“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 criminalized for it,” says Michel Forst, UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention.
The position paper concludes with five calls for action to States on how to make a profound change in how they respond to environmental protest:
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First and foremost: States must address the root causes of environmental mobilization.
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In terms of the media and political discourse: States must take immediate action to counter narratives that portray environmental defenders and their movements as criminals.
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In terms of legislation and policy: States must not use the increase of environmental civil disobedience as a pretext to restrict the civic space and the exercise of fundamental freedoms.
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In terms of law enforcement: States must comply with their international obligations related to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association in their response to environmental protest and civil disobedience and immediately cease the use of measures designed for counterterrorism and organized crime against environmental defenders.
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And with respect to the courts: States must ensure that the courts’ approach to disruptive protest, including any sentences imposed, does not contribute to the restriction of the civic space.
The paper can be downloaded on English (pdf) and French (pdf).
nobody is going to take you seriously if you throw food at the Mona Lisa. it makes you look ridicules and there in almost guaranteeing nothing will get done. Civility just means don’t act like a crazy person nobody is going to listen to a crazy person.
Nobody is going to listen to the person politely asking to be listened to either.
Most of our rights come from uprising and unrest. Nothing really civil about that.
because in the times that actually happened there was no other way. that’s kind of the whole reason democracy exists that you don’t do it that way. Civility has nothing to do with being polite it has to do with controlling your emotions and to not act like children and to use your words like a grown ass person. because saying uprisings and unrest and revolution is easy until your in it.
“using your words” only means something if your words bear impact. To the governments the words of people amd companies profiting off of fossile fuels bear weight because they control a lot of value and employment. They can threaten damage while staying “civil”. People that do not have that kind of impact in their words can lend their words impact by becoming less “civil”.
seems like excuse for violence too me. and how people talk now it has impact but crazy people lessen that impact.
Just because some form of argument can be used to try and justify violence does not mean it is a bad argument.
It does, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.
This has been thrown around as some kind of fact for a long time, especially with the protests of the “Letzte Generation” in germany, a specifically non-violent protest group, that blockaded highways. I have never seen convincing data that this protest has affected the populations position on climate policy. There was broad disagreement with their form of protest and the two get mixed up in discussions a lot.
doing more extreme protests only work if you are a respected group like lets say farmers even they don’t use violence. if you do more extreme protests when you are not respected at all and have not built up that respect doing extreme protests will only undermine you. and definitely if you look like a spoiled brat having a tether tantrum and then take the whole not having respect to begin with thing that is what kills a movement. that is why i very dislike groups like stop oil they undermine there own cause. and make it worse for everybody wanting to do more serious work.
I really don’t know why you keep bringing this strawman up. It is not what my point is about.
The serious work alone will not convince the people either. The loud protests give a voice to the results of the serious work that would otherwise stay unheard.
you know the whole civility is bad thing. serious work by serious groups. loud protest only have impact if the people or groups doing them are taken seriously if not and people only see them as annoyances. your loud protests are meaningless because the whole point is that people listen to you. and if this happens your movement is dead.
The farmers in Germany absolutely used violence
mostly they did not and most people where sympathetic to the farmers and it was still civil disobedience and well organized something environmental activists can learn from.
First, “crazy” is a lazy word used by lazy people to avoid digesting a new idea. Its just used to describe anything that deviates from one person’s subjective idea of “normal”, another word with very little meaning outside of social conformity.
“Crazy people” has been used to describe women, gays, slaves, unionizers, and everyone else who saw the flaws in their times and tried to change them. So firstly, gosh, how lazy is your writing?
Reading your points. You have a major disconnect.
You see protestors as violent, and I don’t disagree.
But corporations giving a generation rising waves of colon cancer via pollution, “spilling” oil and making parts of the planet uninhabitable for years at best, generations at worst.
Is this violence?
Capturing the housing supply via unlimited money supply causing rising homelessness.
Is this violence?
Making healthcare so unaffordable that people die in their homes over going to a doctor and losing their life savings attempting to treat their condition.
Is this violence?
^ Trick question, there is no violence, that’s just business! Any action besides “pls stop mister corpo” sends you to prison.
What a world you live in where corpos have more rights than humans… and you frame that as a good thing?
