The Third Sector and Climate Change: A Literature Review and Agenda for Future Research and Action

Abstract

This article presents a summary review of the voluntary sector literature on third sector organizations (TSOs) and climate change. As governments around the world fail to respond adequately to the climate crisis, TSOs are called upon to work with governments, advocate for policy change, and support communities. However, the literature on TSOs and climate change remains limited. We reviewed 68 articles about TSOs and climate change and identified four mechanisms for voluntary action on climate change, which vary on two dimensions—focusing on advocacy or implementation and occurring within or outside government—and include policy advocacy, advocacy for behavior change, participation in governance, and direct interventions. We conclude with five key areas for future research: explaining the relationship between advocacy strategies and context, foregrounding the role of TSOs in climate governance, exploring direct interventions by TSOs, examining community-based TSOs, and linking TSO action and climate outcomes.

Keywords

climate change climate action environmental nongovernmental organizations environmental nonprofit organizations advocacy implementation

Recent decades have seen unprecedented changes in the Earth’s climate system, including rising temperatures, sea levels, and greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2022), all of which are expected to accelerate and affect communities around the world in the decades to come. The United Nations’ (UN) IPCC warns that if we, as a global society, do not take action, climate change and its effects will pose irreversible risks to humans and ecosystems. Furthermore, the risks of climate change often disproportionately affect the poorest and most vulnerable communities.

Due to collective action problems, governments are theoretically best situated to address climate change. However, for a variety of reasons including political motivations, strained resources, and intractability, governments often fail to take adequate action (Lamb & Minx, 2020). Thus, third sector organizations (TSOs)¹ play a critical role in the climate crisis by advocating for policy change, influencing corporate and individual behavior, and supporting vulnerable communities (Bies et al., 2013; Hall & Taplin, 2010). The voluntary sector scholarly field, however, has been slow to respond to the climate crisis, with a relatively limited body of research explicitly examining the relationship between the voluntary sector and the climate crisis. This Symposium Issue presents a critical opportunity to address this gap.

This article contributes to the Symposium Issue by laying the foundation for a third sector research agenda that brings climate change to the forefront. Similar to reviews on related topics (Fahey & Pralle, 2016; Gazley & Guo, 2020), this article does so by reviewing third sector scholarship on climate change to capture the range of topics that have been addressed, describe the ways that TSOs are engaged in climate action and policy, and bring attention to under-researched areas. Specifically, we ask, how have climate issues been addressed in third sector scholarship? Which topics have been covered or neglected in the literature? And, what lessons may be gleaned to move forward climate and voluntary sector scholarship? Our goal is to build on prior research to develop an agenda to support third sector efforts to address climate concerns.

To begin, we discuss the extent to which the nonprofit literature has addressed environmental issues generally and climate change in particular, and why the time is ripe to create a more explicit research agenda to move the field forward. We then discuss our methods and present the results of our literature review. This literature review covers 68 articles across a variety of journals. Our review summarizes literature on TSOs and climate change by identifying the primary mechanisms for voluntary sector influence—policy advocacy, advocacy for behavior change, participation in governance, and direct interventions—while explicating what we do and do not know about them. We conclude with key takeaways from existing literature and critical points for a third sector climate-focused research agenda. The agenda includes a need for studies that (a) examine the relationship between strategy and context in policy advocacy; foreground TSOs in research on either (b) climate governance or (c) direct interventions, particularly adaptation; (d) focus on the role of small community-based TSOs in all four mechanisms; and finally, (e) link TSO action to climate outcomes.

Literature on Nonprofits and the Environment

The current voluntary sector literature—primarily found in journals like Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (NVSQ), Nonprofit Management and Leadership (NML), Nonprofit Policy Forum (NPF), and Voluntas—about the environment touches on a range of topics that are of central importance to scholars interested in TSOs in general (Kagan & Dodge, unpublished manuscript). These topics include democratic participation, advocacy, social movements, nonprofit-government relationships, donor relations, and TSO effectiveness. While making important contributions to each of these areas of inquiry, this scholarship is generally designed to address sector and organizational concerns, rather than environmental issues per se. In addition, environmental scholarship in other fields typically is not adequately integrated into voluntary sector studies. As examples, the sociology literature examines the structure and behaviors of environmental social movements and countermovements (Brulle, 1996; McCright & Dunlap, 2003). The policy and political science literatures ask how and why environmental policies change, sometimes as a result of interest group pressure, shifting coalitions, or the efforts of policy entrepreneurs (Pralle, 2006; Rabe, 2004; Stokes, 2020). These literatures certainly inform voluntary sector studies on TSO environmental action, yet these streams of literature have largely developed independently, and scholars writing about TSOs and the environment do not collectively pursue an agenda about TSOs and the environment. Although there are promising efforts in the field to bring these scholars together—for instance, this Symposium Issue—to date, there has been no assessment of the extant literature on TSOs and the environment nor a common agenda that would bring these scholars together to build needed knowledge to address the environmental crisis. Thus, we examine the voluntary sector literature and key related literature to help build this agenda.

