The UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders has said that European nations must end the repression and criminalisation of peaceful protest and urgently take action to cut emissions in line with the Paris climate agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C.
After a year-long inquiry that included gathering evidence from the UK, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, Michel Forst said that the repression faced by peaceful environmental activists was a major threat to democracy and human rights.
According to available reports, all of the nations inspected are party to the Aarhus convention, which states that peaceful environmental protest is a legitimate exercise of the public’s right to participate in decision-making and that those engaged in it must be protected.
But Forst was quoted as saying that across Europe the response to peaceful environmental protest was to repress rather than to enable and protect.
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“The environmental emergency that we are collectively facing and that scientists have been documenting for decades cannot be addressed if those raising the alarm and demanding action are criminalised for it,” he said. “The only legitimate response to peaceful environmental activism and civil disobedience at this point is that the authorities, the media and the public realise how essential it is for us all to listen to what environmental defenders have to say.”
Nations are required to urgently cutting emissions to meet the Paris agreement, acting to restore 30% of all degraded ecosystems by 2030 and working to substantially reduce deaths and illnesses from air pollution.
Reacting to this, Forst said that the failure of European nations to act urgently would lead to more direct-action protest. “To date, governments continue to take decisions that directly contradict the clear and urgent recommendations of scientists,” he said.
Forst said the parts of the media and some politicians across Europe were criminalising environmental activism and labelling it a “terrorist threat”. He highlighted the 2023 European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend (TE-SAT), which features environmental activism in its entries on current “extremism”.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
