This is an edited excerpt from Oscar Berglund’s interview on the Land and Climate Podcast, which you can listen to below.
In recent years, laws have been appearing in various countries which limit and criminalise climate and environmental protests. Wanting to understand this trend, my colleagues at University of Bristol and I began to investigate. Looking at both qualitative data and quantitative data sets about the policing of climate protests, we wrote the report Criminalisation of Climate Protest, which identifies the ways that climate and environmental protest have been criminalised and repressed.
The first form of repression of environmental and climate protest is introducing punishment for new crimes that weren’t previously punishable. Expanding sentences or ways to police protests that weren’t previously allowed. The second form of repression identified is the criminilasation through prosecutions or court. This can be done by bringing more cases to court and using existing laws, often anti-terror laws have been used to criminalise protesters in countries like Germany and the Philippines.
Traditionally, there’s been an allowance of protest and an understanding that these actors are part of the political system. This tolerance is decreasing however, seen through the harsher sentences that climate protesters are receiving: in the UK, Just Stop Oil activists faced 4-5 years jailtime for blocking the M25.
Protesters are political actors – not elected political actors, but they act politically in a way that is different from being a member of a party. They are not driven by self-interest in the way that most criminals are. When protest is criminalised in public discourses, media, or courts, it removes that political agency, because being a political agent comes with legitimacy. As citizens, we should be able to intervene politically in our society, especially when not acting out of self-interest. Removing politics and not allowing climate change to be discussed in court removes the motivation and explanation for sitting on a road and blocking traffic. Obviously, climate change is exactly why they sat on that road.
People and institutions should view this criminalisation as a threat to democracy and a threat to net zero policies. We need to take this threat seriously and reverse the criminalisation and oppression of these protesters. We should recognise them as legitimate political actors, whose methods you might not necessarily agree with, but who deserve to be treated as such. This criminalisation and repression of climate and environmental protest serves as a substitute for taking adequate action.
As told to Alasdair MacEwen, with additional editing by Anna Spree.
Dr. Oscar Berglund is the Senior Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy in the School for Policy Studies at University of Bristol.
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