Specifically, this article contributes to the voluntary sector literature on the environment by assessing a subsection of it that focuses specifically on climate change. We primarily ground our review in the voluntary sector literature but also capture literature from adjacent fields to build an agenda uniquely about TSOs and climate change. Between 1972 and 2020, four nonprofit journals—NVSQ, NML, NPF, and Voluntas—included only 85 articles focused on TSOs and the environment beyond a general reference (Kagan & Dodge, unpublished manuscript). This is only 2.35% of all articles published in these journals during this period. Even fewer—10 articles in these journals during this period—focus on TSOs and climate change: 0.28% of articles overall.

Given the practical challenges of addressing climate change, and the slow pace at which governments are taking up the challenge, there is a pressing need to understand the role of TSOs in both taking independent action and holding governments accountable for progress. The paucity of studies in this area, and the absence of a common agenda to build needed knowledge, limits the scholarly field’s ability to make a productive contribution to addressing the climate crisis. The field could develop knowledge useful to practice, to articulate the unique or common challenges TSOs face in addressing climate change compared with other policy domains and how some are beginning to meet these challenges.

To our knowledge, no previous studies have examined the nonprofit scholarly literature to understand what we know about TSOs and the environment, let alone climate change. There are many literature reviews on the environment in other related fields, including sociology (Bohr & Dunlap, 2018), political science (Fahey & Pralle, 2016; Leipold et al., 2019), economics (Heal, 2020), and environmental policy (Biesbroek et al., 2018). However, these reviews are more relevant to theory development in their own disciplines and rarely touch on the role of TSOs, as we illustrate below in our discussion of Fahey and Pralle (2016), which is included in our literature review.

Our aim is to break new ground in the nonprofit field by considering the literature on TSOs and climate change as a distinct sub-field, establishing the current state of knowledge in it, and articulating an agenda for the future to meet the field’s potential to make a productive contribution to addressing the climate crisis. Although our literature review has relevance for advancing knowledge in particular areas of research among TSO scholars in general—such as framing or corporate-nonprofit relations—our main purpose is not to build knowledge in these areas per se, but to establish the boundaries of the TSO and climate change sub-field as a whole and gain a full picture of research within it in order to build a more robust, collective agenda.

Method

To build this collective agenda, we selected a summary literature review approach. Although there are many types of literature reviews with different goals (Cooper, 1988), a summary review provides a “starting point to bridge related areas of work, provoke thoughts, inspire new theoretical models, and direct future efforts in a research domain” (Pare et al., 2015, p. 185). Because summary reviews have been criticized for their subjective approach to article selection (Pare et al., 2015), we draw on methods similar to those used in systematic reviews as described below. Unlike systematic reviews or meta-analyses, which aim to aggregate or synthesize literature in response to focused research questions (Gazley & Guo, 2020), our goal is to analyze the literature, develop a conceptual map of the mechanisms through which TSOs affect climate policies and practices, and provide future direction for scholarship.

To select articles for analysis, we used a multiple step process, shown in Figure 1. Preliminary searches revealed that few articles in nonprofit journals directly address climate change. Thus, we began by examining how nonprofit journals cover environmental issues broadly. We searched four major third sector journals—NVSQ, NML, NPF, and Voluntas—for terms related to the environment appearing anywhere in the article. These searches produced 868 articles across the four journals. We manually reviewed each article for relevance and then coded relevant articles along several dimensions, including whether they significantly discuss environmental issues and which particular environmental issue they cover. This process produced a sample of 85 articles across the four journals that are significantly about environmental issues, and of these 85 articles, 10 are significantly about climate change.²

Figure 1.

Flowchart of article selection process.

