A small survey was conducted online for climate advocates inside and outside of Singapore about Green New Deal policy and advocating for policy reform. Total 10 responses 6 from Singapore and 4 from the rest of the world (ROW) - South Korea, Porto, Rome and Taiwan. The design of the survey was a mix including open ended, scaled (1 to 4, etc..) and multiple choice responses. Each response was unique and comparison, aggregation between responses is limited and inherently qualitative, subjective. Given a sample size of 10, and unequal number of responses between Singapore and ROW, any differences between Singaporeans and ROW responses may not have any relationship to a comparison of the broader groups in general but instead a reflection of the particulars of the individuals that responded.
This article presents a summary of the survey responses, beginning with the design of Green New Deal policy, and then an analysis of campaigning for implementing policy reforms. Some context is provided for Singapore's unique strict legal environment and models of high agency activism are presented based on the nonviolent resistance discipline and finally the responses of suggestions for campaign organizers is presented from survey responses.
Green New Deal policy design
Activism in the "fine city"
High agency models of activism
Advise for organizers
There were a number of similarities between the Singapore and ROW responses. Singaporean responses tended to place greater emphasis on conflict of economy, jobs in the Green New Deal policy design, expressed a lower sense of agency, placing greater emphasis on external barriers such as laws limiting democratic participation and on campaign organizing, tended to focus on creating consensus within and between activist groups.
The quality of the survey could be improved with more responses, so be sure to fill up the survey and share with others you know working in climate activism.
Use this link to give your inputs to the survey.
Green New Deal policy design
There was a general consensus in Singapore and ROW on the definition of Green New Deal, strong influence of the US version from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Only responses from Europe reported more familiarity with GND Europe.
When asked "what is the GND in your own words", "what appeals to you most?"
Singapore response example
"A plan to transition the economy and decarbonise to meet IPCC targets while supporting workers with new jobs and a strengthened social safety net to protect them from the threats of the climate crisis."
ROW response example
"A framework for a social just, environmental regenerative and democratic transformation of our society."
keywords were selected and grouped here into 6 topics, with similar levels of abundance between Singapore and ROW responses ranked by their frequency of mention.
High decarbonization
High social justice
Medium ecological restoration
Medium economic restructuring
Low labor benefits
Low stronger democracy (the one quoted above)
Diverging opinions -- Too radical or too conservative
The basic premise of the Green New Deal rubs with conventional wisdom in that it aims to simultaneously achieve good environmental and economic outcomes. Studies on public perceptions and politics of environmental policy in the US have identified a recurring theme of a conflict between environmental and economic policy agendas (Pew Research, 2020). When asked "Which area most concerns you about GND policy?" both Singapore and ROW tended to fall on opposite sides of this balance either appearing too radical and abandoning bread and butter economic concerns, or being too moderate and "Greenwash". Here Greenwashing is defined as the concern that the name Green New Deal would be used to support policies that do some token actions but overall have a net negative environmental impact. ROW responded more often about concerns of Greenwashing whereas Singaporean responded with less confidence on how the GND would resolve the conflicting agenda with economic growth, jobs and social justice and reported more concerns of appearing too radical. Evidence of the higher concern for how the GND would produce good economic outcomes for Singapore can also be seen in the chart below of the response to the questions "Which policy areas do you feel need most research?" 8 categories were fixed and the response ranged on a 1,2,3 scale from "Pretty clear" to "Significantly more research needed". Areas with similar levels of higher confidence from both Singaporean and ROW were areas of trade, macroeconomics, adaptation and ecosystem restoration. Singaporean responses reported a greater need for research overall 30% vs ROW 52% and in particular in areas of job creation, social benefits and managing households and businesses.
There is a shared pessimistic outlook in and out of Singapore on the likelihood of achieving the political will for a GND 22% out of 100% confident, with Singaporeans expressing slightly more optimism (25%) than ROW (8%) for success at the global scale.
In response to the questions "What are the biggest challenges to gaining political will for just transition policy?", Singaporean responses more than the ROW placed more emphasis on external barriers outside the control of the organizers than the campaign strategy choices within the control of the organizers.
