Advancing Global Social Change: Systems Approaches to the Role of Nonprofits in Climate Policy

The existential threat of climate change requires reimagining foundational aspects of society, including jobs, transportation, energy, the built environment, natural resources, health, and water and food supplies. We argue that to realize such broad scale change requires systems thinking. In this in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nonprofit policy forum 2024-10, Vol.15 (4), p.269-286
Main Authors: Kagan, Jennifer A., Bromley, Patricia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Built environment
Climate change
Climate policy
Food supply
Natural resources
nonprofits
Social change
Sustainable practices
systems thinking
Urban environments
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Summary:The existential threat of climate change requires reimagining foundational aspects of society, including jobs, transportation, energy, the built environment, natural resources, health, and water and food supplies. We argue that to realize such broad scale change requires systems thinking. In this introduction to the special issue on Nonprofits and Climate Policy, we outline four systems-based views of global social change, organized by source of change and assumptions about the technical rationality of the system: engineering, evolutionary, social constructivist, and (critical) realist. By elaborating this framework, we shed light on the fundamental assumptions embedded in climate advocacy and policymaking. Along with describing key scholarship and practice-based examples for each approach, we align the articles in this special issue with the four views of global social change to inspire systems-based research and practice at the nonprofit and climate policy intersection. We hope that creating more explicit accounts of the key beliefs and expectations about how social change occurs at a global systemic level will help to advance research and practice in sustainability.
ISSN:2154-3348
2194-6035
2154-3348
DOI:10.1515/npf-2024-0030