Credit: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Apr 15 2025 (IPS)

The recent US court case that ordered three Greenpeace organisations to pay damages of over US$660 million to an oil and gas company was a stunning blow against civil society’s efforts to stop runaway climate change and environmental degradation. The verdict, following a trial independent witnesses assessed to be grossly unfair, came in reaction to Indigenous-led anti-pipeline protests. It’s vital for any prospects of tackling the climate crisis that Greenpeace’s appeal succeeds, because without civil society pressure, there’s simply no hope of governments and corporations taking the action required.

Civil society is more used to winning climate and environmental court cases than losing them. As CIVICUS’s 2025 State of Civil Society Report outlines, litigation has become a vital part of civil society’s strategy. Just last year, a group of Swiss women won a groundbreaking precedent in the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled the government was violating their rights by failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions. South Korea’s Constitutional Court found that the lack of emissions reduction targets breached young people’s constitutional rights. Other positive judgments came in countries including Ecuador, India and Italy. At the last count, climate lawsuits had been filed in 55 countries.

But fossil fuel companies have noticed civil society’s litigation successes and are also taking to the courts. They have the deep pockets needed to hire expensive lawyers and sustain legal actions over many draining years. Fossil fuel companies have filed over 150 lawsuits intended to silence criticism in the USA alone since 2012.

Protest restrictions

Civil society is doing all it can to demand climate action that matches the scale of the crisis, winning victories by combining tactics such as street protest, non-violent direct action and litigation, but it’s coming under attack. Peaceful protesters are being jailed and activists are facing violence in many countries. Alongside the chilling effect on protests of lawsuits such as the one against Greenpeace, governments in several countries are criminalising legitimate forms of protest. Globally, climate activists and defenders of environmental, land and Indigenous rights are among the groups most targeted for repression.

Security force violence and mass arrests and detentions, particularly of protesters, are in danger of becoming normalised. Last year in the Netherlands, authorities detained thousands for taking part in mass roadblock protests demanding the government keep its promise of ending fossil fuel subsidies. In France, police used violence at a protest against road construction in June and banned another in August. In Australia, activists opposing a huge coal terminal and a gas project were among those arrested in 2024.

In Uganda, campaigners against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline continue to face state repression. Last year, authorities arbitrarily arrested 11 activists from the campaign. These activists have faced intimidation and pressure to stop their activism.

Campaigners from Cambodia’s Mother Nature group paid a heavy price for their work in trying to stand up to powerful economic and political interests seeking to exploit the environment. Last July, 10 young activists were given long jail sentences after documenting river pollution.

Some states, like the UK, have rewritten protest laws to expand the range of offences, increase sentences and strengthen police powers. Last July, five Just Stop Oil activists were handed brutally long sentences of up to five years for planning a roadblock protest. The UK now arrests environmental protesters at three times the global average rate.

Italy’s right-wing government is introducing new restrictions. Last year, parliament passed a law on what it calls ‘eco-vandals’ in response to high-profile awareness-raising stunts at monuments and cultural sites. Another repressive law is being introduced that will allow sentences of up to two years for roadblock protests.

The struggle continues

Yet civil society will keep striving for action, which is more urgent than ever. 2024 was the hottest year on record, and it was crammed with extreme weather events, made more likely and frequent by climate change. Far too little is being done.

Fossil fuel companies continue their deadly trade. Global north governments, historically the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, are watering down plans as right-wing politicians gain sway. International commitments such as the Paris Agreement show ambition on paper, but not enough is achieved when states come together at summits such as last December’s COP29 climate conference.

There’s a huge funding gap between what’s needed to enable countries to transition to low-carbon economies and adapt to climate change. Global south countries want the most powerful economies, which have benefited from the industries that have caused the bulk of climate change, to pay their share. But of an estimated annual US$1.3 trillion needed, the most global north states agreed to at COP29 was US$3 billion a year.

Nor are fossil fuel companies paying their share. Over the past five decades the oil and gas sector has made profits averaging US$2.8 billion a day. Yet companies are currently scaling back renewable energy investments and planning still more extraction, while using their deep pockets to lobby against measures to rein them in. Making the global tax rules fairer and more effective would help too: US$492 billion a year could be recovered by closing offshore tax loopholes, while taxes on the excessive wealth of the super-rich could unlock US$2.1 trillion a year, more than enough to tackle the climate crisis.

Civil society will keep pushing, because every fraction of a degree in temperature rises matters to millions. Change is not only necessary, but possible. For example, following extensive civil society advocacy, last September the UK shut down its last coal-fired power station.

Civil society played a major role in campaigning for the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires large companies to align with the Paris Agreement. And last December, the International Court of Justice began hearing a case brought by a group of Pacific Island states, seeking an advisory opinion on what states are required to do to address climate change and help countries suffering its worst impacts. This landmark case originated with civil society, when student groups urged national leaders to take the issue to the court.

Trump’s return to the White House has made the road ahead much rockier. The world’s biggest historical emitter and largest current fossil fuel extractor has again given notice of its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, torn up renewable energy policies and made it easier to drill for fossil fuels. In response, other high-emitting nations must step up and show genuine climate leadership. They should start by committing to respecting the right of civil society to hold them to account. States and companies must cease their attacks on climate and environmental activists and instead partner with them to respond to the climate emergency.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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