Climate Activism in Our Part of The World and Methodological Insights on How to Study It ^†

Abstract

This paper presents an ethnographically informed analysis of research in Cairo and Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt) surrounding the 2022 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP27) summit. I discuss the geopolitics and geopolitical disruptions of researching activism and activist lives in politically sensitive environments. As shown here, developing new methodological interventions plays a crucial role in understanding contextual methodological limitations, dealing with logistical challenges, and building authentic relationships with research participants. Here, I introduce counter-interviews as a methodological strategy to build trust and invest in researcher–participant relationships. This article draws on participant observation, conversations with environmental and climate activists and non-activists in Cairo prior to and after COP27 and in Sharm El-Sheikh during the second week of the summit, reflective field notes, and 20 semi-structured interviews conducted online between February and August 2023. Here, I use the term “environmental non-activism” to draw attention to the sensitivity, complexity, and fragility of political or apolitical environmental and climate action in an authoritarian context where any form of collective action is highly monitored, regulated, and sometimes criminalized by the state. The main argument of this paper is that examining interlocking power dynamics that shape and reshape the activist space in relation to the state is a requirement for understanding and researching the complexities and specificities of climate activism and non-activism in authoritarian contexts. Along with this argument, this paper invites climate education researchers to reevaluate what non-movements and non-activists in the Global South offer to their analyses of possible alternatives, socio-political change, and politics of hope (and to the broader field of activism in educational research, where commitment to disruption, refusal, and subversion play a key role.

1. Introduction

Environmental activism in the Middle East? This is the first response that I usually receive when people ask about the topic of my research, with a focus on the question intonation. I will promptly show them images from the Fridays for Future İstanbul demonstrations that I captured throughout my fieldwork (Figure 1) to further ignite their curiosity. The more interesting questions come next when people are more surprised, amazed, or sometimes confused as they learn more about climate activism in authoritarian countries and how or why researchers like me study these movements.

Those in my audience who express surprise when learning about environmental and climate activism in the Middle East are not alone in their assumption! Even some political and social scientists overlook or completely reject the idea of the existence and activity of environmental movements or ENGOs (Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations) in autocratic and authoritarian contexts (Böhmelt, 2014; Ku, 2011). This is an immediate consequence of making a strong connection between non-state actors and democracy. However, research demonstrates that environmental NGOs and movements do exist under single-party regimes, monarchies, military regimes, and personalist dictatorships, as examples of China (Hampton, 2005; Bello, 2007; Tai, 2015; Gunter, 2015), Russia (Carmina & Fagan, 2010; Fedorenko, 2017), Malaysia (Yew, 2016), and Taiwan (Thang et al., 2011; Hu, 2011) indicate.

Based on the level of oppression in the socio-political sphere, ENGOs experience different levels of freedom to act and have different levels of access to resources and opportunities to organize, advocate, and educate (Böhmelt, 2014, p. 446). Ayana et al. (2018), for instance, argue that ENGOs can effectively influence environmental policy-making in semi-authoritarian regimes. However, ENGOs need to employ different strategies and tactics in comparison to their fellows working in democratic societies, as they are often not invited nor welcomed to comment on or participate in environmental policy-making under repressive socio-political conditions. One of these tactics is to act indirectly and distance themselves as much as possible from the central state both in their media outlets and policy strategies to deal with complicated situations and to reduce the chance of closure (Gunter, 2015). For instance, since NGO actors cannot target the government’s unsustainable actions and policies, they may focus their resources and energy on alternative environmental designs and promoting eco-friendly lifestyles, as discussed by Fadaee (2016, 2018) in the case of Iranian ENGOs.

ENGOs may also decide to establish strong links to the authoritarian state, as it controls their survival and resources. For example, Tai (2015) shows that building relationships with the state is more important and beneficial to Chinese ENGOs than developing connections with international entities. Therefore, research on the connections between ENGOs and authoritarian states challenges the zero-sum understanding of the organizational autonomy of NGOs as the main civil society actors that are supposed to check and criticize the state.

Scholars also suggest that the environment is a less sensitive or safer topic for authoritarian regimes in comparison to human rights and political prisoners, and therefore, a controlled and limited level of public participation maybe tolerated, allowed, or even encouraged by the state to serve as a pressure relief valve (Marquis & Yanhua, 2018; Doyle & Simpson, 2006). Allowing for a controlled and limited level of public participation and being responsive to ENGOs’ demands to act environmentally friendlier has been referred to as “responsive authoritarianism” (Marquis & Yanhua, 2018). Authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states may even encourage environmental issues to be debated publicly and focused on by civil society actors.1 In such contexts, ENGOs use this “limited opportunity” to establish networks, advocate more participatory environmental planning and policy-making, and introduce themselves as policy actors (Han, 2014).

Along with this line of argument, some research suggests that because non-democracies tolerate ENGOs, the environment might be seen by activists as a window to pursue social and political change under authoritarian regimes (Doyle & Simpson, 2006; Han, 2014). For example, Bello (2007) shows that because the environment was not perceived as a political topic in Southeast Asia, environmental movements played a crucial role in fighting dictatorships in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Indonesia, anti-fascist and anti-dictatorship movements organized people around environmental struggles and public health issues as key topics with which to challenge the regime’s unaccountability and failure to govern (Bello, 2007).

