Eco-Roundup: The things we get wrong about repression of environmental activists
Every month, I assemble a round-up of stories I’m following and issues I’m covering, with palate cleansers at the end.
This month, two different organizations, Global Witness and Climate Rights International released reports on the repression of environmental activists. They both contained a lot of vital information — but they also allowed readers to miss some things about the way climate and land defender movements are suppressed internationally.
Every year, Global Witness puts out a report tallying assassinations of land defenders. In 2023, they documented 196 killings, with a quarter of them happening to people who were fighting mining and extractives. Nearly half of the killings took place in Colombia, and half of those were tied to organized crime. Eighteen people were killed in the tiny country of Honduras — the most per capita. Nearly half of all killings internationally were of Indigenous people. Global Witness also lays out other violent tactics land defenders face internationally, including forced disappearances. It cites research indicating that “across Mexico, 93 land and environmental defenders were disappeared between 1 December 2006 and 1 August 2023.”
This is sobering stuff. Global Witness partners with an array of organizations to verify these cases, and they’re clear about the fact that the numbers are an undercount. They dedicated a whole page to the deaths that remain “hidden” and titled the report “Missing Voices.”
During New York’s Climate Week, I moderated a panel with the organization Climate Activist Defenders. They mentioned that a large proportion of the climate defenders they hear from, who are facing security threats, are based in the Middle East. It’s a part of the world that doesn’t get a ton of coverage in the reports by groups like Global Witness. The organizers I spoke to argued that in places with authoritarian regimes, the civic space is so restricted that climate activism, which typically involves challenging powerful state and corporate actors, is hushed before it can transform into demonstrations in the street. Simply providing climate education could be enough for someone to face a security threat. These stories don’t often get told.
This year, Global Witness dedicated a section to the “global surge in anti-protest legislation,” especially in the Global North. The theme was also the topic of Climate Rights International’s new report. Across the so-called Western world, people are getting arrested and landing long sentences for all kinds of disruptive — but nonviolent — climate demonstrations. In 2022, an Australian activist became the first to be charged under one of that country’s new anti-protest laws. In the UK, amendments to the Public Order Act, passed in 2023, have already been used to arrest at least 125 people for blocking key national infrastructure. Last year a Dutch activist was arrested and charged with sedition after simply tweeting about an Extinction Rebellion protest that he planned to attend, and a French court attempted to entirely ban a climate group, though the ruling was overturned.
In 2024, German activists were charged with “forming a criminal organization.”
There’s this tendency I’m seeing to carve out a separate category of land defender criminalization for those who face harsh punishments in the Global North, in countries viewed as democratic. It’s true that there’s been a notable wave of laws specifically passed to go after environmental activists and fossil fuel opponents across North America, Europe, and Australia. However, I think it’s important to be really careful about analyzing what’s happening in these places separately from the rest of the world. For one thing, it makes it easy to miss trends. Legal structures designed for organized crime have not just been used against land defenders in Germany and the U.S. but also in Honduras and Guatemala. I haven’t done the reporting, but if you dug deeply, you might find that that set of tactics found its footing in Central America and the Global South before making its way to wealthier countries.
Also, a lot of the laws in the U.S. and Europe center around the idea of protecting projects that are important to national security. That framing got its footing in the wake of 9/11, as the so-called Global War on Terror launched. That international crackdown on terrorism not only laid the foundations for this latest wave of anti protest laws specifically aimed at fossil fuel industry critics, but it also allowed environmental activists all around the world to be re-framed as terrorists, according to the regional context.
To me, one of the most important lessons of these new anti-protest laws is that violent crackdowns on terrorism or crime frequently provide cover to go after political dissidents who make environmental arguments. It’s a conclusion that would have been more difficult to make without looking at the criminalization of environmental defenders beyond the Global North. And it’s something we should be especially cognizant of as universities, states, and nations introduce new restrictions on speech in response to pro-Palestine protests.
The Global North crackdown on environmental protest is interesting in large part because it reveals the hypocrisy of nations that claim to be more enlightened and democratic than the countries they previously colonized. Still, I’m curious to know more about those hidden stories and what it’s like to fight for the environment in some of the places we’ve all dismissed as closed to dissent.
