#ecoactivists — Public Fediverse posts

#MonochromeMonday
2021. At Avatar Grove old growth forest park entrance. With some members of Elders for Ancient Trees grassroots activism group.

#SaveOldGrowth #TreesOverGreed #BCpoli #BCForestryReform #StopDeforestation #ProtectForests #WorthMoreStanding #LastStandForAncientForests #VancouverIsland #Activists #Environmentalists #EcoActivists #EcoJustice #PacificNorthwest #SpeakForForests #StopEcocide #VanIsle #PNW #monochrome #protest #AbolishRCMPCIRG

Police make 630 arrests of #climate #protesters in #London in one month

Liberty condemns ‘staggering and shocking’ statistic as #AntiProtest legislation is enacted

by Sandra Laville and Damien Gayle, December 4, 2023

"Police have made at least 630 arrests of peaceful protesters campaigning against new #OilAndGas production in the past month, as the authorities exploit new powers under the government’s anti-protest legislation.

"The mass arrests of more than 470 people – some individuals were arrested more than once – was condemned by #CivilRights group #Liberty as 'staggering and shocking'.

"The protests involve slow marching along roads and are a form of peaceful civil resistance analogous to the 'freedom' rides in the US in 1961, when individuals protested against segregated public transport, says #JustStopOil.

"Evidence gathered by the Guardian over the last four weeks reveals some people have been held in police custody for long periods after arrest.

"A 23-year-old was arrested within five minutes of joining a demonstration on 13 November, and held for 56 hours in custody before being presented to court, according to his testimony to the Guardian.

"A 19-year-old student was held for three nights in a London prison despite being given bail by a magistrates court. The student is considering a case of false imprisonment.

"The protests over the past four weeks coincided with the British government confirming in the king’s speech its plans to grant new #NorthSea oil and gas licences every year.

"Police are using new powers to make the #MassArrests under section 7 of the Conservative government’s Public Order Act 2023, which bans any action that 'interferes with the use or operation of any key national infrastructure'.

"According to data gathered by Just Stop Oil and not disputed by the Metropolitan police, almost half of the arrests were carried out under #Section7. The offence carries a prison sentence of up to 12 months.

"The 19-year-old student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was held in a London prison for four nights after his arrest under section 7. After the first night in prison, he appeared by video link for a court appearance. He was bailed by the court, and should have been released. The student was held for a further three nights in a prison cell, according to testimony given to the Guardian.

"'I consider that I was illegally imprisoned over the three nights of that weekend and will be taking a case of wrongful imprisonment,' the student said.

"Another 19-year-old student who was arrested and also cannot be named for legal reasons, was held for 50 hours in a London police cell, from a Monday morning to Wednesday at 1pm.

"She was charged under section 7 of the act after 24 hours in custody, but held for another day-and-a-half in custody before being taken to court.

"'I remember asking for my medication, and I didn’t get it,' she said. 'I asked multiple times. One of the officers said: ‘Why didn’t you have it with you?’ I said: ‘I didn’t expect to be held for 50 hours in a cell.’ And the officer said: ‘What, after what you have done?’

"'Like I was a murderer or something, they just wanted me to feel bad.'

"Jun Pang, a policy and campaigns officer for Liberty, said: 'We all have the right to make our voices heard on the issues that matter to us. The staggering number of people arrested in recent weeks, many under this new legislation, shows just how sweeping and dangerous these powers are. It’s shocking to see hundreds of young protesters criminalised simply for standing up for what they believe in.'

"Scotland Yard said 630 arrests had been made of Just Stop Oil protesters since 30 October, and 328 people went on to be charged. The rest have been released on police bail.

"JSO data shows at least 276 people have been charged: at least 125 were charged with blocking key national infrastructure under section 7 and 125 with the lesser offence of wilful obstruction of the highway."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/04/police-arrest-climate-protesters-london

#SlowMarch #SlowMarches #BigOilAndGas #UK
#CriminalizingDissent #EnvironmentalActivists #ClimateActivists #ClimateJustice #ACAB #Fascism #SilencingDissent
#CorporateColonialism #EcoActivists #Censorship #HumanRightsViolations

#IndigenousActivists are risking their lives for #butterflies

In #CentralMexico’s forests, armed community members defend an iconic butterfly from cartel-backed logging.

By Anjan Sundaram Dec 20, 2023

"Every winter, northwest of Mexico City, the branches of the Oyamel fir trees ignite in orange, colored by the wings of #MonarchButterflies that have made the epic journey south from Canada and the United States.

"The forest is home to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, created by presidential decree in 1986 and designated as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2008. The reserve shelters nearly 90 percent of the region’s over-wintering monarch butterfly population.

"Despite the fact that the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve is internationally protected, decades of degradation of the forest have posed an existential threat to this fragile ecosystem. Over the past four decades, the number of winter roosting sites for the butterflies in the reserve has fallen by over 50 percent, driven in part by illegal logging.

"After researchers found that 10 percent of total canopy cover had been lost between 2001 and 2012, the Mexican government ramped up enforcement of laws prohibiting logging. Government raids on illegal sawmills in the reserve sharply reduced logging. Yet according to an analysis by the World Wildlife Fund, the rate of forest degradation in the reserve tripled in 2022.