Environmental activists can facilitate and catalyze political liberalization through generating new individual and collective identities, reinforce social and political solidarity, and strengthen a more demanding civil society.2 Such experiences have generated a tendency toward optimistic perspectives on the role of environmentalism in non-democratic societies. For example, Vu (2017) predicts that in the long-run, environmental activism can alter state–society relations in Vietnam and pave the path toward democracy. Environmental NGOs are inspired by democratic ideas even in non-democratic sociopolitical contexts through demanding public participation, generating new individual and collective identities, reinforcing social solidarity, and negotiating with the state on managing environmental degradation (Nomura, 2007). Therefore, some scholars, activists, and campaigners perceive environmental movements as effective tools to enhance democracy, referring to examples of Southeast Asia, where organizing people around environmental health issues served as a pathway to fight fascism and dictatorships by showing the state’s failure to protect people and their environments (Bello, 2007).

However, the complications that sociopolitical oppression creates for environmental activism cannot be underestimated (Yew, 2016) and require close attention to the interrelations of the social and the political. The pessimistic set of arguments draws on examples of the manipulation or distortion of environmental movements to please and serve the interests of the state, the privileged castes and classes, or international and Western donors (Forsyth, 2007; Fedorenko, 2017; Nagel & Staeheli, 2016). Any sort of connection with foreign donors may also jeopardize an environmental NGO’s legal status in an authoritarian context. As with other civil society activists, environmental activists deal with various forms of control and censorship and might be easily accused of espionage, terrorism, anti-nationalism, or threating state integrity, as indicated in the cases of Türkiye, Russia (Knudsen, 2016; Fedorenko, 2017; Sowers, 2018), and, most recently, Iran.

Despite focusing on a non-controversial issue such as the endangered Asiatic cheetahs in a remote area, Iranian environmental activists were arrested on espionage charges and collaboration with Israeli and American information services (Human Rights Watch, 2019). The director of the Persian Heritage Wildlife Foundation, Kavous Seyed-Emami, an Iranian–Canadian sociology professor and environmental activist, mysteriously died in Evin Prison in Tehran only two weeks after his detention (Figure 2), and six other activists were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 4 to 10 years (The Globe and Mail, 2018). This was a turning point for me as an Iranian environmental sociologist to reevaluate my positionality, and it inspired me to conduct research on the dilemma and politics of environmental activism in the Middle East. What does environmental activism mean and entail in the Middle Eastern authoritarian contexts? This is the overarching research question that brought me to Sherm El-Sheikh, Cairo, İstanbul, and, earlier, to Urmia and Tabriz in Iran to learn more about the interconnections of democracy and the environment in the Middle East.

Conducting ethnographic fieldwork within ENGOs in Egypt, Türkiye, and Iran, three Muslim majority societies with the largest populations in the region, led me to understand that environmental activism3 in the Middle East is more complex, diverse, and fluid than what is usually represented in the academic literature (e.g., Inglehart, 1995; Tuna, 1998; Alibeli, 2004; Katz-Gerro et al., 2015).

Along with situating geopolitical disruptions within the politics of disruption as the topic of this special issue, this article invites climate education researchers to revisit what non-movements and non-activists living under authoritarian regimes offer to their analyses of possible alternatives, socio-political change, and politics of hope and to the broader field of educational research and activism where according to Zafar and Startup (2024), commitment to disruption, refusal, and subversion play a key role.

Here, I argue that examining interlocking power dynamics that shape and reshape the activist space in relation to the state can help shed light on the complexities and specificities of climate activism and non-activism in authoritarian contexts. Understanding these complexities requires novel methodological innovations and interventions. This article shares the methodological approach that I designed to successfully collect data and access participants with various perspectives and experiences in a challenging field. It proposes the use of counter-interviews as a tool to identify and minimize outsider biases and to prevent imposing definitions on the participants in the context of conducting an activist ethnography. As an effort to balance the power dynamics in the data collection process, a counter-interview4 is an independent meeting with a potential participant to provide them with an opportunity in an informal and comfortable setting to gather information about the researcher, the research, and the research purposes and products. As shown here, activist ethnography provides an appropriate methodological approach for outsiders and prevents false generalizations (based on universalized definiens) in our analytical and theoretical attempts.

In my broader research, I explore whether and how environmental activism can lead to a more enriched civil society by expanding citizen engagements, or if it spirals into political–environmental crises, like that seen with the Seyed-Emami case, or perhaps offers new articulations of environmentalism.

This paper draws on 20 semi-structured interviews with Egyptian environmental and climate activists and non-activists conducted online between February and August 2023. In my analysis, I also rely on reflective field notes, participant observation, and conversations with Egyptian informants, activists, and non-activists in Cairo prior to and after the Conference of Parties (COP) summit and in Sharm El-Sheikh during the second week of the meeting. In the following sections, I first provide context and background on the research, highlighting my positionality and layers of complexity of conducting fieldwork in politically sensitive environments. I also discuss the geopolitical context at COP27. Then, I discuss the theoretical and methodological frameworks, with a focus on counter-interviews, a strategy that I developed to navigate my fieldwork. The Section 5 introduces three categories to represent the diversity of activists’ relations to the state, which is followed by discussion, where I highlight the importance of methodological interventions to understand power relations that constrain, demarcate, and (formally or informally) mark the activist sphere in totalitarian contexts. In the Section 7, I return to the role of higher education in supporting climate activism in complex sociopolitical contexts and potential pathways for researchers and educators to employ their privileges in empowering local, regional, and national movements and non-movements, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and influencing policy through research and community engagement.

2. Background and Approach: (Geo)Politics of Impossible Research or How Do I Get There?

The challenge of completing a doctoral degree during the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that Iranians are not allowed to enter Egypt postponed my fieldwork for two years. I had to wait not only for the international research restrictions to be lifted but also to receive Canadian citizenship to be able to travel to Egypt, a privilege that impacts my positionality significantly. Long waiting times for citizenship and passport applications served me in an unexpected way: COP27 was announced to be held in Egypt while I was finally able to pass the Egyptian border. But how do I get there?