You have a double standard and are unable to see that both are acts of violence. One indirect, the other direct. We’ll give corpos a bone here and not even factor-in the number of people impacted by each act of violence to determine its severity…
You haven’t put 2 and 2 together and noticed that all of your opinions are pro-corpo-violence?
I can’t help you. I assume intentional ignorance, shill, bot, or family member of some corpo-murderer.
Hey everyone, according to this person, we just need to ask nicely and the corpos will stop.
oh no does the word crazy offend you? if it does that’s your problem not mine its simple to understand and everybody knows what it means that’s why i use it and will keep using it. and has nothing to do with avoiding digesting a new idea that is your fantasy it has to do with getting to fucking point quicker. if you want to do that thing where you make this big deal about what the definition of crazy and normal is you can but i don’t really give a fuck its a distraction and has nothing to do with what i was talking about. if you want to use complicated words in a long stretched out way that is your business. for the most part you are just talking to yourself and maybe your fantasy of what your replying to. thank you for your reply it was very funny to read.
Crazy is not a well defined word everybody knows what it means.
wictionary lists:
I agree throwing food on the Mona Lisa is crazy. I pick meaning 5) with a bit of 3) and think it’s a creative and effective way to raise awareness.
its a good way to gain attention for the wrong reason. like who to avoid.
What? Where did you get that it offended me? Is this one of those internet interactions where victory is making someone upset? That tells me a lot about you.
It is weak writing because it acts as a stand-in for a word that is objective. Crazy is a subjective descriptor that relies on knowledge of the cultural context of the individual speaking.
For example, if you lived in a majority gay society, wanting to have sex with women could be seen as ‘crazy’! Seems a bit lazy doesn’t it? Or at least irksome to have your (in your view) completely normal desires relegated to a dismissive word? Let’s change topics, judging by your previous replies I probably lost you here. I apologize.
I am going to make a big jump and assume you know the definition of subjective and objective, though your writing shows no intelligible signs of understanding…
Nonetheless, I’m glad you found some amusement in the explanation of your intellectual disability. Check the votes… you’re in the extreme minority here and seem to be missing something, the question is, are you missing it on purpose (via trolling) or are you a dunning-kruger? What is amusing, if you are a dunning-kruger then you’ll read this, silently assert your intelligence to yourself and continue with your day. It is a magical ability.
Third option, you are a bot programmed to start conflict and say unpopular things, seems the most likely as I doubt a real person could be this unaware.
Anyway, end of post. Every response you have written fails to engage with the topic of the post to which you are writing replies, but I assume you are doing your best. Carry on my ‘friend’, you’re doing a ‘good’ job.
i got that from you complaining about me using common words. you really like to sniff your own farts. thank you for being so funny i bet you used reddit a lot.
Democracy only works when the government serves and represents the people, and also when the people can take informed and educated decisions on what they want and why. Using words on people that despise you is not going to make much of a difference. We have a great example of that in France right now.
that is exactly what democracy is talking to people that despise you and that you despise. because the next step is just violence and killing some people.
And there still isn’t.
yes saying that from behind your computer now is very easy. when you live in privileged times.
"I know that business is pouring poison in to the river, but you called me a dodo-head!"
Yes, children DO dismiss things for dumb reasons. Why are you taking behavioral lessons from children?
Have you been in a relationship? If so, you might have observed that how you express the same though or emotion might have rather big impact on how it’s received. And to some degree, we are all in complicated relationships with all the other people in our society.
If that was true the farmer protests which are using a tone much rougher than any of the environmental ones would be treated even worse but they are not.
Farmers already have people on their side and their trying to create more pressure on politics so their political representatives can achieve better deals for them. That’s rather different situation from where we still need to convince large portions of population that we should have acted like 50 years ago, but now would also be not bad.
I don’t really understand how people could argue that it’s not important how you package your message.
I think most people are done packaging the message because many ways of packaging this message have been tried and been ignored.
Sure, but being frustrated does not change the nature of humans. You need to have/gain power or you need to change peoples minds if you want to change something.
I guess, but you have to acknowledge that the protesters are also just humans. And what happens when humans get frustrated without the believable prospect of change through civil means?
I absolutely do. The problem is - it’s up to us to make any change happen, since the powers that be seem to be rather content with the whole situation.