Methodology: The case of SDG 13 advocacy in Spain

UN member states adopted the SDGs in 2015, agreeing to 17 goals articulated through specific metrics designed to move toward a world that is sustainable, prosperous, and just. Yet, the SDGs do not provide a blueprint for how to get there and “remain full of ambiguities and polysemous formulations” (Pouliot & Thérien, Reference Pouliot and Thérien2023, p. 104). Each state and local government has been developing their own road maps for achieving the goals, requiring a transcalar understanding of advocacy in this context. The inclusion of local perspectives in policy development and implementation is a central priority for the SDGs (Kindornay, Reference Kindornay2019; Lucci, Reference Lucci2015). Nonstate actors, including INGOs, businesses, universities and other civic actors have been key in shaping their implementation. The SDGs also provide a degree of flexibility that allows society to debate how to achieve these goals. This creates the context for this study, an examination of the interaction and relationships among the layers of organization that seek to shape policy in Spain.

Spain’s civil society participation in the implementation process for SDG 13 makes a great case to examine the dynamics of political opportunities as well as networks between these organizations. Spanish civil society participates in the SDGs through a formal government mechanism, an Advisory Council, that also includes representation from different stakeholders (Rico Motos & Alarcón, Reference Rico Motos and Alarcón2022). The advisory council includes two environmental organizations from the “Axis of 5,” a coalition of the five largest environmental advocacy groups in Spain (see Figure 1). Spain’s Voluntary National Reports to the UN have been prepared through consultation with this council. In 2022 (when the interviews were conducted), Spanish implementation review included SDG 13 as a top priority area. SDG 13 is relevant to a broad spectrum of organizations as the goal encompasses both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, a goal that is interconnected with virtually all other SDGs.

Fig. 1.

Complex relationship between civil society actors in Spain and their influence over decision-makers.

The Axis of 5, which includes Greenpeace, Ecologistas en Acción (a network of 300 anti-capitalist social movement organizations), Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and SEO Birdlife, represent the strongest coalition focused on environmental issues in Spain. They are included individually and as coalition partners in all government consultations as well as in different civil society networks. The presence of networked international and domestic NGOs along with TSMOs like Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future and Scientists Rebellion provide a rich foundation for transcalar analysis of this issue in Spain, as do the political opportunity structures created through government advisory councils, the EU and the UN.

The study followed the social science relevant aspects of the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative studies guidelines (Tong et al., Reference Tong, Sainsbury and Craig2007). The researcher obtained IRB approval from their university prior to research. Consistent with snowball case selection best practices (Parker et al., Reference Parker, Scott and Geddes2019), based on the landscape of climate advocacy in Spain, the subject selection for interviews started with the Axis of 5 organizations considered central to the SDGs and climate change in association with government consultative councils. A second starting point was the Futuro en Común, a prominent network that addresses the whole range of SDGs, composed of over 50 civil society organizations. Futuro en Común is regularly called upon by the government to consult about the SDGs. Organizational representatives were selected by the organizations, as a message requesting an interview was initially sent to a general e-mail address. The rest of the organizations and social movement representatives were selected through snowball sampling (Merton, Reference Merton, Lazarfeld and Stanton1949) by asking the initial interviewees to suggest others who are important in their advocacy world. Snowball sampling is useful in this context (Audemard, Reference Audemard2020) given the goal is to understand the networks as well as the landscape of political advocacy around climate. A total of 24 semistructured in person interviews were conducted by the author in Spanish capital Madrid. Most interviews took place at the offices of the interviewees. Some interviews were conducted in public spaces like cafes as some social movements do not have offices. The subjects included Spanish civil society organization representatives, government officials, and social movement activists. Interviewees were asked open-ended questions pertinent to understanding the relationships among organizations and their advocacy strategies (see Appendix for a list of organizations and questions). These interviews were conducted and audio recorded between January and May 2022, each lasting between 30 minutes and 2 hours. The interviews were held in Spanish after which the author and a team of interpreters from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid transcribed the interviews into English. The in-person interview process for the research was time bound to end in June 2022. By that point, the author had already determined that a saturation point was reached as later interviews and subject suggestions were found to have a more tangential relationship with climate advocacy.

