Adapted to Climate Change? Issue Portfolios of Environmental Nongovernmental Organizations in the Americas

Abstract

To what extent do traditional environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) tackle climate change issues? What explains the variation among ENGOs regarding their attention to climate change issues? To answer these questions, we use an original dataset comprising 293 ENGOs that are affiliated with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and based in North, Central, or South America. We find that generalist ENGOs have a higher likelihood of tackling climate change issues and even of indicating them as a priority area of their work. However, we also find that the issue areas of the specialist ENGOs and whether these align with climate action explain variation across ENGOs based in different countries. Compared with wildlife-focused ENGOs, especially those working on nature protection and sustainability are more likely to tackle climate change issues. Interview data confirmed that ENGO leaders make informed decisions on their organization’s goals.

An Empirical Mapping of Environmental Protection and Conservation Nonprofit Discourse on Social Media

“…Consistent with their expectations, they find that wildlife groups are less likely to attend to these issues (Johnson et al, 2023). The latter finding is consistent with another important study that examines environmental organizations based in 22 countries of North, Central, and South America (Tosun & Levario Saad, 2023). They find that generalist environmental organizations are more likely to attend to climate change issues than specialist organizations, whereas from the latter group, sustainability-focused organizations are more likely to address climate change issue than wildlife or conservation groups (Tosun & Levario Saad, 2023).…”

“…While climate change is unarguably one of the biggest environmental issues society faces, it is not the only one. Our study complements other important research in this domain (Johnson et al, 2023; Tosun & Levario Saad, 2023) by showing that the other two environmental priorities—biodiversity and air pollution—get disproportional attention on EPCNs’ social media agendas.…”

“…Neither do we claim to extract value-laden ideologies nor nuanced linguistic tactics used by EPCNs. Following many other scholars in nonprofits studies (see i.e., Tosun & Levario Saad, 2023, p. 3 line 11; Wu & Xu, 2023, p. 2 line 34, p. 3, line 5), our usage of the term “discourse” in this article means “a formal discussion, conversation and exchange of ideas.” 1 With the recent increase of “transdisciplinary research” in organizational studies (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 2010), the social sciences have taken a “discursive turn” as discourse in organizational studies is not only the study of textual elements but also “the shaping of social reality through language” (Alvesson & Karreman, 2000, p. 1126). For instance, social movement scholars refer to ways in which movement framing impacts political effectiveness (Benford & Snow, 2000).…”