Colleagues warned me about the challenges associated with obtaining government security approvals to conduct social science research in Egypt. The same process was required for any social science research in Türkiye and Iran. During the conservative Ahmadinejad’s presidency, a bill was passed to require all Iranian social sciences and humanities graduate students studying abroad who wish to conduct research in Iran to introduce themselves to the government. I was advised to represent my research topic slightly or completely differently to receive the required paperwork. Some researchers thought it was too risky to voluntarily introduce themselves and skipped the process. A colleague advised me not to pursue an approval at all, as “you will simply put your name in their radar”, as she saw, which later proved to be right, the whole process to red-flag researchers. Back in 2017, my research was not perceived as a risky topic, as it was concerned with the environment and nature, a less sensitive topic for the Iranian government in comparison to women’s and minority rights movements. However, the attack on environmental activists in 2018 and the tragic death of Seyed-Emami changed the perception. Soon, I received expressions of concern and was required by the supervisory committee to present safety plans to protect my participants and myself after multiple incidents of arresting social science researchers living abroad upon their arrival in Iran.5

One of the strategies I employed to get to the field was to have a prestigious university affiliation, which not only helped with logistics, such as visa applications, but also facilitated gaining trust, establishing relationships with scholars and researchers, and finding a way to navigate my life when I felt overwhelmed in a big city like Cairo. I applied to the Boğaziçi University in Türkiye and to the American University in Cairo (AUC) to audit courses. Registering at the AUC provided me with more opportunities and privileges than expected, including providing my only chance to get to the UNFCCC summit. I volunteered for the office responsible for representing the institution at the conference. Upon offering my assistance as an environmental sociologist, my ideas and collaboration were welcomed. It was through the office’s generous support that, finally, with many tears and prayers, I was able to get to Sharm El-Sheikh! Although during my time in Cairo sometimes I had to change my name, ethnicity, nationality, language, and religion to get around in the city without raising too many questions, red-flags, or simply attention, the international context of the COP27 provided a safety shield where I felt it might be fine to disclose my identity without feeling obligated to respond to several follow-up questions. In two incidents, I even received successive sympathy comments on the Islamic Republic’s brutal response to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising6 in Iran that was happening at the time of the conference.

In my trusted circle of friends in Cairo or even outside, almost every time I mentioned my research questions and goals, people reminded me of “that Italian researcher”, 28-year-old Giulio Regeni,7 who was tortured and killed in Cairo, and warned me not to rely on my Canadian passport too much! I was always honest about my background with my potential participants during counter-interviews and let them ask me as many questions as they wished. The concepts of potential participants and counter-interviews are both explained in the methodological framework section. In the following section, I first provide more detailed context for COP27, as attending to contextual complexities and challenges is crucial, particularly in the case of engaged activist ethnography (Scharenberg, 2023).

3. Geopolitical Context at COP27: Who Is Saving Who? (And from Whom?)

For some, COP27 was supposed to save the Egyptian economy by attracting investment or at least to save the Egyptian tourism industry after the hardships of the pandemic. It was also supposed to save the accountability for the Global North by the Global South that was once achieved. Yet, there was another saving mission for COP27 that started a few months before: saving the life and freedom of Alaa Ahmed Seif Abd-El Fattah, an Egyptian–British political activist and prisoner. His family started a human rights campaign for Alaa’s freedom a month prior to the conference. Alaa’s sister, also a British citizen, traveled to Sharm El-Sheikh to attract the international community’s attention to his unfair imprisonment. Alaa started a hunger and water strike during the conference, which was covered by the media. Yet, all these actions resulted in no betterment of his situation, let alone other thousands of Egyptian political activists who did not have the privilege of holding a foreign citizenship. Campaigners for Alaa were not even successful in granting him a break to spend the new year with his family, and he is still jailed for threatening national security and spreading fake news. Alaa’s picture, along with two Emirati political prisoners, was held by human rights activists in COP28 in Dubai who were able to stage a historical protest in the United Arab Emirates (McDowall, 2023).

November 11 or 11/11 should also be considered in order to understand the political context of COP27: a major security show that the government used to scare and scatter activist coalitions and to further temper the “climate of fear for Egyptian civil society organisations to engage visibly at the COP27”8 that UN human rights experts warned about (UNCHR, 2022, para. 3). Hashtags on 11/11 in Arabic and Egyptian Twitter started to appear on my feed upon arrival in Egypt in September. The call for anti-government protests on 11/11 started long before on social media, and by November 1, a total of 67 citizens were arrested in relation to the calls (Reuters, 2022). Some argued that the calls were issued by the Muslim Brotherhood, while others traced it back to Gamal Mubarak, the youngest son of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator who ruled the country for over 30 years and was overthrown in 2011. Egyptian businessman, Mohamed Ali, was another suspect for issuing the call for rallies. Weeks before the promised Friday9 of 11/11, the number of security guards increased in major squares in Cairo and Alexandria. Foreign embassies advised their citizens to avoid nonessential travel on 11/11, especially in downtown Cairo and the Tahrir Square area (Figure 3). Churches10 held their services online and invited their congregations to stay home. Students reported that they were stopped at Tahrir Square by the police and their cellphones were checked. No protests happened under the increased security measures.