Because the nonprofit journals are limited in their coverage of articles about climate change, we broadened our search to another 44 journals.³ We conducted a citation analysis of the 85 articles in our original sample to determine which other journals, at the boundary between nonprofit scholarship and other fields, are most likely to cover TSOs and climate together. The 44 additional journals were cited in at least 5 of the 85 original articles. Using Web of Science, we searched each of these 44 journals for articles relevant to TSOs and climate change. Because our focus is on the voluntary sector literature, we used the sector-related search terms identified in Maier et al. (2016): nonprofit, non-profit, “non profit,” not-for-profit, “not for profit,” NPO*, nongovernmental, non-governmental, “non governmental,” NGO*, “civil society,” “third sector,” and voluntary. We recognize that this list does not include certain terms used in other literatures that may also be relevant to voluntary sector studies (i.e., “social movement”). However, the breadth of the Maier et al. list picked up literature from other fields, allowing us to draw a wide boundary around the voluntary sector literature that includes a sample of the most related literature from adjacent fields. We also included “climate change” OR “global warming” as topic-related search terms. These searches resulted in a total of 157 articles.

Next, we reviewed titles and abstracts, and as necessary, full texts for relevance. To be included in our sample, articles needed a substantive focus on climate change and needed to describe some role for TSOs in more than a passing fashion. All articles in the sample focused on environmental issues, but articles were excluded if they made only passing reference to climate change. Few articles were omitted due to a lack of focus on climate change, and more were excluded for lack of focus on TSOs. For example, the term “voluntary” created many false positives. Out of the 157 articles in these boundary journals, 58 are included in our final sample.

Our final list of articles includes these 58 articles and 10 of the original 85 articles in our initial search that are also significantly about climate change, for a total of 68 articles about climate change and TSOs. Although we recognize that relevant articles may appear in other journals outside our search, we are confident that this process enabled us to identify a comprehensive and purposeful set of articles with a clear focus on TSOs and climate change, covering a broad range of journals, disciplines (sociology, development, management, political science, and public administration), geographical regions, and time periods. Publication dates range from 2000 to 2020, and Figure 2 shows geographic distribution.

Figure 2.

Articles by geographic region.

Using content analysis (McNabb, 2018) similar to coding methods used in other literature reviews (Ospina et al., 2017), we coded the 68 articles along a variety of dimensions, including methods used, theoretical perspective, primary nonprofit topic, primary environmental topic, research question or purpose, and implications. Through an iterative coding process, we developed a typology of mechanisms for voluntary sector influence on climate change through which TSOs do—or could—affect climate mitigation and adaptation policies and practices, described in our results section below. We thus move the voluntary sector and climate change literature forward by suggesting an agenda for future research.

Results of Literature Review

We organized the results of our literature review into four mechanisms for voluntary sector influence on climate change, shown in Table 1. These mechanisms emerged from the literature review and reflect ways that TSOs affect climate change through mitigation or adaptation activities. Mitigation refers to human interventions to reduce GHGs, and adaptation refers to adjustments made in response to actual or anticipated changes in the Earth’s climate or their effects (IPCC, 2015). When possible, we distinguish between mitigation and adaptation, but many articles in our sample do not make a sharp distinction between the two. For example, articles sometimes describe climate activism and policy advocacy generally, and many laws and international agreements contain both mitigation and adaptation components.

Table 1.

Mechanisms for Voluntary Sector Influence on Climate Change.

	Advocacy	Implementation
Activities within government	Public Policy Advocacy (39 articles)	Participation in Governance (11 articles)
Activities outside government	Advocacy for Behavior Change (12 articles)	Direct Interventions (6 articles)

As the table shows, mechanisms are organized based on whether they primarily consist of implementation or advocacy activities and whether they occur within or outside of government. Four ideal types emerge: policy advocacy, advocacy for behavior change (primarily targeting corporations and members of the public), participation in governance or implementation, and direct interventions, such as when TSOs develop technology or manage conservation easements. Table 1 should be read as a heuristic device that delineates key topics (mechanisms) of relevance for TSO engagement on climate issues. Our descriptions of the mechanisms provide theoretical arguments about how each mechanism operates.

Public Policy Advocacy

The majority (57%) of literature on TSOs and climate action relates to public policy advocacy—or efforts to influence public policy—the first mechanism for voluntary sector influence on climate change we identified. Not only does this emphasis on advocacy suggest opportunities for bridging the voluntary sector literature and adjacent literatures, it also suggests that other mechanisms warrant more attention in voluntary sector studies. For instance, the prevalence of literature on public policy advocacy is underscored by two literature reviews from sociology and political science, respectively, that appeared in the results of our searches. First, Rudel et al. (2011) review the sociological literature on the political economy of the environment, and identify three foci in subsequent waves of scholarship: industrial production’s damaging effects on the environment, organized social movements’ challenges to environmental destruction, and mobilizations of “marginalized and disorganized” participants. Second, Fahey and Pralle (2016) review recent literature on environmental policy and politics. Although their review mentions the importance of TSOs in building (activist) networks and in transnational governing arrangements, TSOs are largely missing from discussions regarding influence over climate mitigation and adaptation policies including climate justice, climate adaptation planning and implementation, and democratization of international governing institutions.