Singapore response example focused on external barriers
"Laws that prevent and discourage public assembly and activism"
ROW response example, focus on retaining volunteers, an aspect of campaign strategy and organizing capabilities
"people lost interest in participating"
Activism in the "fine city"
Legal barriers to democratic processes such as protesting was the most frequently reported external barrier. Singapore has a reputation for having strict laws, the "fine city" and it's single-party political system does not rank high compared to other developed countries for civil liberties and press freedom -- 158/180 (Reporters without Borders, 2020).
One prominent law, the Public Order Act is noteworthy in it's wide sweeping scope and little room for citizens to autonomously organize and assemble in public spaces. Recent changes have been applied to the way that the law is administered that interpret even a single individual holding up a sign or wearing a T-shirt as a potential violation and subject to possible fines. Recently a local activist, Jolovan Wham @jolovanwham has received attention for his outspoken criticism of these laws and has served jail time for his own intentional acts of conscience and disobedience against these laws on a range of issues such as migrant worker rights and the death penalty. He was ordered to pay $1,000 to a migrant charity for public defamation of Minister Josephine Teo in the wording of how he criticised her potential conflict of interest in the handling of migrant worker dorms given that her husband is the CEO of Surbana Jurong, a firm that was awarded contract for the COVID-19 care facilities. He responded by raising the funds online $1,001 and donated the proceeds to a migrant worker NGO. In response to his police interrogation from holding up a placard of the smiley face, Jolovan organized a campaign #smileinsolidarity with first an online photo album of others adding photos with smiley faces and then with a petition to reform legislation to allow for greater freedoms of public assembly. The petition has generated >500 signatures in the first 48 hours.
Recent examples of citizen initiatives, response from government
A recent failed example of citizen led collective action. An online petition was created before 25 May 2020 calling for the national day "funpack" of goodies and memorabilia to be "opt-out" in order to reduce waste and conserve financial resources in light of the COVID-19 recovery. At the time of presenting to the committee the petition secured >80,000 signatures or close to 2% of a city of 3.5 million Permanent Residents and citizens. The response two weeks later on 05 June however was lackluster, only committing to not deliver door-to-door, but to make the goodies available at the Community Centers for collection.
A moderately successful example was the response to a sudden ban on personal mobility devices (PMD) which affected the 7,000 delivery drivers. In response they organized a physical gathering of 50 e-scooter Nov 6 2019 and an online petition of 20,000 signatures generated a response less than 2 weeks later 16 Nov of $7mil grant with payout of S$1,000 per rider to incentive switching to an e-bicycle.
Political success, opportunity or skills?
Authors who have commented on Singapore's political system and civil society also tend to focus on external barriers in the framework of "political opportunity structure" which describes policy or regime reforms as an endogenous outcome and feature of the political system (CHARANPAL, 2014)(Danielle Hong, 2017) (Kriesi, 1991). The model of political opportunity structure organizes the analysis the openness of the democratic process and the cohesive unity of the ruling party. Alternative models exist elsewhere which place greater emphasis on the autonomy of the organizers in the discipline of nonviolent resistance. Practical models and handbook for resistance and organizing were developed in work from Gene Sharpe, Bill Moyer and by contemporary authors Chenoweth and Engler. Chenoweth published an analysis of >300 case studies around the world including several from Southeast and East Asia of nonviolent resistance using statistical test of significance and concluded that the skills of the organizers was at least as important of a determining factor as the political opportunity (Chenoweth, 2013). According to Chenoweth success of the organization is inevitable once the movement has activated a sustained resistance of >3.5% of the population and has a more than 50% probability at participation levels as low as 1% (Chenoweth, 2013).
High agency models for activism
Chenoweth's main thesis is that the strategic success of nonviolent resistance centers on the critical role of mass participation with a number of factors cited as instrumental to shifting support away from the opposition.