"To protect these forests — one of the few remaining wintering refuges for migrating monarchs — the local #Mazahua Indigenous community in Crescencio Morales has established its own security force.

"As these self-described forest defenders from Crescensio Morales fight to protect the monarch butterfly’s refuge, Indigenous leaders took the global stage at the United Nations annual climate change summit in Dubai to wage this battle on a second front: to convince world leaders to recognize the dangers environmental land defenders, particularly in Latin America, face and to build stronger mechanisms to support them.

"Around the world, environmental activists face increasing violence

"As their weapons indicate, the world’s environmental defenders need defending. Every day, the councils of Crescencio Morales’ guardia comunales work in shifts, patrolling their community as well as the boundary of the Monarch Biosphere Reserve. They say they are threatened by #sicarios, cartel #hitmen, who also benefit from the #IllegalTrade, and are allied with clandestine loggers who camp in the surrounding forests. The guardia comunales run well-armed patrols through their territories to prevent the sicarios from expanding their territories and cutting down the precious Oyamel fir trees.

"These conflicts put environmental #activists at great risk. Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised to stop such violence, but the country remains among the world’s deadliest for those defending its pristine ecosystems. In January 2020, the body of the anti-logging activist and monarch butterfly defender #HomeroGómezGonzalez was found in a community near Crescencio. Activists suspect his death was connected to illegal logging disputes, the Guardian reported.

"The pressures that Mexico’s Indigenous activists face are emblematic of similar conflicts arising globally. Communities like Crescencio Morales are on the front lines of a battle to protect their local environment from a mounting scramble for natural resources, amplified by corruption.

"Members of Crescencio Morales’s community told me that in addition to fighting the illegal loggers, they also protect their forested mountains from #mining companies seeking to extract #gold, #silver, and #copper — #minerals now in high demand as the world transitions to clean energy technologies.
Land defenders around the world — in countries including Mexico, #Brazil, The Democratic Republic of the #Congo, and the #Philippines — face increasing violence as they defend their territories, according to #GlobalWitness, an accountability nonprofit that studies the link between #NaturalResources, #conflict, and #corruption. A 2023 investigation by the organization found that nearly 2,000 #activists have been killed over the last decade for their efforts to protect the planet, many of them from Indigenous communities trying to preserve their ecological heritage.

"The majority of recorded killings of #LandDefenders in 2022 took place in #LatinAmerica, making the continent perhaps the most dangerous place for #EnvironmentalDefense.

"#IndigenousLands include some of the planet’s most threatened landscapes

"The Mexican constitution protects the right of Indigenous communities’ self-determination — which, among other forms of #sovereignty, allows them to govern their land communally. In 2023, more than 50 percent of Mexico’s land fell under these legal regimes, termed #TierraComunal or #TierraEjidal — which roughly translates to communal land. This, according to a study by the Rights and Resources Initiative, is the highest percentage of land collectively owned by Indigenous and local communities of any country in the #Americas.

"This unique aspect of #MexicanIndigenous heritage means that broad swaths of land in Mexico remain protected. Yet mounting effects from climate change as well as political and economic pressures mean that some of Mexico’s Indigenous communities have been forced to block highways in protest and appeal for help to protect themselves, their communities, their ecosystems, and their way of life.

"#Mexico’s unique legal regime is especially important for Crescencio Morales because it offers communities in the area, with deep historical and cultural ties to the monarch butterflies, the legal authority to protect the reserve. But the law can only do so much to protect the refuge and its migrating butterflies from illegal logging pressure.

"To prevent destruction of the Monarch Biosphere Reserve, Indigenous activists have taken their security and that of the butterflies’ precious trees into their own hands. When I visited Crescencio Morales earlier this year, I walked with a community policeman named Aurelio during an armed patrol along his community’s border. (We are withholding his identity and using a pseudonym to protect him from being targeted by local violence.) At the summit of one of the hills surrounding the community, Aurelio told me Crescencio Morales had been forced to arm itself to protect its people, butterflies, and #Forests.

"The security situation in towns such as #CrescencioMorales is complex. According to other community leaders I spoke with this year, who wished to remain anonymous due to security risks, the locals did not trust the army or the state police, which they often suspected of cutting business deals with the cartels. Armed security volunteers who protected the community from #taladores, the illegal loggers, patrolled their town in pickup trucks.

"These hyperlocal battles — on highways and in open warfare by the #GuardiasComunales — have larger stakes: Mexican Indigenous environmental activists are defending landscapes that have implications for global #biodiversity. Without their efforts, environmentalists fear systemic #deforestation from illegal logging, which would not only destroy habitat for vulnerable species but also increase the #GreenhouseGas emissions that further drive #ClimateChange. And without the preservation of the Crescencio Morales Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, an important chain in a migration that connects ecosystems from Canada to Mexico would be severed."

Full article:
https://www.vox.com/climate/24006471/cop28-rising-danger-environmental-activism

#ForestDefenders #JusticeForHomero #DirectAction #CriminalizingDissent #DefendTheForest #IndigenousRights #Extinction #EnvironmentalActivists #ClimateActivists #ClimateJustice #Fascism #DirectAction #SilencingDissent #CorporateColonialism #EcoActivists