In contrast to these prior reviews that only tangentially highlight TSOs and public policy advocacy, this section foregrounds literature that focuses specifically on the advocacy strategies and tactics that TSOs use to influence climate policy. We organize this subset of the literature by the target level of government—international, national, and subnational—each of which has potentially significant influence on climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

International

We begin at the international level where nations and civil society groups come together, often through the UN, to negotiate and reach agreements on global climate policy. A significant number of studies about advocacy at the international level focus on framing, including how TSO frames are reflected in the media (Luxon, 2019), the direct use of framing in public policy advocacy (Allan & Hadden, 2017; Kuchler, 2017), and the development of common frames among actors (Ansari et al., 2013).

Most commonly, studies about framing focus on direct policy influence. Overall, these studies suggest that TSOs have effectively used justice or human rights frames in the context of international agreements to build coalitions and win policy (Allan & Hadden, 2017; Kuchler, 2017), and that a framework of “sincerity as strategy” may be an effective means of advancing more “radical” policy ideas as it simultaneously enables dialogue for mutual understanding and strategic action to win specific goals (Holdo, 2019). However, Bracking (2015) identifies the limitations of these approaches. That is, in the context of the Green Climate Fund, established by the UN to assist developing countries, she finds that NGOs shaped the more “radical” components of the fund’s policy design, including shifts toward low-carbon development, gender equity, and participatory mechanisms. Yet, the process of frame negotiation between NGOs and developing countries versus businesses and developed countries resulted in “non-performance” of the fund. Luxon (2019) examines indirect influence, showing that media pick up environmental NGOs’ (ENGO) negative as well as positive “emotional frames,” suggesting that framing to mobilize and to get media attention are not contradictory.

In contrast to the above studies that focus on one-way influence of NGOs’ framing strategies, Ansari et al. (2013) focus on how diverse actors in transnational climate policy, including NGOs, firms, nation states, and individuals, developed a common frame or “logic.” Although the role of NGOs is downplayed in favor of an analysis of the frames, the study offers unique insights about the importance of developing shared frames in governing the transnational commons.

The remaining articles on international public policy advocacy examine, first, the influence of NGOs and businesses in international climate policy. Downie (2014) observes that both NGOs and organized business interests apply pressure domestically rather than through transnational networks to influence policy (and each other), and Lund (2013) finds that businesses are more influential than NGOs in the context of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. Second, other studies focus on TSOs’ motivations to select advocacy strategies or tactics. Two studies focus on how NGO tactics are affected by peers in advocacy networks (Hadden, 2018; Hadden & Jasny, 2019), while Grundig (2009) offers a rational choice model to explain promising strategies NGOs might employ to affect climate policy.

National

Continuing the focus on public policy advocacy, articles in this section cover advocacy targeting national governments. Some appear in policy journals and apply theories of the policy process, such as the multiple streams framework (MSF), indicating TSOs’ role in a broader policy field. Others center TSOs and elevate issues of strategy and its interaction with context, organizational form, and relationships. Studies in developed countries focus almost exclusively on mitigation policy, while the few articles covering the Global South attend to both adaptation and mitigation.

First, theories of the policy process help explain the adoption of specific policies. For example, Carter and Childs (2018) and Hermansen (2015) apply the MSF to explain how NGOs successfully advocated for the passage of the U.K.’s Climate Change Act and Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative, respectively. Also, Torney (2019) uses policy diffusion theory to describe how Finland and Ireland adopted climate policies modeled after the U.K.’s Climate Change Act following NGO pressure. However, these policies were subsequently weakened through pressure from domestic private interest groups.

In the context of the Global South, studies take a broader view of the policy process and examine NGO influence at various stages of the policy cycle. These studies are among the only ones to attend seriously to both climate mitigation and adaptation policies and collectively describe an important role for TSOs in implementation. Based on a review of 19 articles on ENGOs in the policy process in Southeast Asia, Haris et al. (2020) find that ENGOs play a large role in implementation, a smaller role in policy formulation, and an active role in monitoring and identifying policy options. Similarly, in the context of the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategies and Action Plans, Lopa and Ahmad (2016) found that NGOs and CSOs did not participate in agenda setting or final decision-making but were used as personnel through stakeholder consultations for both formulating and implementing policy. They argue that states seek to control TSOs but will capitulate when foreign donors condition aid on TSO participation.