The interviewees were asked about their organizational goals and strategies toward SDG 13 (see Appendix for questions), their relationship with different government agencies as well as their relationships with other NGOs and social movements in their work around SDG 13. In addition, the author also observed meetings and events organized by Futuro en Común, the main SDG coalition, and attended events organized by movement activists. The author examined reports, newsletters, official internet pages, social media accounts, and press releases for 2022 to understand the network framing. The goal was to understand the advocacy and action among the Axis of 5 and the transnational movements, including Extinction Rebellion, Scientists Rebellion and Fridays of Future and Futuro en Común. The author also analyzed the 24 transcribed interviews and her meeting observations using NVivo, where the three themes emerged in shaping INGO engagement with SDG 13. The themes centered around INGO representation of the voices for climate change including political opportunity structures, network relations, and within the networks, the differences in strategy and organizational structures. The author was the sole reader of the interviews and coded the interviews around these three themes as they emerged. The next sections describe the results of this data gathering focusing on each of these three themes.

Analysis and conclusion

The SDGs create a common framework from which states and civil society organizations work on global issues, including climate change. INGOs are the main actors in TANs (Keck & Sikkink, Reference Keck and Sikkink1998) working on these issues. A major debate is whether these INGOs serve to advance the goals of social movements or whether they coopt and undermine movement goals. Some emphasize the pathways that social movement activists can forge to get their views incorporated through their connections with INGOs (Hale et al., Reference Hale, Held and Brown2017; Hermansen et al., Reference Hermansen, McNeill, Kasa and Rajao2017). However, others suggest that movement positions are compromised as established INGOs carry their message into the institutional decision-making fora (Choudry & Kapoor, Reference Choudry and Kapoor2013; Tarrow, Reference Tarrow2005). Here, a transcalar analysis of climate advocacy in Spain suggests that this is not an either-or proposition. The analysis indicates that how movement voices get carried through INGOs is contingent on particular political opportunities and network relationships among these actors.

Political opportunity structures internationally and domestically can affect INGO activities (Benford & Snow, Reference Benford and Snow2000; Dellmuth & Bloodgood, Reference Dellmuth and Bloodgood2023; Gamson & Meyer, Reference Gamson, Meyer and Tilly1996; Gerő et al., Reference Gerő, Fejős, Kerényi and Szikra2023; Henry et al., Reference Henry, Sundstrom, Winston and Bala-Miller2019; Klandermans, Reference Klandermans1984; Snow & Benford, Reference Snow and Benford1988). The interviews in this study reveal that the political opportunity structures associated with climate policy at the domestic level are framed first and foremost by the policies of the EU and the UN Paris Climate Agreement. The Spanish government uses supranational and international agreements as a basis for tailoring their own policy positions. While they create a low base for environmental advocacy, the EU creates opportunities for INGOs by requiring civil society input in the climate policy processes. In Spain, this gives them a seat at the table on the government’s consultative councils where they can directly advocate for the SDGs in general and climate provisions in particular. These councils are the formal mechanisms through which INGOs can help to shape national policy. While these international agreements create certain opportunities for INGOs, the influence of these consultative mechanisms is shaped by the partisan make-up of Spain’s coalition government, which allocates relatively less power to ministries relevant to the SDGs. Thus, in this case the opportunities afforded to INGOs by international forces, are in turn limited by domestic coalition politics.

In addition to the political opportunities shaping INGO positions, network relations between the INGOs and social movements also influence their advocacy (Buffardi et al., Reference Buffardi, Pekkanen and Smith2017; Diani, Reference Diani2015). The interviews point to a complex relationship between social movement organizations and INGOs (see Figure 1). A transcalar approach (Pallas & Bloodgood, Reference Pallas and Bloodgood2022) reveals that well-established and tightly networked domestic anti-capitalist environmental social movements in Spain are fully integrated into all relevant government consultative councils through their participation in networks with INGOs. Domestic social movement organizations are also incorporated into networks like the Alliance for the Climate and the Futuro en Común. These networks between movement groups and INGOs provide avenues through which these networks challenge the positions developed by the EU and UN in the context of the liberal international order.

An example of this influence cited by interviewees was the way in which INGOs incorporated demands for the development of more local community-based energy supplies as opposed to sustainable energy solutions promoted by large energy conglomerates. This reflects the social justice orientation of Spain’s domestic environmental movements, but which is less central to the traditional environmental agendas of established INGOs. The close ties developed in their advocacy networks allowed the domestic movements to exercise this influence and shape INGO positioning on this issue.

