Forging possibilities from crisis: radical hope through grassroots action in the Philippines

As climate change intensifies, cultivating hope has become critical for sustaining possibilities and collective action. However, existing scholarship on hope remains predominantly Eurocentric and theoretical, offering limited empirical attention to how hope is generated and sustained through everyday actions in the Global South. This paper addresses this gap by examining four grassroots initiatives in the Philippines engaged in environmental advocacy, post-disaster recovery, youth empowerment, and speculative design. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2024 and guided by the framework of radical hope, we analyse how a climate politics of hope is enacted in practice. Our findings reveal three dynamics of hope as it is lived and practiced in the Global South. First, hope emerges from a critical recognition of injustice and disillusionment with technocratic solutions, coupled with a conviction that action remains necessary. Second, hope takes shape through ‘do-it-ourselves’ politics, where communities mobilize collective agency and creative action when state institutions fail to respond. Third, hope is sustained through relational, embodied and imaginative practices that cultivate connections, repair, and possibilities. Together, these findings demonstrate that hope is not merely an affective stance but a deliberate political endeavour through which marginalized communities challenge injustices and keep alternative futures alive.