Next, several studies focus on the advocacy strategies TSOs use to influence public policy at the national level. Although some studies focus on broad campaigns, such as the multi-pronged strategy to raise awareness of air pollution in China (Fedorenko & Sun, 2016), others focus on specific strategies. For example, Vandepitte et al. (2019) studied a climate justice network in Germany and showed how it managed its legitimacy as it negotiated tensions between its dual disruptive and civil strategies for coordinating action in a decentralized network. Also, Luhtakallio and Tavory (2018) focus on narratives and show how climate activists and NGOs in two national contexts, Finland and Malawi, coordinated action through forms of engagement that create commonality. Together these studies reveal how TSOs apply specific forms of engagement to enable coordinated action on climate. They also suggest the importance of relational outcomes as means for accomplishing other goals.

As with the international level, several studies focus on national-level framing and discourse. Teräväinen et al. (2011) highlight how national contexts in France, Finland, and the United Kingdom influence the framing of climate risk and energy security, while Kim (2016) shows how “environmental developmentalism” discourse prioritizes business interests in South Korea. McDonald (2016) finds that ENGOs in Australia failed to frame climate change in ways that would sustain public interest or guide policy solutions. Specifically, ENGOs poorly managed a tension between their inside efforts to frame issues in terms of conservation and their outside relationships with the grassroots climate movement. A better strategy would grasp “the field,” and shift the frame to create public mobilization to move beyond impasse.

Although studies on national advocacy strategy tend to focus on TSO activity, one study tests public opinion on advocacy strategy. Liu (2018) uses cultural theory to demonstrate that people in Taiwan with different cultural orientations—egalitarian and individualist—view protest-based advocacy strategies positively and negatively, respectively. She argues that cultural theory provides a better explanation of differences in public opinion than partisan affiliation.

Other studies about public policy advocacy at the national level foreground contextual factors. For example, Dolšak (2013) and Never and Betz (2014) examine the relationship between climate policy and contextual factors in transitional or “emerging” economies, including the strength of the NGO sector and interactions with the strength of green energy and country financial capacity. Overall, these studies suggest that NGOs play an ambiguous role in emerging economies, highlighting a need for more research about what factors might support climate mitigation in these contexts.

Furthermore, a few studies indicate that context may be more important than strategy, begging questions about how to advocate effectively in challenging political contexts. Most directly, Hall and Taplin (2007) compare advocacy effectiveness in the United Kingdom and Australia and find that contextual factors—such as national leadership, fossil fuel industry influence, and TSO legitimacy—explain success in the UK and failure in Australia (see also Hall & Taplin, 2010, below). Relatedly, Kostka and Zhang (2018) and Henry (2010) highlight the challenges ENGOs face in China and Russia, respectively, where ENGOs exert some influence through elite channels or transnational networks but these result primarily in symbolic changes to environmental governance.

Subnational

Most articles about subnational public policy advocacy are only tangentially about TSOs, and almost all focus on climate mitigation. Articles in this section often focus on scalar advocacy and targeting the right level of government. For example, in California, Hall and Taplin (2010) find that, in unfavorable national contexts, advocacy groups target their efforts at the state level. Byrne et al. (2007) argue that civil society movements in the United States should target their efforts at the local level, and Verhoeven (2021) and Rootes (2013) describe how local efforts may be more effective when coupled with advocacy at higher levels of government.

Other articles focus on public participation (Adkin et al., 2017) and local climate action groups (Riedy & Kent, 2015). Although most of these studies focus on one-way advocacy, Dodge (2017) documents mobilization and counter-mobilization in the fracking controversy in New York State. She shows how intensive competition among multiple pro- and anti-fracking advocates generated impasse. Rejecting a view of advocacy as between only two groups, she shows how intractability arises from complex, multiple interactions within and across coalitions. In contrast to a strong presence of TSOs creating impasse, Portney and Berry (2014) show that the mere presence of ENGOs is associated with local sustainability policies.

Finally, in a study of adaptation, Musah-Surugu et al. (2019) examine the role of NGOs in local climate change adaptation in Ghana, finding that NGO success builds on a three-part strategy involving advocacy, service provision, and local empowerment.