The arrest of Ajit Rajagopal, an Indian climate justice activist, and his lawyer, Makarios Lahzy, also conveyed the Egyptian government’s clear message to Egyptian and foreign environmental and climate justice activists (The Guardian, 2022). A week before the conference, the government also declared a reevaluation of its formerly announced decision to designate a specific space for the Green Zone and Blue Zone participants to interact. Therefore, the direction of traffic remained one-way for the entire conference: Blue Zoners could visit the Green Zone if they wished to, but the Green Zoners did not have access to the Blue Zone. My interviewees repeatedly reported difficulty in navigation due to the design of the venues, long distances between pavilions, and confusing directions and maps. All this contextual information, especially regarding the conscious and unconscious design characteristics of and around the Green Zone, which was the civil society space, raise the question of whether and how COP27 has served Egyptian environmental activists, a question that I asked my interviewees, and their responses evolved as the COP27 fever started to break.

4. Theoretical and Methodological Framework: From Social Non-Movements to Environmental Non-Activism

I started recruiting potential participants upon arriving in Egypt through ENGOs, environmental groups’ websites, and social media, including Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. In my initial emails and messages to the groups and individuals, I heavily relied on my AUC affiliation and emphasized my desire to learn more about environmental challenges and solutions both in Egypt and across the broader Middle East region. If they were receptive to the idea of supporting me on this journey, I would then invite them to meet in person to discuss the research further. I met with individuals who identified themselves as environmental or climate activists, some after long conversations about what it entails. I also met with active individuals who preferred to be called environment, climate, or sustainability supporters, advocates, or ambassadors. Some strongly refused the activist label and wanted me not to contact them again. Some asked, “What do you mean by environmental activist?” When I explained myself, they said they do those things, sometimes “very actively”, but they do not wish to be called an activist because they do not “oppose the government” or “attend protests.” Some individuals declined to participate in the research interview, as they did not believe they met the research criteria. However, they expressed a genuine interest in helping me learn more about the city and its culture, which I greatly appreciated and welcomed.

In my first few days of inviting one of my potential participants for a research interview in Cairo prior to COP27, I once found myself justifying his participation in my research, which easily turned to trying to convince him that he in fact is an environmental activist. Imagine us sitting on the patio of a luxury café in Garden 8 in New Cairo (Figure 4), smoking and having an expensive cappuccino. After a long pause following my explanations about activism and its definitions in the academic literature, he turned to me: “So, you really think I am an environmental activist?” It was the magic of doing a pre-interview meeting, or what I call a counter-interview, that led me to this learning moment. As a researcher, it was not my role to persuade people to accept a definition they had not had the privilege or opportunity to be represented by, nor was it my place to shift the attention of their activities and the individual and collective identities shaped by those activities in order to convince them to participate in my research interview.

This made me realize that I was about to meet several environmental non-activists, along with environmental activists in COP27. The process of reevaluating my interview trajectories directed me toward the social non-movement theory. Following Bayat (2013) in theorizing everyday resistance and pursuing change in the Middle East as “social non-movements,” here, I use the term “environmental non-activism” to draw attention to the sensitivity, complexity, and fragility of political or apolitical environmental action in an authoritarian context where any form of collective action is highly monitored, regulated, and sometimes criminalized by the state. Both Türkiye and Egypt, as the largest populations in the Middle East region, experienced major social and political changes in the past few decades that resulted in increased violence, crackdown of civil society, and the arrest and detention of numerous journalists and activists. Egypt experienced a revolution followed by the Kefaya (meaning “enough”) movement and Arab Spring in 2011 that led to the fall of the Egyptian octogenarian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, who ruled the country for over 30 years. During the uprisings that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, alone at least 846 people were killed and more than 6400 people were injured (BBC News, 2011). In June 2012, Egyptians voted in their first ever free and fair presidential election to put Mohamed Morsi of Muslim Brotherhood in power. Egyptians also approved their new constitution via referendum in December 2012. The country’s crises did not end here, however, and in 2013, a series of protests led to the removal of the first democratically elected president from office by the coalition as a result of a coup d’état. In July 2013, General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), announced the dissolution of the government and suspended the Egyptian constitution of 2012. He has ruled the country since 2013.

Civil society activists in the Middle East turn to environmental issues when political issues are harder to or simply out of reach for civil society organizations, as environmental issues may be perceived as less sensitive by authoritarian regimes. The post-crack-down situation also creates momentum for environmental activists and non-activists who, in the eyes of politicians and the public, are concerned with far more “luxury” or “Western”11 topics than the realities and politics of everyday life in their society. The question then is what are the best ways to learn about activists’ ideas and ideals?

While quantitative studies have contributed to social movement scholarship through providing useful information and statistical comparisons, they usually consider collective action as a fact with tangible outcomes—social movements are considered either as successful or failed in this perspective. A qualitative approach toward social movements focuses on collective action as a process and deals with the ways in which relationships, rationales, norms, and values are shaped and transformed through and by movement events (Melucci, 1989). However, understanding sociopolitical complexities of social movements in politically closed societies is not possible without undertaking qualitative research. Criticizing previous social movements scholarship for attempting to understand and analyze social movements with universalized conceptions, the recently growing field of politically engaged or activist ethnography concentrates on the questions of specificities and complexities of collective actions in diverse contexts (Scharenberg, 2023; Lyon-Callo & Hyatt, 2003). Activist ethnography is a critical mode of social inquiry used both by academics and activists that includes a range of activities, from investigating what informants perceive as problematic and troubling to learning the interconnection of the sociopolitical relations that shape lived experiences. It also includes detecting the “social relations that link what people do in their local, interactional world with practices in which people in other places engage” (Bisaillon, 2012, pp. 608–609).

Researchers working in the field of activist ethnography range from those advocating activist anthropology to those who encourage researchers to focus on social movements from within by emphasizing on the lived experiences of individual activists (Sutherland, 2012). I understand undertaking research through an activist ethnographic approach as using ethnographically informed methods to explore social movements “from the standpoint of an activist” (Sutherland, 2012, p. 628).

