D6.1 Lessons from Environmental Movements of the past (D16): WP6 – Climate movements, democracy, and change (UNITN)

Over the past two decades, public involvement in environmental and climate-related regulatory decisions hasexpanded across Europe and beyond. These initiatives have highlighted citizens' rights to information aboutenvironmental and health risks while underscoring the democratic imperative of participatory decision-making.Moreover, environmental movements, NGOs, and activists have urged a redefinition of democratic processes.This paper argues that such phenomena emerged as consequences of environmental activism from the 1970sand 1980s. Through analysis of social mobilizations following the Seveso disaster (Italy), the Gorleben nuclearfacility controversy (Germany), and the Żarnowiec nuclear plant dispute (Poland), we trace the emergenceand evolution of some specific environmental movements, examining their techniques, repertoires, democraticpractices, and political demands. Despite their differences, these controversies and the following mobilizationintroduced environmental concerns into decision-making processes at local, national, and European levels.More significantly, they challenged the structural limitations of governments in managing risk. Confronted withopaque decision-making, technocratic delegation of power, and lack of transparency, environmentalmovements demanded more participatory governance forms. These movements advocated for includingaffected communities and citizens in public deliberation, enabling them to raise scientific and moral questions,express autonomous assessments, and help define political priorities.This democratic transformation was largely an unintended consequence of 1970s-1980s environmentalmobilization. What began with minimal ambitions – introducing environmental controls and addressingenvironmental crises – produced results exceeding activists' expectations: renewed political participation,grassroots knowledge production, and alternative participatory democratic models. Nevertheless, theseambitious outcomes were only partially achieved. While national and European institutions received manyspecific environmental protection and governance requests, citizens' and movements' involvement in decisionmakingprocesses, along with their proposals for transforming European democracies, remained marginalized.