While these domestic movement groups are deeply embedded in networks and coalitions with INGOs allowing them to shape advocacy frames, this is not necessarily the case with TSMOs like Extinction Rebellion (XR), Scientists Rebellion (SR), and Fridays for Future. The loose structures of these TSMOs make it difficult for them to network consistently with other climate advocates. While interactions between the transnational movements and INGOs occur sporadically, there is a disjuncture not only regarding organizational structure, but also in terms of technical policy focus. These TSMOs lack the means to develop specific policy goals and instead seek to drive home broader messages about the dangers of climate change through dramatic acts of civil disobedience, media actions, and manifestos. Domestic movement groups also engage in street level activism, but their close network ties enable them to maintain relations with INGOs and thus their channels into the policy process.

This is not to suggest that INGOs have no connection at all with these transnational movement actors. Interviews revealed that INGOs may engage with these groups in limited ways for specific projects. For example, some INGOs have provided training for activists in Fridays for Future. At other times, INGOs and transnational actors work together on protest mobilization. So while some ties exist, they are not the kinds of relations that INGOs have with domestic movement groups that are integrated into formal networks. As we saw, domestic movement groups influenced INGO agendas in regard to local energy development. There is no clear parallel with transnational movement groups. Their dramatic demands and actions help garner attention to issues generally, but broad calls for the end of fossil fuel use without specific policy proposals do not allow them to directly influence INGO positions.

Debates about the role of INGOs in relation to social movements have too often presented a simple binary. Either INGOs coopt and undermine social movements (Choudry & Kapoor, Reference Choudry and Kapoor2013; Tarrow, Reference Tarrow2005) or they are benevolent agents providing access and voice in the halls of power for grassroots interests that are otherwise completely blocked from policy spheres (Florini & Institution, Reference Florini and Institution2005, Habermas, Reference Habermas1992, Hale et al., Reference Hale, Held and Brown2017, Keck & Sikkink, Reference Keck and Sikkink1998, Meyer et al., Reference Meyer, Boli, Thomas and Thomas1987). This study suggests a more complicated picture. In some ways, INGOs may be incompatible with movement groups and fail to represent their interests or goals, but in other instances, they are responsive to grassroots voices and act to authentically elevate them. The research here on one issue, climate advocacy, in one national setting, Spain, reveals elements of both. The analysis suggests that outcomes depend on political opportunity structures and the way in which organizations are networked.

Political opportunity structures influence the actions of all advocates. In this case, larger intergovernmental institutions, like the EU and the UN, shape the options available to civil society. While the EU helps guarantee some form of access to the policy development process, this is tempered by domestic political opportunities. In Spain, under the government at the time, partisan coalition politics limited the access civil society can have to the actual centers of climate policy power. The larger structural features of the national and international environment shape the possibility for INGO influence and in turn, that of grassroots voices that they may claim to represent.

The way in which these structures of opportunity are utilized is also influenced by the relationships that INGOs have with grassroots movements. Scholars argued that the monopoly of large and dominant organizations is challenged by competitors in Spain (Aguilar, Reference Aguilar, Muro and Lago2020; Pape et al., Reference Pape, Brandsen, Pahl, Pieliński, Baturina, Brookes, Chaves-Ávila, Kendall, Matančević, Petrella, Rentzsch, Richez-Battesti, Savall-Morera, Simsa and Zimmer2020). Yet, this challenge does not necessarily stand in the way of cooperation through networks. An analysis of how movements and INGOs are networked helps us understand the extent to which INGOs reflect grassroots interests in their policy advocacy. In this case, INGOs are deeply networked with domestic environmental movements in Spain. This has enabled movement organizations to shape INGO positioning on climate policy in important ways. Other movement entities, in particular loosely coordinated transnational movement groups, are not well networked with INGOs. This, along with organizational incompatibilities, limits the extent of TSMO influence via the INGO pathway to policy-making.

This is a single case based on a single issue, so generalizability is limited. However, there is enough evidence to reveal that examinations of the roles that INGOs play in policy advocacy in relation to social movements benefits from transcalar analysis that includes consideration of organizational networks and political opportunity structures.