Causes and Consequences of Environmental Protests: The Global Environmental Contestation and Civic Mobilization Observatory (GECCO)

When and why do accelerating processes of environmental change lead to protests and civic unrest? And what are the effects of environmental protests on policy change and public opinion?

Accelerating processes of global change are increasingly impacting on individuals and local communities, and case study evidence suggests that social mobilization in the form of environmental protest and mass demonstration events is increasing.

The aim of the GECCO project is to analyze large-scale patterns of social mobilization around increasingly contested environmental problems.

The project employs machine-learning techniques to build a novel global dataset of georeferenced environmental protest events for the period 1990-2025.

Together with global datasets on climate change and biodiversity loss, this data is analyzed using spatial regression methods and agent-based modelling to explore the impact of global environmental change on the likelihood of social mobilization and contestation, if and how protests impact public opinion, and leads to goal attainment and policy change.

The findings will be relevant for research and practice toward just transformations into sustainable societies.