Social Networks and Motivation on Rail to the COP
The annual Conference of Parties, known as COP, mobilizes climate activists from all around the world to gather in the cities where the conference is held to put pressure on the negotiators to take bold action to prevent the climate crisis. The COP is a two-weeks conference that monitors and reviews the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and creates space “for countries to advance their climate commitments and actions, [...] for a wide variety of stakeholders from around the world to gather and discuss the climate crisis and solutions'' (United Nations, 2021). COP26 was the most important climate conference since the Paris Agreement. Since the measures that were decided on in Paris in 2015 would currently lead to global warming over 3 °C (United Nations, 2021), countries at the COP26 were working together to ensure that global warming does not exceed 1.5 °C (United Nations, 2021). During the time of the conference, people in Glasgow took to the streets to protest every day. The biggest protest counted 100,000 participants who marched to communicate their values, emotions and demands (BBC News, 2021). This protest took place alongside hundreds of other collective actions around the world (BBC News, 2021). A group of young organizers has launched the “Rail to the COP”, an initiative that invites and encourages people, including policymakers, climate professionals and (youth) activists, from all over Europe to travel together to COP26 sustainably (Rail to the COP, 2021). The campaign’s aim is to promote and facilitate “the transition towards a sustainable travel future” by bringing together the travel industry, (youth) activists and policymakers (Rail to the COP, 2021). The train left on Saturday, Oct. 30. 2021, in the Netherlands and collected about 500 people in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Brussels. During the train ride, there were on-board workshops to facilitate cross-sector discussions and form alliances to speed up the transition towards more sustainable travel (Rail to the COP, 2021). The aim of this research is to investigate the motivation of the passengers to join the Rail to the COP. To do so, the goal is to find out more about why they chose the climate train over other means of transportation, their background, how they relate to climate anxiety and their social networks on the train. Recent studies have focused on investigating the motivation of people to participate in collective (climate) action. However, the unique setup of the climate train creates a new space to conduct research, as it brings together activists that otherwise may not encounter each other. The climate train can be seen as a special form of protest, as it was marketed as a means of transportation to COP26, as well as a protest to demand the transition to sustainable travel, and as a space for dialogue. Thus, conducting research in this space allows for an innovative contribution to existing research.
Find the results of the research here:
RESEARCH BY EMILIA KÖHN, LISA KLEIN AND MYRTO HIRCHE
PICTURE https://railtothecop.com/