Action Toolkit

to counter aviation

Introduction

Why should we take action to counter aviation?

Failure of institutions in the face of climate collapse

For years, the climate movement has been demanding that governments take action to halt global heating. The first Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-1) happened in 1995. So for almost 30 years, world leaders have been meeting every year to find solutions, but CO2 emissions have kept growing, as well as the profits of polluting companies. Meanwhile, we’re close to passing the barrier of 1.5ºC of warming, with the consequences of the climate crisis becoming impossible to ignore and intertwining with conflicts around the world.

The only plan of the aviation industry in the face of climate breakdown is to keep growing, while showering the public with greenwashing to make them believe that aviation emissions will be cut without ever needing to reduce flights. We cannot accept that these industries keep leading us to climate catastrophe, burning through people and planet for the sake of their profits, with the complicity of governments everywhere.

Our answer must be resistance, to bring about a just transition for aviation and pave the way for a sustainable and fare transport system for all, on a planet with a future. To do this, we have to collaborate to build effective and daring strategies, reconsigning the need for creativity and a diversity of tactics and to stay strong in solidarity, not only within the struggle to counter aviation but inside a wider climate and social justice movement.

 

It works

Faced with such a dire picture, it can seem futile to oppose this destruction. However, history shows us that resistance, including disruptive protests, works. Without it, we would not have achieved the end of slavery, the establishing of a 40 hour work week, the winning of the right for women to vote or the accomplishments of the civil rights movement in the US.

When talking about aviation, here are some inspiring victories of long lasting struggles*:

  • Bangabandhu Airport, Arial Beel wetlands, Bangladesh
    In 2011, a proposal for a major airport in the Arial Beel wetlands was cancelled following protests by farmers and fisherfolk. Potential alternative sites would displace people and a recent proposal to locate the project in Char Janajat triggered protest.
  • Heathrow Third Runway Airport Expansion, UK
    Many local and national groups had been campaigning since 2002 against the Heathrow airport expansion. It was cancelled in 2019, after a judge ruled that the plans did not take into account the most recent evidence on climate change and economics.
  • Prat airport expansion, Catalonia, Spain
    The latest in an endless series of proposed expansions of El Prat airport was paralyzed in September 2021, thanks to the mobilization of social organizations, environmentalists, peasants and neighborhood assemblies.
  • ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, Aeroport du Grand Ouest, France
    A Zone to Defend, the controversial airport project in Western France became a symbol of resistance and alternative proposals. On 17 January 2018 the French Government gave up, the Zadistes won.

Strategy

An overview

What is strategy?

You become engaged with a social movement, because you notice there’s something wrong and you want to change that. For example, private jets are wrong because of the immense pollution and warming they cause at the service of the luxury lifestyles of a tiny minority of super rich people. So the goal is established to ban private jets.

Once you establish the goal you are aiming for, you will start planing what kind of actions should be taken to achieve that. The combination of tactics and actions adopted to reach that goal is your strategy. It can include all kinds of things, such as direct actions, petitions, reports, communication work and community organising; it can focus more on one of these tactics or be more diverse; it can be a long-term strategy that can include several goals or a shorter one, if your goal seems more easily achievable.

Beautiful trouble developed a great tool to help you plan successful actions that take into consideration a wider strategy. Check out the Action Star.

Building a successful strategy involves a conscious analysis of the reality around you, thinking about how actions can affect it and constantly evaluating where you are standing and the impacts your strategy is having on society. Your strategy will be informed by the way your perceive change to take place, and that is your theory of change.

 

Theory of change

We, as active people in social movements, are united in our wish for a progressive change in our societies. Theories of change (ToC) as a concept help us by making our basic assumptions visible and explain why we believe that our actions will achieve the desired results.

A ToC describes how we believe our activities will lead to the outcomes and impacts we want to achieve. They are usually quite broad. The details follow when we then take our ToC to inform our decisions on effective strategies and tactics.

Different ToCs can complement or contradict each other. Clarity about the theory of our own group enables us to have constructive strategic debates because the process to establish a ToC can help us to identify potential sources of conflict and create coherence.

These 8 guiding questions can us help identifying our ToC:

  1. Analyse the problem: What is the problem?
  2. Desired end state: What is your vision for the future?
  3. Goal: What is your “concrete” goal? What do you want to achieve?
  4. Desired change: What needs to change in order to achieve the goal?
  5. Decision-maker: Who has the power to bring about this change?
  6. Concrete actions: How can you influence the decision-maker?
  7. Alliance partners: Who can help you achieve your goals?
  8. Success: How do you know that you have won?

Additional sources on ToC:

 

Key values

An overview

Climate justice

Those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis are already suffering the most from its consequences. We need justice among all—now and for future generations. Climate Justice also implies the struggle against all forms of discrimination based on gender, origin, race, class, nationality, disability, religion or sexual orientation. It means that the Global North and the global wealthy are responsible for a larger share of the effort to combat the climate crisis and to mitigate the consequences.

Climate justice requires a transformation of our unjust global systems—and privileged industries like aviation must be among the first we change. While to Western Europeans, it might seem normal to fly, this “normality” has only existed in the last decades, and is still rare on a global scale. Only a global minority flies at all. In fact, the planet is mostly being heated up by a small number of frequent fliers. At Stay Grounded, climate justice is one of our core values.

More info in our Fact Sheet Aviation: A matter of Climate Justice.

 

Global solidarity

Communities in the Global South are at the frontline of airport struggles, resisting against airport expansion and land grabbing. In many cases, these communities have already been bearing the consequences of the climate crisis for a long time. As a global network, Stay Grounded has members all over the world and global solidarity is central to our work. Our notion of global solidarity is strongly rooted in the need for decolonial practices, giving centre stage to Global South struggles, learning from non-Western forms of knowledge, acknowledging the responsibility of the Global North to act and battling the colonial and extractive dynamics engrained in the system we live in.

 

Degrowth

With the looming climate breakdown, automation, digitalisation and likely climate induced pandemics, we need to be realistic: aviation will change—and it will do so either by design or by disaster. The aviation industry is growing without limits. In order to legitimize this in times of climate crisis, technological improvements and emissions offsetting have been promised as solutions to reach ‘carbon-neutral’ growth. But green flying is and will be an illusion in the decades to come. The only way to effectively reduce aviation’s climate impact is to reduce flights—to degrow aviation. We need to radically reduce aviation, especially in countries of the Global North. This is a necessary step to reach a just and ecological mobility system.

More info in our Degrowth of Aviation report.

 

Just transition

We must end over-reliance on the most polluting, climate-harming forms of transport driven by a globalised corporate economy. The demand for a “just transition” has been developed by trade unions and the climate justice movement. It aims to protect workers and communities currently dependent on fossil fuel industries but is also a broader process to help safeguard the future of workers, communities and the planet. It is not an argument for delaying the changes needed, rather for managing them effectively, fairly and democratically. It does include changes in what we do and how we work.

At Stay Grounded, we developed a guide to help you connect better with aviation workers and trade unions that represent them.

 

Intersectionality

Intersectionality is a theory but also a practice that strives to challenge the simplistic ways of understanding differences between people and their experiences. Intersectionality acknowledges the importance of not only examining one dimension of a person. People’s experiences can be shaped by multiple aspects of one’s identity. A Black woman faces different challenges than a Black man or a white woman. Social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination are overlapping and intersecting.

 

Targets

Tactics

Alliances

Narratives