How Environmentalists Deal with (Yet Another) Global Crisis: Resilience, Vulnerability, and Intersecting Crises

The Covid-19 pandemic has had multiple effects on social systems as yet another crisis, alongside climate change and biodiversity loss, that stems from the complex interaction between human and natural systems. In this regard, building resilience to ongoing and future crises has become a common reference point in both public and scholarly discourse. In the context of building resilience, the civil sector has an important social role to play in promoting the public interest and strengthening the role of citizens in democratic societies, thus enabling them to participate in society’s development. The environmental movement, as one of the most successful social movements, combines issues of environmental protection with a concept of social justice and economic development, and thus with building the resilience of society as a whole. The research questions were: how has the Covid-19 pandemic affected environmental NGOs, and what strategies have they applied to cope with and adapt to the new situation? How do environmental activists describe the concepts of vulnerability and resilience within the NGO sector? What are their expectations of future trends in the field to which their activism refers? The results of this research point to the conclusion that resilience is defined in terms of an organization’s adaptability, flexibility, inner social cohesion, and capacity to self-organize with an emphasis on networking. Intersecting crises that stem from the complex relationship between human and natural systems pose a challenge of finding an efficient frame for the problem within the movement and of re-establishing a corrective role in society. © 2021, INST SOCIAL RES ZAGREB. All rights reserved.