To advance my understanding of activists’ standpoint, I developed counter-interviews, a research strategy that I began to employ particularly to navigate my research in politically sensitive fieldwork contexts. A counter-interview is an independent meeting with a potential participant, where the researcher provides them with a chance to ask questions about herself, her research, and, if the meeting goes well, the research interview process and purpose. Potential participants meet the criteria of the research but their participation in the research cannot be guaranteed until after the interview is completed, especially in a politically sensitive context where trust is fragile. The lifespan of the term potential participant begins at the stage of contacting the person for an invitation to a counter-interview to the stage of reconnecting for the invitation to an interview session and then up to two weeks after the interview is conducted, as they might decide to withdraw their participation. The whole process may take a few months.

The idea of inviting potential participants for a counter-interview as a basic component of my fieldwork first occurred to me back in 2020. The compulsory shift to online interviews during the pandemic made many researchers rethink their strategies to maintain connection with their participants, especially in emotionally sensitive contexts. An online interview requires not only a stable internet connection but a stable human connection, which is hard to maintain without making eye contact. In 2020, I initiated a research project at the University of Alberta to study the impacts of the downing of the Ukrainian Flight PS752 on the Iranian community in Edmonton (BayatRizi et al., 2022). After one of the emotionally heavy interviews, the participant said, “So, did I give you the answers you wanted for your research?” right after I stopped the recording. When explaining the difference between qualitative and quantitative approaches and how there are no wrong or correct answers, I learned that meeting with my participants before the actual interview is necessary. This would give the researcher a chance to explain the purpose of a research interview and provide the potential participants with an opportunity to ask questions about the interview and research process.

The importance of holding in-person counter-interviews doubles when studying politically sensitive topics and contexts. It is even more important when (and where) conducting social science research is not very common and becoming suspicious of the researcher’s identity and any hidden agenda is also very likely. I provided my potential participants with a chance to know me both professionally and personally and to ask questions about myself, my background, and my purpose. It is through establishing an authentic relationship with the potential participants that I have found the best conversations tend to happen. A counter-interview may lead to a quite informative and valuable conversation that tempts you to start the recording, but I find it as a trap that may scare away the potential participant and results in a feeling that you are sitting with them only because they carry something valuable to you, which is their lived experience. We may have been attracted to them for that reason, but in order to get closer to their point of view and create the feeling that we are safe enough to hear their story, we need to show more: more appreciation, more curiosity, or even more of the real feeling of desperation, which, as researchers, we sometimes feel when our days of effort in the field only lead to dead ends.

I met with several potential participants who had concerns to even be seen with a foreigner and speaking in English, especially if the location of the meeting was not chosen wisely. No researcher wants her potential participant to look around every two minutes to ensure that no one is listening to or following them. No matter how much their fear feels unnecessary to an outsider, they are the leaders of the stage and should feel safe and comfortable sitting with the researcher, being seen with her, and around the words she chooses to communicate. Buzzwords then play a crucial role in a counter-interview. This is the main reason that I tried to familiarize myself with the glossary of everyday life in Cairo, which I sometimes found is different from that of New Cairo. Through conversations with informants before arriving in Cairo, I prepared a list of uncomfortable terms while trying to understand how to refer to the series of recent political changes in the country: revolution, Arab Spring, coup d’état, protests, social movement, overthrow, and uprising carry different meanings for people from different political backgrounds and age groups. Cultivating trust in a politically sensitive context can be best practiced when the researcher assures her potential participants that she is curious, open, and ready to learn from them and about every detailed aspect of their work and activist life, especially in conducting an activist ethnography.

5. Findings: The Skeptical, the Hopeful, the Proud

In this section, I draw on participant observation, conversations with environmental and climate activists and non-activists in Cairo prior to and after COP27 and in Sharm El-Sheikh during the second week of the meeting, reflective field notes, and 20 semi-structured interviews conducted online between February and August 2023.

Here, I identify three main categories to explain activists’ and non-activists’ perceptions of the conference: the skeptical, the hopeful, and the proud. These perceptions shape and inform the positions taken by activists for or against environmental or political actions designed by international organizations, governmental agencies, and ENGOs. Understanding these perceptions is crucial in the politics of inclusion and exclusion and whether and how Middle Eastern climate activists and non-activists decide to participate in broader alliances. It also represents the complexity of activist work in a politically sensitive environment.

The skeptical arguments were mainly centered upon the choice of Egypt as the host for a COP. Some individuals saw this as a problematic choice, “awarding the Egyptian government with legitimacy” (FN)12 and reinforcing its authority when it should be challenged or punished for its actions against democracy, human rights, and the environment. Many used the term greenwashing to explain the choice of Egypt by the organizers and to mention Egyptian government’s policies and practices to win or maintain the host position:

“I would say a huge greenwashing would be just COP27 happening in Egypt.”

(E02, 30, M.)13

Some interviewees compared the conference to “a show” or “an exhibition” aligned with the growing commercialization and corporatization of COPs:

“People in the pavilion space had absolutely no idea [of] what’s happening in the negotiations about everything they care, completely disconnected, and this gives space for greenwashing, this gives space for corporates to actually divert attention away from the negotiations, it makes the work of activists harder.”

(E08, 26, M.)

Sponsors of the conference were widely criticized for greenwashing. In September 2022, Egypt’s foreign ministry signed a contract with Coca-Cola to sponsor COP27 (Ahram Online, 2022). The decision sparked considerable controversy within climate circles in Egypt and globally due to the brand’s longstanding notoriety for decades of environmental and human rights abuses (Tigue, 2022). Activists called on the UN to remove Coca-Cola, along with Microsoft, as sponsors of COP27, describing the partnership as “pure greenwashing” (Tigue, 2022). However, Coca-Cola maintained a prominent presence at the conference, just as it has throughout Cairo: “Some organizations will never be sustainable, because what they’re doing mainly is greenwashing, “Hi, like, I’m Coca Cola, I’m not sustainable whatsoever, but I’m gonna invest money to reduce carbon emissions”, they just want the good publicity for being sustainable.”

