MAIN TRENDS IN THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CONCERNING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

One of the factors of discontent on the part of the urban population is the loss of natural landscapes, fragmentation, and destruction of habitat due to the sprawl of settlements and infrastructure. The determining role in conflict resolution belongs to local authorities, who mediate between actors with different social and economic interests. The purpose of this article is to study the prerequisites for the formation and development of the environmental protest movement, caused by the lack of proper communication between the authorities and the public around issues concerning urban landscaping in Kazakhstan. The object of the study is the factors that affect the emergence and development of civil environmental initiatives. The article uses protest event analysis, which allows the dynamics of civic mobilization and its key characteristics to be reconstructed on the basis of various textual sources from social networks. The Meta Corporation (Facebook, Instagram) played a defining role as a communication channel, with more than 200 posts, 132 photos, 74 videos, 188 pieces of textual information, and 165 links. At the same time, it was found that the greatest negative reaction and subsequent escalation of the conflict was caused by the withholding of information on the decisions made by official bodies in the public domain (+43%), while the imitation of dialogue by the authorities gives little hope of a positive resolution of the conflict (-12%). The results obtained with different scenarios underscore the need and responsibility of government agencies to develop and strengthen the capacity of local communities to play an active role in decision-making. Public participation and social partnership expand the number of participants, guaranteeing a new quality of management process in gathering information, setting priorities, making decisions, monitoring their implementation, and evaluating results. © 2022 Mykolas Riomeris University. All rights reserved.