Although studies at international, national, and subnational levels have somewhat different foci, a few cross-cutting lessons emerge. For example, research on framing, policy entrepreneurs, and other advocacy tactics underscores the challenges that TSOs often face when opposing powerful economic interests. Studies also highlight the importance of both strategy and context, and point to a need for a strategy to span multiple scales or overcome tensions, such as between mobilization and winning policy. Furthermore, to the extent studies focus on outcomes, these tend to be intermediate relational outcomes, which may or may not aid in securing climate policy. Therefore, more research is needed to link strategies to climate outcomes.

Combined, these studies suggest a need for research on how TSOs win favorable policies in unfavorable contexts, including how advocacy strategies address contextual factors at different scales, how advocates make decisions about where and how to dedicate resources, and how TSOs might counter the influence of power economic interests. Furthermore, while studies suggest that framing strategies are often effective, particularly at international levels, future research should continue to explore how framing and non-framing strategies combine and the circumstances under which they are successful, particularly given the strength of countervailing business interests.

Finally, most policy advocacy research, especially at higher levels of government, focuses on mitigation, suggesting a need for more studies on climate adaptation, including the ways that TSOs address energy and environmental justice concerns across levels of government. In particular, more research is needed on the relationship between advocacy and service provision in local contexts and whether these can be complementary, particularly in adapting to climate change, and also on how to advance climate policy in the Global South.

Advocacy for Behavior Change

The second mechanism for voluntary sector influence we identified in the literature is advocacy for behavior change, which occurs when TSOs directly appeal to corporations and the public to change their behaviors. This section explores the more limited literature on these topics.

Direct appeals to the public

A common theme in studies of interventions directly targeting the public is that current efforts may only achieve outcomes at the individual or household level. Two studies in the United Kingdom highlight the potential impacts of public engagement with TSOs on carbon-reducing behaviors and suggest that deeper forms of engagement such as volunteering (Büchs, 2014), or substantial interventions (Bardsley et al., 2019), produce the best results, although preexisting concern for climate change may promote volunteering in the first place (Katz-Gerro et al., 2015). Howell (2012) reports on the opinions and experiences of individuals involved in carbon rationing action groups (CRAGs) that set carbon emission limits for members and hold them accountable. Howell finds that while CRAGs do not support collective carbon rationing per se, they support carbon literacy and reduction at the individual level.

Likewise, in the Global South in northern Kenya, Grillos (2018) found that an NGO intervention to affect decision-making in pastoral communities prone to climate-related droughts improved women’s participation at community levels, but actual behavioral changes were only seen at household levels.

Direct appeals to corporations

Corporations are responsible for a significant portion of global GHG emissions. Thus, TSOs frequently attempt to influence corporations, either through adversarial activities or partnerships. Regarding adversarial activities, and like the public policy advocacy literature, institutional context shapes third sector influence on corporate behavior. Doh and Guay (2006) find that TSOs have more opportunities to influence corporate social responsibility in the EU where the institutional structure is friendlier to environmental concerns, while U.S. policy is heavily influenced by industrial and economic concerns. Although, Durand and Georgallis (2018) find that TSO prominence is associated with higher commitments by firms to the solar industry, likely because TSOs shape public perception.

Regarding partnerships, the few studies in this area examine either the drivers or motivations of partnerships, or more limitedly, their outcomes. Existing research shows how events and networks shape partnerships between TSOs and corporations (Shwom, 2015), and what motivates TSOs to enter partnerships with renewable energy firms, such as averting environmental harms and promoting green jobs (Lyakhov & Gliedt, 2017). In the only study directly about outcomes, albeit organizational outcomes, Dupuis and Schweizer (2019) describe how two major food retailers in Switzerland became climate leaders through supportive regulatory and contextual conditions, including partnerships with the World Wildlife Fund. Related research opines that “public interest sector” representation on corporate boards of directors could influence U.S. climate policy (Hein & Jenkins, 2017) and argues for relational approaches to understanding renewable energy partnerships, which often include TSOs (Kruckenberg, 2015).

In summary, TSOs may advocate for change by directly appealing to the public and corporations. They can shape individual behavior to reduce carbon footprints, but deeper levels of engagement produce better effects and benefits may be limited to individual and household levels, suggesting a need for research regarding whether such efforts can achieve broader impacts. Furthermore, TSOs can influence corporations, particularly when the context is favorable and when TSOs develop partnerships with corporations, but more research is needed on the actual climate outcomes of partnerships. Influencing corporations through adversarial approaches seems highly contingent on context.