(E01, 26, F.)

The choice of Egypt was described as “ironic,” “hypocritical”, and “irresponsible” given the fast pace of the country in environmental degradation. Some participants were skeptical of the choice of Sharm El-Sheikh for the conference and its controllability. Controllable places are not always the safest and most secure places given one’s identity in a politically closed society. Another frequently raised point was the accessibility of the conference in terms of the travel, accommodation, and food costs in a seaside resort city. They also expressed frustration and disappointment when asked about the registration experience and access to badges, especially for the Blue Zone. One participant reported that Egyptian NGOs were requested around USD10,000 to secure a booth in the Green Zone (E20, 43, M). Registration fees were therefore a key barrier for the involvement of Egyptian NGOs in the conference. Some organizations were denied participation in the conference, despite their work closely aligning with the event’s focus, including the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (CEWLA), who has worked on the impacts of climate change on Egyptian women in slums and rural areas (Boukhari, 2022).

Therefore, the accessibility of COP27 can be explained regarding (a) access to badges and registration, (b) costs and feasibility of traveling to Sharm El-Sheikh, (c) employing “security excuses” as exclusivity tools,14 and (d) accessibility of the venue, including difficulty navigating from one place to another, limited accessible to washrooms, lack of baby changing tables, and lack of healthy food options (Figure 5). The Green Zone can in fact be described as a food desert: many participants were frustrated by the high prices, long lines, and low quality of the food. The Climate Action Network International newsletter published on November 10 also reported a sewage management crisis in the conference center (Climate Action Network International, 2022). The accessibility of COP27 was also questioned and criticized because of “the secrecy” and the “last minute policy” (FN), as many did not receive their entry QR codes even after the conference began.

The real impact and role of COP27 in the future of climate change were questioned mostly by those who expressed concerns about the costs and carbon footprint of the conference. One participant particularly discussed the potential failure of the Loss and Damage Fund by drawing intersections between democracy, human rights, and the environment:

“We’re trying to take money from the countries of the North, because as compensation for the historical extractivism, which is, of course, very important issue and we all need to back this up, because it’s the only fair thing that can happen, and by coincidence, the governments of the Global South are the most corrupted, and there is no accountability, no transparency. So, who will be monitoring this? Civil society of course. Where is civil society? There is no civil society, they are in prison. So, tackling the human rights issue is inevitable here, if we are speaking about any kind of Loss and Damage [Fund] […] even me advocating for climate injustices […] you need civil society, you need freedom of speech to be speaking about this.”

(E13, 44, M.)

The last set of arguments that should be categorized under the skeptical is the back-to-normal scenario confirming that choosing Egypt as the host for the United Nation Climate Conference will not lead to a major change in the long run:

“There’s not that many of us [Egyptian activists], we have seen a rise because of COP27. But now, four months later, […] the momentum is now not visible anymore, […] it’s more of a thing that they just engage with for the sake of the conference.”

(E08, 26, M.)

Participants also criticized the government’s lack of sustainability vision and long-term plans for engaging civil society in environmental decision making:

“For them [the government] it’s still a checklist for certain keywords that they need to say, so that they can get more funds, and more loans […] everyone is making the other hear what they want to hear. “Will it be a potential for more money?” And now we call it green, and we will be tree huggers.”

(E13, 44, M.)

The hopeful perceived the climate conference as a unique opportunity for bringing together Egyptian ENGOs, organizational and governmental sustainability sectors, and individuals supporting environmental causes in different roles:

“I think it was a great way to bring attention to the environmental issues in Egypt, and to make Egyptians even just think about the environmental issues. And also, to show that there’s a lot of people who are working towards a better future, especially the youth.”

(E07, 32, F.)

“I have to say COP27 was a golden moment that all the actors working on climate got to know each other and were able to get together and get themselves together […] and I hope that that this momentum continues, although unlikely will, but at least there is hope.”

(E04, 40, M.)

Directing public attention to sustainability and environmental degradation in the country and raising awareness in governmental bodies were other benefits of hosting COP that brought hope for a greener future (Figure 6):

“The main challenge [facing environmental groups] was the misunderstanding from the authorities, […] before COP27 or the announce that Egypt will host the COP27, it wasn’t easy to explain to the any responsible [authorities] about the environment, climate change, the human impact, it was like something that to talk about environment, it was a kind of welfare, like, people die, there is more important problems. But also people die from climate change.”

(E20, 43, M.)

Hosting COP27 also offered a world class opportunity, especially to young activists, and opened doors to regional and international cooperations. Many activists and non-activists were excited to meet and network with people from diverse backgrounds and international organizations hoping to shape alliances and coalitions or to find future jobs and opportunities in both the Green and the Blue Zones:

“It’s about the connections. […] I’ve connected with climate activists from Namibia, from Tuvalu, from Fiji Islands, and like I’ve met a queer inclusive feminist from the Pacifics and working on sexual reproductive health and rights in a climate aware approach.”

(E15, 33, F.)

“It was good to found that people share your interest, […] that you are not alone […] there is people they share the same passion with you to also to get to know to new tools, to know how to fight for your case in a better way, […] it was a very good opportunity for me to tell my story”

(E20, 43, M.)