Low barrier for participation, recruitment
Diversity of participants from broad cross section of the public
Strategic weakening of the pillars of support of the opposition
More appealing for security defects
More appealing to external agents to withdraw support
Blowback (movement growth) in response to regime repression
Agile, adaptive, intelligence from decentralizing decisions to the edge
Diversity of tactics : dispersion (stay-away, sit-ins), concentration (strike, protest)
Otpur, A simple recipe for toppling a dictator
Another source of material for developing a framework for activism is from a movement cited in both studies -- Otpur, a student activist movement in Serbia that forced the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The organizers faced similar systemic challenges of an oppressive authoritarian regime as reported by the Singaporean survey participants. The organizers adopted a high agency attitude and strategy centered on internal goals and milestones, organizational discipline and stressed the importance of having plans for navigating barriers and obstacles (Kurtz 2010). This high sense of agency was re-iterated in a TedTalk in 2011 by one of the prominent organizers, Srdja Popovic titled "how to topple a dictator" (Popovic, 2011). Srdja like Chenoweth also claimed that the success of nonviolent movements depends more on the skills and discipline of the organizers rather than their circumstances. He emphasized three elements he considered critical to success - unity, strategy and nonviolent discipline. Srdja emphazied organizers to scale down their ambitions into tangible, small wins that can be executed at the scale that the organizers are already at, and gradually build greater levels of ambitions adaptively as the organization grows and develops greater capabilities. Srdja has developed educational platform Center for Nonviolent action and Strategies (CANVAS) which has been applied successfully by other activist movements around the world to for political change in places such as Egypt in 2011 Arab Spring removal of Mubarak (CANVAS, 2020).
Generalizing nonviolent campaigns beyond confrontational, momentum-based
Like the Otpur movement, Chenoweth's study focused mostly on regime changes or secession movements as it is more unambiguous to code a success or failure. Aside from regime changes, Daniel Hunter from 350.org published a handbook "Climate Resistance Handbook" which appeals directly to campaign organizers for environmental causes and promotes similar strategies from the nonviolent discipline, and given the "handbook" title adopts a high agency philosophy (Hunter, 2019). Unlike Chenoweth's work which focused exclusively on nonviolent civil disobedience framed as a conflict, Hunter provides a broader definition of nonviolent campaigns which are also framed as cooperative. Despite Engler's book title "Nonviolent revolt" he also casts a broader net than Chenoweth and uses a contrast between two competing resistance strategies "movement" and "organization" to develop the main ideas and concepts of movement building. Engler characterises pure "movement" as rapid, highly emotionally charged, provocative public performances aimed at capturing media attention, symbolic victories and winning over public sympathy. By contrast the "organizational" approach is a more slow moving, methodical approach that seeks behind the scenes transactional victories through relationships with decision makers and allies (Engler, 2017).
Advise for organizers
Survey participants were asked to comment on the challenges to organizers and offer solutions from their experience.
What challenges have you faced in organizing for change, What lessons have you learned from them?
What are the most successful stories of social change that you have encountered or read about that you think could apply to Singapore to realize change in the next 3 years?
The responses were grouped into 8 main topic areas and motivated by the framework of the nonviolent resistance social movement.
Coalescence of individuals around shared values, goals and strategy
Recruitment, retention : meaningful actions and low barriers to participation
Small wins : traction with tactical actions which have high chance of success
Cooperation with groups which share similar interests, values
Public sentiment : general concern, accept solution, motivated to give support
Leverage points of support to weaken the pillars of the opposition
Decision maker : maintain relationships in order to address concerns
Singaporeans and ROW responses identified similar challenges for organizers. Both cited the importance of a motivating message that resonates with the public and is in the language of decision makers. Both cited the need for diversity. Singaporean responses emphasized decision making and consensus building within and between groups and ROW responses highlighted volunteer recruitment, retention and grassroots engagement.
Coalescence
One Singapore response highlighted coalescing on shared strategies as a barrier for internal organizers.
"Lack of agreement on how radical to be especially in the face of strict laws against public protest, and how wide the scope should be (e.g. whether to include social justice issues)"
Recruitment, small wins
A response from outside Singapore emphasized the need for providing a structure for new participants to quickly become involved and make a contribution although she admitted that this takes a substantial upfront investment from the organizers.