Participation in Governance

The third mechanism for voluntary sector influence on climate change is participation in governance, such as overseeing or implementing government policies or programs. However, few articles focus directly on the role of TSOs in governance, which is surprising given research about TSO influence in the implementation of climate policy noted above. Although there is a wide body of literature on environmental governance, TSOs are rarely the focus of these studies. For example, a few articles in our sample describe programs that may include TSOs in their governance schemes without highlighting how TSOs participate or the implications of their participation (Evar, 2011; Howard et al., 2015; Matisoff, 2013). The limited articles that do focus generally on TSO engagement in governance in our sample support positive results (Auer, 2000; Sovacool, 2011).

A few studies examine specific cases or instances where TSOs play a role in governance. These include monitoring corporations, providing expertise, and facilitating governance in the context of sustainable development (Voegtlin & Scherer, 2017); managing specific projects, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives in Nepal (Rutt & Lund, 2014); participating in regional collaborative arrangements to address climate adaptation (Bauer & Steurer, 2014); and coordinating carbon offset initiatives (Rousse, 2008). Combined, these studies highlight benefits of TSO participation in governance such as enhanced participation and innovation (Sovacool, 2011) but also suggest that, at times, collaborative schemes result in more talk than action (Bauer & Steurer, 2014). Furthermore, TSOs also must navigate donor pressure, which sometimes forces them to scale up or engage in activities with limited impacts (Rubinov, 2020; Sachedina, 2010).

The limited research in this area suggests a need to study these arrangements in more detail to draw out lessons to promote concerted action on climate change, explore the ways TSOs can add value, and document the benefits and costs TSOs face in directing resources toward collaborative governance. Key questions relate to the consequences of programs involving or led by TSOs, the circumstances under which they succeed, and the management practices or resources needed to support their activities. Studies might also compare the relative potential of collaborative governance versus advocacy to achieve transformational change.

Direct Interventions

The final mechanism for voluntary sector influence on climate change is direct interventions, where TSOs might independently influence climate mitigation or adaptation. A few studies focus on how TSOs can directly further climate change mitigation by managing conservation easements (Rissman et al., 2013); deploying solar geoengineering, a technology that blocks solar radiation (Reynolds & Wagner, 2020); and effectively implementing local energy programs (Hillman et al., 2018).

As with prior mechanisms, studies in the Global South focus on TSO adaptation efforts. For example, TSOs use microfinance instruments to assist household climate adaptation (Fenton et al., 2017), provide direct aid for climate vulnerable farmers (Aryal et al., 2020), and manage the conflict risks that climate change presents in pastoral communities (Abrahams, 2020). However, these programs are limited. For example, microfinance loans are often used to repay existing loans, and men are less likely than women to seek TSO assistance.

These studies provide a glimpse of the roles TSOs can play in direct interventions—by using easements, deploying technology, and financing or supporting adaptation—but they only scratch the surface of a larger reality. More research is needed to understand the breadth of TSO direct engagement in climate mitigation and adaptation.

Discussion

The goal of this article is to provide a summary review of literature on TSOs and climate change, which may serve as a foundation for a common agenda to unite scholars interested in the intersections of these topics. This summary review is anchored in the voluntary sector literature, and while it incorporates literature from related fields, we acknowledge that additional scholarship exists in other fields that may inform the topics and questions raised in this review (e.g., Grant & Vasi, 2017). Furthermore, subjects closely related to climate change are beyond the scope of what might reasonably be covered in this summary review, such as urban migration (Castellano et al., 2021) and renewable energy technology (Vasi, 2009). Future research should continue to explore these topics in conjunction with climate change, including through targeted literature reviews.

To move forward scholarship on the voluntary sector and climate change, in addition to providing an organizing heuristic derived from existing literature, this review suggests a few major takeaways and key related points to be addressed in future research. First, the literature on public policy advocacy, our first mechanism for voluntary sector influence, is the most developed among the four mechanisms, and studies highlight a tension and a potential complementary relationship between strategy and context. Although these studies hint at a pathway forward, more research is needed to determine the most effective strategies or activities to win favorable climate policy in challenging contexts. Some studies leave the impression that a favorable context is a necessary condition for effective climate policy and action, but others are optimistic that change is possible even in difficult contexts. Studies in countries such as China and the United States will be crucial, where the national contexts present challenges and organized counter-mobilizations are highly effective. Related topics that may help illuminate the relationship between context and advocacy include scalar politics and comparative studies designed to shed light on this critical relationship between context and strategy.