Supporting the position of Egypt in international negotiations, some interviewees indicated that Egypt is the representative of the Global South in the international negotiations and this role should be acknowledged and respected. A few weeks before the conference, a potential participant argued that the government will allow demonstrations and protests simply because young climate activists will support the position of the country in the international negotiations: they will be supporting what Egypt and every other Global South country would and should demand, which is holding the Global North accountable for the climate crisis. Climate justice was therefore another recurring theme that can be categorized under the hopeful:

“If you look at the developing and even LDCs, like the Least Developed Countries, or the small island developing states, how they get one weather event that wipes out 200% or 300% of their GDP in a few hours, that’s why it was a huge accomplishment of COP27 to establish the foundations of the Loss and Damage Fund, which is supposed to be dedicated to really compensating those countries that are worst affected by the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events.”

(E12, 45, M.)

Another subcategory in the hopeful section is related to political opportunity. Some informants viewed COP27 as an opportunity to attract international attention to the reality of life and complexities of collective action in the Egyptian political sphere:

“I think for any Egyptian actor, regardless [of] what they work on, COP27 was a success, and I’m not here looking from an international community’s perspective, […] I’m just looking at the context in Egypt: whether you are a government official, whether you are an environmental activist, whether you are a human rights activist, whatever you’re working on, this was a success. Every single activist was able to spotlight issues they’re working on and adequately engage with different stakeholders and bring to light things that if COP had not come to Egypt this would have never been discussed or acknowledged, that’s why I deem it a success”.

(E08, 26, M.)

When I asked him to elaborate on the comment on human rights activism, he responded:

“I think COP27 provided a platform, an opportunity for human rights activists to speak that they don’t get, just listen, just look at pre- and post-COP, pre-COP all the international journalists were paying attention to issues in Egypt, post-COP they don’t. And now they’re on to COP28, and that’s exactly what I mean.”

(E08, 26, M.)

The line between hopefulness and disappointment, or sometimes helplessness, was sometimes thin for this group. When discussing democracy and the environment in Egypt with a potential participant in the Green Zone, he said, “Let them see what is really going on in here”, referring to the incident of forcing the journalist who asked questions about Alaa in a COP meeting to leave (FN).

The proud considered hosting the conference per se as a win for Egypt. They discussed the difficulty of security management for such an enormous event and admired the Egyptian government for its capabilities in organizing the conference and hosting world leaders. The proud perceived hosting a COP as a major achievement in the country’s status in the international community and indicated that it should be acknowledged as the leader of Africa, the MENA region, and the Global South in general:

“I think Egypt before COP27 isn’t Egypt after COP27”

(E09, 20, F.)

The proud category also referred to various achievements of the country in the environmental and sustainability sectors, including massive renewable energy projects, such as the Benban Solar Park, Egypt’s ranking in the Sustainable Development Goals Report (87th), and the launching of the country’s 2050 Climate Change Strategy, confirming Egypt’s leadership and role model status for other African, Arab, or Muslim countries.15

“Egypt’s Vision 2030 was there since 2015 but like, in the past five years maybe the discourse was more familiar, you start seeing more NGOs coming out and saying that […] we want to advocate sustainability […], especially by the time COP27 was being hosted in Egypt, So more NGOs started leaning more towards working on the SDGs, […] private sector even started creating foundations […] in order to advocate sustainable development as part of their corporate social responsibility.”

(E11, 26, F.)

The proud category mostly reflects those participants who worked directly in or were more engaged with the government, the Ministry of the Environment, or government-funded organizations and entities. They referred to Egypt as the leader of the green transformation in Africa, and some provided concrete evidence and examples to support this argument.

There was also a sense of pride among participants for President El-Sisi’s opening speech, who called “the city of Sharm el-Sheikh the city of peace, and the first of Egyptian cities to know its path towards green transformation”.16 Relatedly, many participants expressed excitement and pride for their country to host the United States’ president and how Joe Biden referred to Egypt as an appropriate host for the COP, as it is historically called the “Mother of the World”.17 Um al-Dunya18 in Arabic has been and is still widely used in Egyptian and Arab pop culture to refer to the country’s ancient civilization, religious significance both for Muslims and Christians, and cultural achievements (Kotb, 2014). The proud category can be understood through nationalism, which plays a major role in shaping activist identity. In some cases, participants shared their growing national pride and sense of belonging to the country through their love for nature and the country’s history.

6. Discussion

As reviewed in the Section 5, there are three main categories to explain how participants perceived COP27 and its implications for their activism. The skeptical, the hopeful, and the proud categories identified and described in this paper indicate the complexity of activists’ relationships with one another, the state, the public, and the international community. The skeptical category targeted the organizers of the conference, the Egyptian government, and the commercial sponsors. The skeptical category refers to perceptions of temporality or superficiality of environmental initiatives, reducing them to public-pleasing or donor-pleasing gestures with labels like greenwashing. Lack of accountability for timely and effective climate action was also mentioned by participants who were pessimistic about the ironic choice of the country as a host for the United Nations climate conference. The hopeful category refers to the perception that the conference provided a unique opportunity for different environmental and climate groups to organize, mobilize, coordinate, and collaborate on mutual goals, such as a (more) sustainable Egypt and Africa. The hopeful category also emphasized the COP’s capacity to serve as a platform for Egyptian ENGOs to mobilize themselves, educate the public and policy-makers about climate crises, and attract international and governmental funding for sustainable initiatives. Lastly, the proud category considered hosting COP a resounding success for the country, framing it as a defining moment in its regional and global standing. Focusing on the environmental leadership of Egypt, the proud perceived this milestone as a turning point for Africa and the Global South and assumed further responsibility for Egypt to represent Southern countries.

