> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.europeans.today/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Repression of climate and environmental protest is intensifying across the world - URL: https://www.europeans.today/2024/12/28/repression-of-climate-and-environmental-protest-is-intensifying-across-the-world/ - Published: 2024-12-28T01:05:00.000Z - Updated: 2024-12-28T23:43:59.000Z - Description: A global report reveals rising repression and criminalisation of climate and environmental protests, with state and corporate actors employing anti-protest laws, harsher policing, and violence to stifle activism worldwide. - Author: Oscar Berglund - Tags: Climate Change, Climate Crisis, Activism, Climate Protests, Climate Action, Climate Activism, Environment, Environmentalism, Environmental Action, Policing **Highlights from this story** ● Global criminalisation of climate protests is a growing trend worldwide, involving both democratic and non-democratic states alike. ● Four key forms of repression: Anti-protest laws, court prosecutions, harsher policing, and killings or disappearances. ● Protests and repression vary: Arrests are highest in Australia, UK, Canada; police violence peaks in Peru and Uganda. ● Governments criminalise activists to avoid addressing urgent climate and environmental crises. C limate and environmental protest is being criminalised and repressed around the world. The criminalisation of such protests has received a lot of attention in certain countries, including [the UK](https://theconversation.com/just-stop-oils-harsh-sentences-are-the-logical-outcome-of-britains-authoritarian-turn-against-protest-235148?ref=europeans.today) and [Australia](https://theconversation.com/draconian-and-undemocratic-why-criminalising-climate-protesters-in-australia-doesnt-actually-work-185961?ref=europeans.today). But there have not been any attempts to capture the global trend – until now. We recently published a [report](https://crecep.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/files/2024/12/Criminalisation-and-Repression-of-Climate-and-Environmental-Protests.pdf?ref=europeans.today), with three University of Bristol colleagues, which shows this repression is indeed a global trend – and that it is becoming more difficult around the world to stand up for climate justice. This criminalisation and repression spans the global north and south, and includes more and less democratic countries. It does, however, take different forms. Our report distinguishes between climate and environmental protest. The latter are campaigns against specific environmentally destructive projects – most commonly oil and gas extraction and pipelines, deforestation, dam building and mining. They take place all around the world. Climate protests are aimed at mitigating climate change by decreasing carbon emissions, and tend to make bigger policy or political demands (“cut global emissions now” rather than “don’t build this power plant”). They often take place in urban areas and are more common in the global north. ### **Four ways to repress activism** The intensifying criminalisation and repression is taking four main forms. ### **1\. Anti-protest laws are introduced** Anti-protest laws may give the police more powers to stop protests, introduce new criminal offences, increase sentence lengths for existing offences, or give policy impunity when harming protesters. In the **14** countries we looked at, we found **22** such pieces of legislation introduced since 2019. ### **2\. Protest is criminalised through prosecution and courts** This can mean using laws against climate and environmental activists that were designed to be used against terrorism or organised crime. In Germany, members of Letzte Generation (Last Generation), a direct action group in the mould of Just Stop Oil, were [charged in May 2024](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/23/alarm-as-german-climate-activists-charged-with-forming-a-criminal-organisation?ref=europeans.today) with “forming a criminal organisation”. This section of the law is typically used against mafia organisations and had never been applied to a non-violent group. In the Philippines, anti-terrorism laws have been used against environmentalists who have found themselves [unable to return to their home islands](https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/15/philippines-anti-terrorism-laws-climate-activists/?ref=europeans.today). Criminalising protest can also mean lowering the threshold for prosecution, preventing climate activists from mentioning climate change in court, and changing other court processes to make guilty verdicts more likely. Another example is injunctions that can be taken out by corporations against activists who protest against them. ### **3\. Harsher policing** This stretches from stopping and searching to surveillance, arrests, violence, infiltration and threatening activists. The policing of activists is carried out not just by state actors like police and armed forces, but