Other stories I’m following:
“Reminiscent of the worst part of the McCarthy Era”
Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, is demanding that the IRS revoke the tax-exempt status of nine organizations that have criticized Israel for its mass killings and environmental destruction in Gaza, including Jewish Voice for Peace and the People’s Forum. These letters suggest that simply supporting groups that participate in civil disobedience could be grounds for revoking an organization’s tax-exempt status. If this logic were accepted, it would threaten the existence of numerous environmental and Indigenous organizations. The People’s Forum is the venue that hosted the panel I moderated during Climate Week, which was focused on how to keep environmental activists safe around the world. These letters show why the link between attacks on pro-Palestine protesters and the climate movement is not theoretical.
“I am proud to spearhead legislation to jail eco-terrorists who try to shut down pipelines”
Senator Ted Cruz is leading a group of U.S. Senators in pushing a bill to crack down on protests against fossil fuel infrastructure. A law on the books now says that anyone convicted of “damaging or destroying” an interstate oil or gas pipeline faces criminal charges. Under the Safe and Secure Transportation of American Energy Act, that language would be modified to “damaging, destroying, vandalizing, tampering with, disrupting the operation or construction of, or preventing the operation or construction of” a pipeline. Cruz says in his press release that this is a response to actions by activists known as the “valve turners,” two of which attempted to shut down Enbridge oil pipelines via above-ground valves. However, this language could plausibly create new penalties for someone who simply blocks the road to a construction site.
“They’re essentially taking something that would be a trespassing charge and turning it into a felony”
On a related note, reporters Hilary Beaumont and Nina Lakhani published a valuable duo of investigations showing how fossil fuel lobbyists are writing laws curtailing civil liberties. The lobbyists coordinated with policymakers across the U.S. to continue spreading the anti-protest laws that first proliferated in the wake of the Standing Rock movement in 2016. (Ted Cruz’s bill is an extension of this trend.) According to the first report, “Emails between fossil fuel lobbyists and lawmakers in Utah, West Virginia, Idaho and Ohio suggest a nationwide strategy” to deter climate protests with the threat of long jail sentences. A second piece profiles how one of these laws was used against people protesting the Mountain Valley Pipeline, whose major shareholder is EQT Corporation. MVP was pushed forward by Biden as a national security priority, also under pressure from the fossil fuel industry. Many of the Mountain Valley pipeline opponents are also facing civil suits from the company, another strategy often used to pressure environmental defenders.
Georgia prosecutors dropped 15 counts of money laundering aimed at an Atlanta bail fund that supported organizers demonstrating to stop the Atlanta Police Training Center known as Cop City. Some of those they supported identified as forest defenders and objected to the project partly on environmental grounds. “Atlanta Solidarity Fund leaders Marlon Kautz, Adele MacLean and Savannah Patterson still face racketeering charges, along with 58 others who were indicted last year” under a law designed to go after organized crime.
“She has been fully pardoned. It was very sudden.”
Vietnamese officials released climate activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong early from jail this month, as the country’s top diplomat headed to the U.S. for the UN General Assembly. The activist had been sentenced to three years for tax evasion. Four other environmentalists faced similar charges. This is a useful demonstration of the power of international pressure. We included an interview about Hong’s case in Drilled’s series about criminalization of environmental defenders.
The latest addition of Grist and High Country News’s series on trust land is up, and it’s great, obviously. State trust lands generate revenue for public institutions, usually via activities like oil and gas drilling or livestock grazing or timber harvesting. The problem is that most of that land was swindled away from Indigenous people. A lot of this happened during the allotment era, when reservations were carved up into individual parcels, some of which were assigned to tribal citizens, and the rest of which were handed off to white people and states. This left reservations looking like checkerboards. Reporters Anna V. Smith & Maria Parazo Rose wrote about what it might look like for states to give the land back and created a super cool interactive map, so you can see where state trust lands are located on different reservations.
Palate Cleansers
I cover topics that are heavy and distressing to take in, so I'm ending these posts with things that make me feel grounded: food, nature, community.
Something Delicious: pickled perilla leaves
This summer I grew shiso, also known as perilla. It was broad-leafed and not the purple color I expected. But I made this super delicious Korean pickled perilla and was so so pleased. Ate it with rice and my heart sang.
Garden Update: Harvest nuggets
Hustling to leave town for six weeks, I harvested as much as I could. I made three different kinds of pesto and pickled some peppers. Committed also to clearing space in the freezer, I discovered a new delicacy: pesto pasta with chicken nuggets. The harvest is complete.
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