Similar qualitative studies on COPs may employ and further advance the categories introduced in this paper. For example, in their chapter on “Climate change governance and institutional structures in Egypt pre- and post-COP27,” El Baradei and Sabbah (2024, p. 283) reported that governmental documents on COP27 “saluted the achievements realized on the national, regional and international levels. At the national level, the government secured funding for its climate change projects and signed agreements with a value amounting to $83 billion. At the African level, it was an opportunity for emphasizing Egypt’s political leadership position among its African peers. And at the global level everyone was proud of the newly established Loss and Damage Fund.”

Although most of what El Baradei and Sabbah’s interviewees described in relation to COP27 can be categorized under the proud and the hopeful, there are also skeptical perceptions, especially when it comes to civil society participation and public engagement:

“… amongst the problems of the existing institutional structure is the lack of a clear participation mechanism to secure societal buy-ins. […] some other experts were doubtful about the participatory process that the government referred to as being part of the development of NCCS [Egypt National Climate Change Strategy 2050].19 Either they said that they were surprised to learn that there is a NCCS, or they participated but were concerned about the extent their opinions will be heeded to”.

(p. 300 [emphasis added])

Applying the three mentioned categories to El Baradei and Sabbah’s chapter verifies that participants cannot be categorized rigidly under one category since their position may change in response to different sets of questions. While this indicates the dispersion of ideas and the non-inclusivity of the categories, it also reflects the multifacetedness and multidimensionality of activists’ experiences and their perceptions of their own activism in relation to the state. These peculiarities cannot be understood without considering the sociopolitical contexts in which they emerge, which may change over time and/or in interaction with regional and global forces and processes.

Understanding the politically different and politically closed sociopolitical contexts of host countries and their implications for local and international activists participating in COPs is particularly important now that the UNFCCC is aiming to increase geographical inclusivity compared to before. COP28 in Dubai and COP29 in Baku proved that totalitarian states use the same or similar tool sets to marginalize and silence activists. For instance, during COP28, United Arab Emirates announced the start of a new mass trial prosecuting more than 80 Emiratis, including human rights defenders. According to Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, “the timing appears to be deliberately intended to send a clear message to the world that it [UAE] will not tolerate the slightest peaceful dissent” (Amnesty International, 2023), which was also the case with the arrest of the Indian climate justice activist and the 11/11 security show in Egypt that I draw upon in this paper. COP28 was argued to be and advertised as “the most inclusive COP ever with Blue and Green zones working side-by-side to deliver real, actionable solutions” (COP28 Overview),20 and yet, no protests were allowed in the Green Zone (Amnesty International, 2023).

Just as Egypt failed to demonstrate accountability for the conduct of COP27 and barriers created against the involvement of local and global climate NGOs and activists, neither the UAE nor Azerbaijan did, and probably neither will Brazil in COP30. Similar to the non-democratic settings within the countries and their consequences for the broader climate policy-making, the lack of space for activists, civil society feedback, and an online public sphere where the flaws of the conference can be freely discussed undermines the checks and balances essential to democratic governance of the COPs.

7. Conclusions

Those with the privilege to occupy positions in higher education can impactfully bridge the gap between the realities of UNFCCC and the aims and wishes of climate activist individuals and groups, human rights defenders, and marginalized communities by using their expertise and platforms to advocate for policies that address both environmental and social justice, while fostering interdisciplinary research that aligns global frameworks with grassroots movements for meaningful, participative, and inclusive change.

This role is significant for educators from the host country. In the context of Egypt, the previously mentioned chapter by El Baradei and Sabbah (2024), “Climate change governance and institutional structures in Egypt pre- and post-COP27”, is an excellent example of providing a channel for vocalizing the informal information and knowledge available to researchers and those in higher education positions within the host country. Laila El Baradei is a professor of public administration in the Department of Public Policy and Administration, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at The American University in Cairo (AUC), and Shaimaa Sabbah is a PhD candidate in Public Health at the AUC. By utilizing their access to resources, informants, and interviewees in different governmental entities, the work of El Baradei and Sabbah manifests how domestic public policy can benefit from what has come to the front in light of the COP. Researchers’ access to cultural, economic, and social capital, research platforms, and cross-border networks can support and amplify climate activist practices and movements while also contributing to the production of knowledge that challenges authoritarian (educational) systems and fosters social change. This type of research contributes to both “Activism as Education” and “Activism is Education” paradigms while also offering tools for an “Activism through Education” approach. The question of how different societies interpret environmental problems and cooperate in solving them is central in global environmental governance. The answer does not always lie in the development of elite-controlled institutions but should be further pursued through grassroots organizations (Thompson, 2001). Climate conferences provide unique opportunities to address the climate justice gap not only between the North and the South but between the governments and civil society. A crucial step toward an informed climate (justice) action is to understand the specificities and prerequisites of global environmental cooperation and to pay proper attention to the delicacies of engaging activists, advocates, and educators from across the globe to form and facilitate possible collaborations. Understanding these delicacies will be possible through developing novel methodologies and research designs, as shown here.

This research contributes to the growing body of literature that examines how research methodologies and higher education can support climate activism in complex sociopolitical contexts, particularly within authoritarian regimes. It considers how academic and research engagement with climate activists and non-activists, social environmental movements and non-movements, and inside safeguarded COP zones or outside them can be sites of resistance and mobilization, even under conditions of political repression and restricted civic space. Innovative research engagement with climate activists not only highlights the potential of academic institutions and scholarly inquiry to resist oppressive structures and foster critical consciousness but also embodies a practice of “disruption, refusal, and subversion” in its own right (Zafar & Startup, 2024). Here, I introduced counter-interviews as a methodological strategy to build trust and invest in researcher–participant relationships, which can be employed and further developed by activist ethnographers working in politically sensitive fields