Second, TSOs participating in climate governance, our third mechanism, operate in complex policy fields among diverse actors. The environmental governance literature generally illuminates these complexities, but, with a few exceptions, these studies obscure the role of TSOs. Existing research makes clear that TSOs play a key role in governance schemes (e.g., leading collaboratives) and are essential for outcomes, such as governance legitimacy and policy change. However, studies fail to examine what TSOs uniquely bring to the table, when their participation is meaningful rather than symbolic, and what outcomes may be expected with different types of TSO participation in different contexts. Studies that examine TSO influence at both policy formation and implementation would be particularly meaningful, especially when these happen at different levels of government.

Third, studies on other types of TSO action are warranted, particularly research on TSO direct interventions, our fourth mechanism. Studies suggest myriad ways TSOs directly mitigate climate change or facilitate adaptation, such as developing or deploying new technologies, facilitating voluntary programs, or partnering with corporations to reduce carbon emissions. Scholarship is behind practice in this regard, though, and details are scant about many of these initiatives and whether and under what conditions they work. Our search uncovered only limited research about climate adaptation in particular, thus underscoring a need for research in this area, including TSO capacity needs as they support communities. Relatedly, there is a dearth of literature on the relationship between advocacy and direct intervention either across organizations or within single organizations performing multiple functions. Organizations playing both roles may be uniquely positioned to inform advocacy efforts, but they may also face resource constraints.

Fourth, across all four mechanisms, literature is weighted toward large, well-resourced TSOs. Given their influence, studies on these organizations are critical. However, the literature largely overlooks smaller TSOs, particularly formal and informal organizations representing identity groups, indigenous people, and vulnerable communities. More research is needed to understand the needs of communities and representative organizations and when and how interventions and their outcomes change with their inclusion. Some evidence exists that vulnerable groups can have significant impacts when they work collectively. Yet, many communities and identity groups remain overlooked in policymaking and governance. Thus, studies are needed that examine where TSOs are missing, how communities are affected as a result, and how organizations, coalitions, and networks emerge and develop to amplify their voices.

Finally, articles across all mechanisms pay some attention to outcomes but largely focus on interim outcomes, including success with building coalitions, getting media attention, raising public awareness, or informing policy design. Some research connects to policy or climate outcomes directly, with most focused on whether TSOs affect policy adoption, individual or corporate behavior, or institutional arrangements, but neglect the challenging task of assessing whether TSO efforts result in less carbon or GHG pollution (mitigation) or greater protection of vulnerable communities (adaptation). Furthermore, we see evidence that organized business and economic interests can thwart the achievement of key outcomes, but little on how exactly this counter-mobilization blocks outcomes and what to do about it (cf. McCright & Dunlap, 2003).

Conclusion

Governments around the world increasingly focus attention on climate mitigation and adaptation policies, with some further ahead than others. As governments continue to respond to climate change, our attention on TSOs should not be read as off-loading important responsibilities to the third sector. The third sector lacks the legitimate use of force and the capacity and resources to address climate change that governments are more likely to possess. Yet, the third sector plays a critical role, not least of which includes pressuring and holding governments accountable for passing rigorous policies, providing resources to ensure that policies get fully funded and implemented, and protecting the most vulnerable groups. Outside governments, TSOs may mobilize the public to take action collectively or in their own lives, push the private sector toward low-carbon ways of doing business, or generate other interventions.

This literature review documents what we know about the role of TSOs in addressing climate change, which suggests that they are already doing much of this work. Yet voluntary sector scholarship has not caught up to the reality of TSO action on climate change. The need for knowledge in this area is urgent. Climate change is among the world’s most pressing challenges, and TSOs are uniquely situated to take action within and outside of government. By providing an organizing framework and identifying critical areas for future scholarship, this research helps illuminate the path forward. Focused attention in nonprofit scholarship can result in more robust models of TSO action on climate that can inform both theory and practice. Thus, this article makes a distinctive contribution by paving the way for environmentally focused nonprofit research and for devoting additional resources to critical issues facing humanity.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Yongjin Choi and Royal Srem Sai for their research assistance on this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jennifer A. Kagan

Notes

Author Biographies

Jennifer A. Kagan is an assistant professor of public administration at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research lies at the intersection of nonprofit management and environmental policy. She incorporates legal issues into questions involving representation, nonprofit advocacy, and environmental policymaking.

Jennifer Dodge is an associate professor of public administration and policy at University at Albany, SUNY and editor of Critical Policy Studies. Her research focuses on the role of civil society organizations in public deliberation and policy advocacy, and the interpretation of policy conflicts in the environmental field. She writes about interpretive methodologies.

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