also private actors including private security, organised crime and corporations. In Germany, regional police have been accused of [collaborating with an energy giant](https://theconversation.com/german-police-have-long-collaborated-with-energy-giant-rwe-to-enforce-ecological-catastrophe-198095?ref=europeans.today) (and its private fire brigade) to evict coal mine protesters, while [private security](https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/las-bambas-mine-peru/?ref=europeans.today) was used extensively in policing anti-mining activists in Peru. ### **4\. Killings and disappearances** Lastly, in the most extreme cases, environmental activists are murdered. This is an extension of the trend for harsher policing, as it typically follows threats by the same range of actors. We used data from the NGO Global Witness to show this is increasingly common in countries including Brazil, the Philippines, Peru and India. In Brazil, most murders are carried out by organised crime groups while in Peru, it is the police force. ### **Protests are increasing** To look more closely at the global picture of climate and environmental protest – and the repression of it – we used the [Armed Conflicts Location Event](https://acleddata.com/?ref=europeans.today) database. This showed us that climate protests increased dramatically in 2018-2019 and have not declined since. They make up, on average, about **4%** of all protest in the **81** countries that had more than **1,000** protests recorded in the 2012-2023 period: [CREDIT: BERGLUND ET AL/ACLED -- CC BY-SA —](https://bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristol.ac.uk/dist/f/1182/files/2024/12/Criminalisation-and-Repression-of-Climate-and-Environmental-Protests.pdf?ref=europeans.today) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/15/40/1540bec0-7154-4feb-b8e1-97f579155b08/content/images/2024/12/000034b.jpg) ###### — Climate protests increased sharply in the late 2010s in the 14 countries studied. (Data is smoothed over five months; number of protests is per country per month.) This second graph shows that environmental protest has increased more gradually: [CREDIT: BERGLUND ET AL/ACLED -- CC BY-SA —](https://bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristol.ac.uk/dist/f/1182/files/2024/12/Criminalisation-and-Repression-of-Climate-and-Environmental-Protests.pdf?ref=europeans.today) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/15/40/1540bec0-7154-4feb-b8e1-97f579155b08/content/images/2024/12/000034c.jpg) ###### — Environmental protests in the same 14 countries. We used this data to see what kind of repression activists face. By looking for keywords in the reporting of protest events, we found that, on average, **3%** of climate and environmental protests face police violence, and **6.3%** involve arrests. But behind these averages are large differences in the nature of protest and its policing. A combination of the presence of protest groups like Extinction Rebellion, who often actively seek arrests, and police forces that are more likely to make arrests, mean countries such as Australia and the UK have very high levels of arrest. Some **20%** of Australian climate and environmental protests involve arrests, against **17%** in the UK – with the highest in the world being Canada on **27%**. Meanwhile, police violence is high in countries such as Peru (**6.5%**) and Uganda (**4.4%**). France stands out as a European country with relatively high levels of police violence (**3.2%**) and low levels of arrests (also **3.2%**). In summary, while criminalisation and repression does not look the same across the world, there are remarkable similarities. It is increasing in a lot of countries, it involves both state and corporate actors, and it takes many forms. This repression is taking place in a context where states are not taking adequate action on climate change. By criminalising activists, states depoliticise them. This conceals the fact these activists are ultimately right about the state of the climate and environment – and the lack of positive government action in these areas. ![PUBLIC SQUARE UK](https://storage.ghost.io/c/15/40/1540bec0-7154-4feb-b8e1-97f579155b08/content/images/2021/09/end-flat-1.png "PUBLIC SQUARE UK") --- ### **Sources:** ##### ▪ This piece was originally published in [The Conversation](https://theconversation.com/repression-of-climate-and-environmental-protest-is-intensifying-across-the-world-246379?ref=europeans.today) and re-published in PUBLIC SQUARE UK on 24 December 2024\. | The authors write in a personal capacity. ##### ▪ **Cover:** Unsplash/[Rico Arce](https://unsplash.com/@jrarce?ref=europeans.today). (Licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/?ref=europeans.today).) ![Creative Commons License](https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/4.0/88x31.png "Cover photograph license") --- ![The Conversation](https://counter.theconversation.com/content/246379/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic)