The Growing Criminalization of Climate Protest: A Look at Tactics and Human Rights

1. Introduction: A Troubling Contradiction

We're in a strange time. As science gets clearer about the climate crisis and people want action, governments are cracking down on those who speak out. This is happening in democracies and autocracies, which is a big problem for human rights and for dealing with climate change. This paper looks at this disturbing pattern, breaks down how climate protests are being criminalized, and suggests ways to protect basic democratic rights.

This paper argues that criminalizing climate and environmental protest is a failure on two fronts. First, it violates the rights to protest peacefully and speak freely. Second, it makes it harder to create good climate policy. When governments punish dissent, they shield themselves from the public pressure needed to push for change. They focus on managing public anger instead of dealing with the climate crisis itself.

This paper will be divided into five sections. First, it will give background on different kinds of environmental and climate activism. Then, it will list the repressive tactics used by governments and corporations. After that, it will provide statistics on how widespread the crackdown is, noting where it's most intense. Next, the paper will examine what these trends mean for democracy and climate policy. Finally, it will offer actionable steps for governments and public groups.

2. The Background: Understanding Environmental Activism

To understand how governments react to climate activism, it's important to know what these protests are all about. The increase in climate and environment protests isn't random. It's a direct response to governments and corporations not doing enough to deal with environmental issues. As experts express concern about not meeting climate goals, more people are taking action. There are two main types of protest:

• Environmental Protests: These aim to stop specific projects that harm the environment, like drilling for oil, cutting down forests, building dams, or mining. These protests usually happen where the projects are located.

• Climate Protests: These are more recent and often take place in cities. Groups like Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion are part of this. These protests usually call for broad policy changes, like ending new oil exploration or creating a Green New Deal.

Now that we know the context and reasons behind these protests, let's examine how governments try to stop them.

3. Repressive Tactics Around the World

The crackdown on climate and environmental activism isn't the same everywhere. It involves governments and corporations using coordinated tactics in different parts of the world. This analysis shows a five-part plan of repression, where public shaming leads to new laws, which then allows for more aggressive policing and legal action. This section breaks down these methods to help us understand the problem.

1. New Anti-Protest Laws: Governments are passing laws to restrict protest. These laws create new crimes, increase punishments, give police more power to stop demonstrations, protect officers who harm activists, and limit the ability of groups to offer legal help. The United Kingdom is a good example, where laws have given police more power to limit protests and have made many protest activities illegal.

2. Misusing Existing Laws: Besides new laws, governments are using existing laws—often those meant to fight terrorism—to target peaceful activists. This wrongly portrays non-violent civil disobedience as a threat to national security. Examples include labeling activists as terrorists in the Philippines, the French government trying to shut down an environmental group using anti-separatism laws, and using organized crime laws against climate groups in Germany and Spain.

3. Court-Based Repression: The legal system is being used to get more convictions and remove the political message from climate protests. One tactic is to stop defendants from mentioning climate change as the reason for their actions. This limits their defense and makes it less likely that juries will side with them. This creates a situation where the main reason activists are on trial can't be discussed in court.

4. Repressive Policing: Policing ranges from legal to illegal and even criminal. It's carried out by police, military, private security firms, and sometimes organized crime groups. Tactics include arrests and stop-and-search operations, as well as harassment, surveillance, and infiltration of activist groups. In extreme cases, there's physical violence, intimidation, and even killings.

5. Public Shaming: Public shaming makes other forms of repression possible. Politicians, media, and corporate-funded groups contribute to talk that dehumanizes activists and encourages punishment. This is often done by separating activists from their causes, focusing on disruption and criminal behavior instead of the climate crisis. For example, media coverage of the group Just Stop Oil in the UK focused on law and order, with little mention of the oil licenses they were protesting.

This strategy, from public talk to laws and street-level enforcement, shows a clear effort to close space for climate advocacy. The impact of these strategies is real, as shown by statistics from around the world.

4. Numbers and Regional Differences

To understand how big the global crackdown is, we need to look at data on violence, arrests, and sentencing. This data shows a disturbing trend and regional differences in how repression is carried out. The Global North has high arrest rates, while the Global South sees more deadly violence.

