Individual

Individual actions such as not using single-use plastics, planting your veggie garden, consuming local food, or being vegan, might seem irrelevant compared to the grand scheme of the climate crisis.

However, it is often too easy to underestimate the power one has as an individual and the ripple effect our actions can create. Too often, we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem and convince ourselves that a massive problem requires a massive solution. Whether it is mobilising your community, lobbying for a policy, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make earth-shattering changes.

Meanwhile, improving the problem by 1%, although oftentimes it might not seem to even be noticeable, can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.

As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits said when writing about the value of small habits, “if you can get 1% better each day for one year, you’ll end up 37% times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1% worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.”

1% Better Every Day

The effects of small habits compound over time. For example, if you can get just 1 percent better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year.
CLEAR, J. *Continuous Improvement:* *How It Works and How to Master It*

On a day-to-day basis, this can be a difficult concept to value, as we often dismiss small changes and actions because they don’t seem like they will have an effect at the moment. If you stop using single-use plastic now, corporations are still using plastic. If you water your garden now, you still don’t have any vegetables to consume. If you go vegan now, mass agriculture is still going on. We make a few changes, but the results never seem to come quickly; so – disappointed – we slide back into our previous habits.

Unfortunately, the slow pace of transformation often makes things we are not okay with slide.

But when we repeat positive changes, even if just by one percent, day after day, that eventually leads to great impact. Creating a chain of positive actions, where more and more people are participating:that is when your individual actions influence the collective actions that are made.

Take the example of Plastic Free July. What started as an individual challenge for Rebecca Prince-Ruiz to refuse single-use plastics, turned into a grassroots campaign with a handful of participants, and has now grown to millions of people across 170 countries taking up the challenge of refusing single-use plastic every July each year.

Collective action is the essential bridge between individual action and systemic change.

Collective

As seen with campaigns such as Plastic Free July, Meatless Monday, #MyEcoresolution, and Fridays for Future, where students all over the world skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations demanding action from leaders and corporations to act on climate change, there is no collective action without individual action.

In many ways, collective action is the essential bridge between individual action and systemic change.

When you get involved in your government, your neighbourhood, an organisation, or even just a group of friends or family, you begin to influence and affect that social network. Collective action can also put in place processes to better enable individuals to live and act according to their values. These spaces can help us to find a common purpose and strengthen resilient communities.

Social movements are purposeful, organised groups striving to work toward a common goal. These groups might be attempting to create change, to resist change, or to provide a political voice to those otherwise vulnerable. As a collective, they create social change.

Social movements, built up from communities and collectives, have been key to almost every change in human history.

For example, the civil rights movement was formed after the arrest of Rosa Parks ignited outrage and support leading to the creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association formed by Black community leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.

Similarly, Occupy Wall Street was formed after Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist publication, proposed a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest corporate influence on democracy. Roughly 200 people responded to the call for Occupy Wall Street by organising meetings at Tompkins Square Park in NYC prior to the launch date of September 17, 2011.

Collective action changes systems all the time. Through community care, petitions, protests, lobbying, legal challenges, and empowering citizens, collective actions can shape the mechanisms, policies, and practices by which a society lives.

But when does collective change turn into systemic change?

Fridays for Future climate strike in London on March, 2021.
*Photo by Pamela EA*

Systemic

After studying 323 violent and non-violent protests that occurred between 1900 and 2006 worldwide, Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist from Harvard, found that a movement needs at least 3.5% of the population to engage in a peaceful civil uprising to succeed in achieving its aims. It is worth noting that the study found that nonviolent resistance is twice as effective as the use of force.

So what does that mean for an issue as big as the climate crisis?

As Bill McKibben wrote for Climate Words,

There are 8 billion people on the planet; that would imply the climate crisis requires a movement of 280 million people, which is a lot of human beings, but easier to imagine than, say, 50%.

In a sense, the rule recognizes that most people most of the time will be apathetic and uninvolved, which makes it hard to mount an uprising, but also hard to stop one once it gets started, especially if there's no violence to repulse bystanders.

Historians, Chenoweth notes, have tended to fixate on violent upheavals, and so have the movies--but “ordinary people, all the time, are engaging in pretty heroic activities that are actually changing the way the world – and those deserve some notice and celebration as well.”

Although Bill McKibben speaks of mobilising globally, this rule can also be applied at a local level by mobilising 3.5% of a community, city or even a country.

So whether you are engaging in individual, collective or systemic action, remember that what you do matters. Through your gestures, change is possible.