The world is changing, global civil society is the glue holding long term progress together

The world is changing, global civil society is the glue holding long term progress together | Photo: Jukan Tateisi

Election nights can redraw national priorities in hours. What takes far longer to rebuild is continuity, the steady work of keeping projects alive, preserving expertise and maintaining public pressure when attention moves on. That is where global civil society sits, often out of frame yet constantly at work. It is not a single institution and it is not confined to conference halls. It is a living web of people and organisations that act across borders, across sectors and across election cycles, building progress piece by piece where formal power can be slow, divided or temporary.

Global civil society is best understood as an ecosystem. At one end is the individual who starts a small initiative, a community organiser mapping unsafe streets, a teacher running an after school club, a volunteer building a local food network. At the other end are large non governmental organisations, professional humanitarian responders, research and advocacy groups, foundations and co operatives that operate in multiple countries. Between them sits a wide middle, alliances of local associations, campaign networks, watchdog organisations and practical innovators. The scale varies, but the substance is consistent. It is organised human action, aimed at improving lives and protecting shared resources, from modest interventions to system level change.

Its importance becomes clearer against the rhythm of government. States are indispensable, only governments can legislate at scale, allocate large public budgets and enforce standards. Yet governments also change, sometimes sharply. A policy embraced by one administration can be diluted, reversed or deprioritised by the next. Departments are reorganised, funding lines are cut, targets are rewritten, international commitments are reframed. Political volatility does not always signal bad faith. It may reflect economic pressure, geopolitical shocks or domestic polarisation. The effect, however, is tangible. Long term work can be interrupted by short term politics.

Global civil society helps absorb that shock. It provides a form of continuity that does not depend on one cabinet, one coalition or one electoral mandate. It holds institutional memory in places where memory can be politically inconvenient. It sustains expertise through networks of practitioners who learn, document, share and adapt. It maintains services and advocacy when public systems falter, and it keeps issues visible when the political spotlight swings elsewhere. In practical terms, it is a stabilising force, a bridge between urgency and endurance.

The introduction of The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 strengthened that ecosystem by giving it a shared vocabulary. The goals, set within the 2030 agenda, offered a global framework that could link local projects to international priorities, poverty reduction, health, education, equality, climate action and more. For civil society actors, the sdgs functioned less as a slogan and more as a working map. They provide a common reference point for planning, for measuring outcomes and for collaborating across different communities that previously spoke in separate languages, humanitarian aid, environmental protection, social justice, public health, governance.

That co ordinating effect matters. When organisations align their work to a common framework, they can compare results, identify gaps and build partnerships that are larger than any single programme. The sdgs have helped create a meeting point for volunteering and philanthropy, applied research and frontline service delivery, campaigning and accountability journalism. Smaller initiatives gain a recognised structure for explaining what they do and why it matters, without losing the specificity of place. Larger organisations gain a consistent way to connect local realities to global trends.

Global civil society also operates as an early warning system. Before many crises become mainstream political debates, they are documented and named by people working close to the ground. Medical teams report patterns of harm, researchers publish datasets, local groups track pollution, legal advocates record rights violations. In many cases, their contribution is not only what they do, but what they make visible. They turn isolated incidents into evidence, and evidence into public concern.

Humanitarian action offers one clear illustration. Médecins Sans Frontières emerged from a push for independent emergency medicine and public testimony. The model combines service with witness, delivering care while insisting that suffering is not merely a statistic. That dual role, practical and communicative, is one reason civil society can shift public understanding, not simply respond to events.

Development work offers another. BRAC began in Bangladesh as a modest relief effort and expanded over time into large scale programmes in health, education and livelihoods. Its trajectory reflects a pattern repeated across regions. A local response to immediate crisis evolves into durable systems of delivery, training and community empowerment, work that rarely fits neatly into a single political term.

Environmental action shows how civil society connects nature to social resilience. The green belt movement, associated with Wangari Maathai, demonstrated how tree planting could be both ecological repair and social empowerment, particularly for women. The lesson is not only that small actions accumulate, but that practical work can develop into civic leadership, policy influence and cultural change.

Movements can also travel faster than institutions. Fridays for Future began as youth led protest and scaled into an international network within a short time, turning individual action into collective pressure. It illustrates the flexibility of civil society, able to be local and global at once, spontaneous and persistent, without requiring formal hierarchies to spread.

Innovation driven initiatives add another dimension. APOPO’s work training animals to detect landmines and support tuberculosis detection highlights how civil society can test solutions that reduce time and cost in urgent fields. Where a method proves effective, it can influence practice beyond the organisation itself, informing policy, attracting investment and raising standards.

These examples differ in size and style, but they share a method. They identify a concrete problem, mobilise people, sustain a mission and build networks that increase impact. That is why global civil society is not defined by a single ideology. It is defined by function. It is the part of humanity that organises itself to push, build, heal, educate, document, innovate and hold power to account.

This function becomes indispensable when politics becomes unpredictable. Programmes launched with ambition can be stalled by reshuffles or funding cuts. Laws can be reversed. International co operation can be weakened. Climate strategies can be delayed. In those moments, civil society does not replace the state, but it prevents drift. It continues services, safeguards evidence, keeps issues alive in public debate and sustains the long horizon needed for problems that require decades, not terms, such as ecosystem restoration, disease control, social inclusion and educational equity.

The sdgs were designed for that long horizon. They assume sustained co operation across borders and across sectors. In practice, much of that sustained work is carried by civil society, organisations translating global goals into local projects, generating data on what works, connecting communities to institutions and mobilising resources to close gaps. The framework offers direction, the ecosystem supplies momentum.

As the world faces intertwined pressures, climate disruption, inequality, displacement, disinformation and institutional fragility, global civil society has become a critical layer of resilience. Where governments are ambitious, it accelerates delivery. Where governments are constrained, it fills gaps. Where governments retreat, it preserves knowledge and solidarity. Often it does so without visibility, through methodical work far from cameras, and that may be its quiet strength.

The picture that emerges is a constantly shifting map of organised humanity. Some efforts remain small and transform a single community. Others begin modestly and eventually help shape international standards. Together, they create continuity beyond electoral calendars, a capacity for action that crosses borders and survives political change.

The world is changing, and that is precisely why global civil society matters, it keeps the responsibility for progress alive when priorities swing, and it turns shared frameworks like the sdgs into real world action.