Data from Global Witness shows the serious risks activists face. From 2012 to 2023, at least 2,106 environmental and climate protesters were killed. Most deaths happened in countries with lots of natural resources, including:

• Brazil: 401 deaths

• Philippines: 298 deaths

• India: 86 deaths

• Peru: 58 deaths

While deadly violence is less common in the Global North, arrest data shows a different kind of repression.

Region/Country	Protest Arrest Rate	Key Observation
Global Average	~6.3% - 6.7%	Used as a point of comparison.
Australia	20% (1 in 5)	Highest rate.
United Kingdom	17%	About three times the average.
Norway	15.1%	Shows a trend in the Global North.
Brazil	0.6%	Low arrest rate, but high violence.
Peru	2.0%	Low arrest rate, but high violence.
Uganda	2.2%	Low arrest rate, but high violence.

This difference is important. In the Global North, repression often goes through legal systems, leading to high arrest rates that discourage protest. In parts of the Global South, repression is more direct and violent, with violence and intimidation serving as a deterrent, leading to fewer arrests but more deaths.

The United Kingdom, in particular, has increased its use of harsh prison sentences for peaceful protesters. For example, climate activist Roger Hallam got a five-year sentence for organizing a protest. But this approach doesn't seem to align with public opinion. While groups like Just Stop Oil aren't popular, a recent poll showed that 61% of the British public thought these sentences were too harsh.

These numbers show a world where defending the environment is becoming more dangerous. This trend affects not just activists but also democracy and climate policy.

5. What This Means for Democracy and Climate Governance

The criminalization of climate and environmental dissent goes beyond the impact on activists. It's a serious threat to democracy and makes it harder to deal with climate change. By targeting peaceful protesters, governments are hurting human rights and preventing public debate needed to create good climate policy.

Experts say this trend is a shift toward authoritarianism, even in democracies. Dr. Oscar Berglund of the University of Bristol says this crackdown represents authoritarian moves that are inconsistent with the ideals of vibrant civil societies in liberal democracies. He argues that it shifts focus toward punishing dissent against inaction on climate and environmental change instead of taking adequate action on these issues.

This concern is shared by international human rights monitors. Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights defenders, warns that governments are repudiating human rights defenders with these policies. She says the current path is incompatible with the realization of human rights for all and a road to destruction.

The criminalization of protest is designed to solve a political problem for those in power. As Dr. Berglund argues, the goal is to insulate the political forces that are too slow to act on climate change from proper contestation. This hurts human rights and closes off a key way for the public to provide feedback, making climate action less likely. By criminalizing peaceful protest, governments risk escalating conflict and pushing activists toward more extreme actions that are harder to control, destabilizing society. Given these serious implications, we need clear policy changes now.

6. Policy Changes

To reverse the trend of criminalizing climate and environmental protest, governments, courts, and police need to act quickly. The following steps are needed to protect the right to protest peacefully and speak freely, ensuring that civic space is protected, not suppressed.

1. Stop Using Bad Laws: Governments must stop using anti-terror and anti-organized crime laws against peaceful climate activists. These laws weren't meant for this, and misusing them delegitimizes dissent and discourages public participation.

2. Uphold the Right to Protest: Public groups should regularly evaluate and publish data showing how they are protecting—not suppressing—the right to protest peacefully and speak freely. This makes them accountable to the public.

3. Focus on Human Rights in Policing: Human rights should be central to all policing related to protests. Police should be trained to help peaceful protest, ensuring the public can exercise their rights without fear of excessive force.

4. Change Anti-Protest Laws: Governments, especially in the UK and other countries that have passed restrictive laws, must review and repeal laws that unfairly limit protest rights. Laws with harsh sentences for non-violent civil disobedience should be changed to meet international human rights standards.

5. Promote Research: We need more research to understand the tactics of repression and their impact on activists and society. Continuous monitoring will help identify and implement measures to protect human rights and keep protesters safe.

Climate and environmental protests are a real response to a serious crisis. The activists involved aren't radicals. They're citizens using their rights to call for action. Continuing to criminalize them not only fails to address the climate emergency but also erodes the democracy needed to deal with it effectively.