Why are environmental protesters being criminalized? | World News

Why are environmental protesters being criminalized? (AP)

Climate and environmental protest is rising in line with increasing global temperatures. But new draconian penalties are putting people who rally against climate pollution in jail.In late 2024, in the industrial city of Newcastle on Australia’s east coast, a flotilla of kayaks paddled into the harbor shipping lane to block a massive coal ship from docking.The “climate defenders” gathered by activist group Rising Tide aimed to temporarily blockade the world’s largest coal port and bring attention to a climate crisis caused primarily by burning fossil fuels. It also called for an end to new coal, oil and gas projects.The New South Wales (NSW) state government and the police had attempted to stop the blockade in the courts. But after a judge lifted an order creating an exclusion zone at the port, the protesters held up the coal tanker for over 30 hours. Some 170 activists were arrested for alleged crimes, including the disruption of a major facility. Most could face fines of up to 22,000 Australian dollars (€12,350) or two years in jail, under a 2022 anti-protest bill.The law criminalizes public assemblies that disrupt major public infrastructure such as roads, tunnels and ports, and was a response to past blockades by climate protesters. The then-NSW attorney general said that prior laws did not sufficiently penalize the “major inconvenience that incidents like these cause to the community,” along with “severe financial impacts” due to “lost productivity.”Zack Schofield, a spokesperson for Rising Tide who was also arrested, said the NSW law is being “used to target climate protesters almost exclusively.”

Australia is getting tough

A young climate activist who blockaded a lane on Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2022 was the first to be charged under the NSW law and was initially given a 15-month sentence.Sue Higginson, a member for the Greens Party in NSW, called the imprisonment of the nonviolent protester “undemocratic,” adding that people should not be punished for “engaging in legitimate forms of dissent and civil disobedience.”One in five climate and environment protesters are arrested in Australia, which is the highest rate in the democratic world, according to a 2024 study on climate protest criminalization by researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK.Harsh anti-protest laws have been passed across the country, the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter. That includes the island state of Tasmania, where protests at sites of old growth forest logging can incur a $13,000 fine or a two-year prison sentence.

Climate protest crackdown goes global

Similar punitive anti-protest laws have been enacted across Europe and US. In the UK, recent amendments to the Public Order Act give police increased power to act on “serious disruption” from public protests.Five Just Stop Oil activists were charged under the revised act for organizing the blockade of a UK motorway in 2022.Charged with conspiracy to create a “public nuisance,” the protesters were sentenced to prison terms of between four and five years in 2024 before their sentences were slightly reduced.Said to be the longest sentences for a nonviolent protest in British legal history, they were almost on par with the five-year maximum sentence for aggravated assault, noted Global Witness, UK-based campaigners monitoring the criminalization and killing of environmental defenders.The UK law has been used against climate and environmental protest 95% of the time, said Oscar Berglund, a senior lecturer in international public and social policy at the University of Bristol, who co-authored the 2024 report “Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests.” In Germany, members of the nonviolent climate action group Letzte Generation (Last Generation) were charged in May 2024 with “forming a criminal organization,” said Berglund.The law is typically used against mafia organizations, and has never been applied to a nonviolent activist group, said the researcher.Meanwhile, anti-terror laws and military action have been used to suppress climate actions, including a blockade of a highway in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2023. This was in contravention of statute law, according to an Amnesty International study that described a “sweeping pattern of systematic attacks” that “undermine peaceful protest” across 21 European countries.

Protesters face crippling litigation cases

In addition to anti-protest laws passed by governments, climate activists are facing massive compensation claims from fossil fuel companies for disruptions caused during actions. Known as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP), the anti-protest litigation peaked in March 2025 when a jury in the US state of North Dakota found Greenpeace liable for more than $660 million (€609 million) for its role in an oil pipeline blockade. The action was bought by oil major, Energy Transfer, which has faced years-long resistance to an oil pipeline running through North Dakota — especially from the local Sioux Tribe, who set up a protest at the Standing Rock Reservation that gained international attention.“It’s part of a renewed push by corporations to weaponize our courts to silence dissent,” said Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, of the compensation that could force the organization to shut down its US operations.Beyond the threat of arrest and litigation, some 2,000 environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2023, with 401 cases reported in Brazil and 298 in the Philippines, according to the Bristol University report on the criminalization and suppression of climate and environmental protest.

Are laws a tool of the fossil fuel industry?

“You don’t have to dig very deep,” said Berglund of the influence of oil, gas and coal interests on harsher anti-protest laws and policing. “The protesters are being targeted because they are a threat to fossil fuel profits.” He added that in the UK, anti-protest laws were drafted in consultation with a right-wing think tank, Policy Exchange, which has openly promoted the oil and gas lobby. But for Luke McNamara, a professor at the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales, these “punitive actions” also reflect “growing intolerance” for the disruption caused by climate protesters resorting to peaceful civil disobedience.“Australian politicians regularly share their great affection for the right to protest,” he said in reference to new local anti-protest laws. However, this principle “tends to crumble each time an innovative climate protest garners attention,” he told DW.Back in Newcastle, some 130 Rising Tide protesters who pleaded not guilty remain uncertain about the severity of potential fines or imprisonment when their trial begins later this month. “If the penalties are disproportionate, we will appeal,” said spokesperson Zack Schofield of what could become a test case for judicial willingness to criminalize environmental dissent in Australia — and beyond. For Berglund, such prosecutions confirm the increasing impact of the climate movement. “Protesters are targeted when they are successful,” he said.