"People lost interest in participating because they didn't feel like they had a chance to offer meaningful contribution to the campaign. My lessons learned is, developing ways of offer this structure. However, I have not reached yet this point."
This is the advise adopted by Otpur, Frontloading the campaign with a pre-configured set of values, goals and actions that can be copied through a lightweight recruitment and training program. Every public action by Otpur was simultaneously a disruptive act to achieve a symbolic victory, an education outreach platform to the public and also the first initiation step for recruitment (Engler, 2017).
Cooperation
Cooperation with other groups was one of the most frequently mentioned comment. They all shared a common observation of the limits of organizing within a small group of interested environmentalists, and the need to break out and reach a more diverse audience.
Singapore responses
"I think solidarity is difficult without community building, which is difficult without spaces which are safe and conducive for contestations and discussions to come about. There are in general, many environmental groups in Singapore but there seems to be difficulty forming a broader coalition. Another difficulty is bridging with non-environmental groups, which also relates to the challenge of making climate a truly intersectional agenda."
"collaborate with other organisations, diversify your movement (i.e. more policymakers, more economists, and people of other roles that are not so present in the climate movement)"
"Advocacy for migrants’ rights in Singapore (but it isn’t exactly successful yet)" "lack of interest beyond a strong but small core of people"
ROW response
"The most effective change happens at the grassroots level - and requires allies with communities you may not even realize are allies. "
"Educational courses combining art & environment, impacting children; organising art installations in rural places focusing on climate change and see local communities to get interest for the topic;"
Public sentiment
The responses expressed that they felt that the public is generally apathetic, not willing to accept lifestyle changes and focused on systemic changes in energy systems. While public sentiment was cited frequently as an external barrier, only a few responses framed it with the agency of an organizer as an opportunity to improve a more strategic public narrative.
Singapore responses
"requires a major shift in public perception/awareness toward/of clean energy and energy efficiency"
"Lack of traction of the sustainability movement beyond the individual level"
"People who simply don't care about climate change, Apathy."
ROW response
"People want to change ideally, but in practice they are not necessarily ready to give up their habits"
Some of the ROW responses framed public sentiment as a challenge to the organizers to develop a more compelling, accessible narrative.
"The 'air pollution argument' for clean energy transition has its limits. "
"Putting the GND ideas in simple terms and develop story telling around its principles."
Leverage
While not referred to explicitly as leverage, points of leverage mentioned include academics, media and public attention.
Decision maker
Some of the responses felt that it is important to maintain relationships with "stakeholders" and "institutions" presumably decision makers in government and business and maintain a narrative that would not exclude these agents and appeals to their concerns.
Singapore response
"need to talk to stakeholders in the terms they are familiar with and address their key concerns"
ROW response
"Activism should not be opposite to institutional processes, it should rather use its tools and activate them differently."
[the raw responses to the survey are anonymized to protect the identity of the respondent and are available to members of Green New Deal Singapore and on request to any of the survey respondents]
References
Center for Nonviolent Actions and Strategy (CANVAS)
CHARANPAL S. BAL 2014 PRODUCTION POLITICS AND MIGRANT LABOUR ADVOCACY IN SINGAPORE
Chenoweth, 2013 Why civil resistance works : the strategic logic of nonviolent action
Kriesi, 1991 Political opportunity structure of new social movements
Danielle Hong, 2017 Exploring Informal Social and Cultural Activism in Singapore : A study on local ground up initiatives
Delahunt, Medium, 2018 A summary of Bill Moyers Doing Democracy : Movement Action Plan
Engler, 2017 This is an uprising : how nonviolent revolt is shaping the 21st century
Hunter, Daniel 350.org 2019 Climate Action Resistance Handbook
Kurtz 2010 Otpor and the Struggle for Democracy in Serbia
Pew Research, 2020 As Economic Concerns Recede, Environmental Protection Rises on the Public’s Policy Agenda
Popovic, Srdja TedTalk, 2011 How to topple a dictator
Reporters without borders, last accessed 2020 Press Freedom Ranking
A good deal for Southeast Asia, a good deal for Singapore