates are centralizing the production of information, counter-trends exist that are potentially more important in shaping the future.
Many state and non-state actors will surely seek and sometimes gain more power, to the detriment of the justice-seeking objectives of analysts and activists. But it will be in significant part the prospect of an intolerable future that enables change from below.