New coal mines continue to open every year and oil and gas companies continue to explore new parts of the world. But increasingly, people (especially indigenous communities) are saying no to new fossil fuel development on their lands and using the courts and legislatures to get the message across.
In India, protests by Adivasi communities persuaded officials to cancel the auction of land for coal mines in the biodiverse forests of Chhattisgarh state. In South Africa, the Mpondo people prevented Shell Global from carrying out seismic surveys for oil and gas off the Wild Coast. In Australia, First Nations people blocked the development of a coal mine in Queensland.
These legal victories occurred over the past three years. On Monday, leaders of these and other grassroots environmental movements, spanning six countries, won the Goldman Environmental Prize.
“One of the things we’ve seen in recent years is that environmental law, the protection of natural resources, has become intertwined with human rights law and indigenous peoples’ law,” said Michael Sutton, an environmental lawyer. and executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation.
What compels these types of cases is the fact that as climate concerns have increased, so has fossil fuel exploration in many places, said Carla García Zendejas, an attorney and director of the People, Lands and Resources program. of the Center for International Environmental Law.
“With all the decisions that are being made for climate change, trying to address the climate crisis,” García Zendejas said, “it seems like the oil companies are just trying to get every drop of oil out of the ground as quickly as possible.” possible, before permits and concessions are suspended, revoked or suspended.”
In most countries, a proposed project to extract natural resources must go through an environmental review process, he said. And people who live in the areas have a legal right to access information about the proposed project.
In 2021, residents of Mpondoland, on South Africa’s wild coast, learned from tourists and visiting guides that a project was underway to conduct seismic surveys for oil and gas off their coast.
“It was a shock for us to hear that the Department of Minerals and Energy had already given Shell permission to explore for oil and gas,” said Nonhle Mbuthuma, a local resident and community organiser. “But the people on the ground were not aware.”
He had co-founded a group called the Amadiba Crisis Committee, originally to fight a proposed titanium mine, which he quickly mobilized to oppose seismic studies.
Ms Mbuthuma is one of the winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, along with Sinegugu Zukulu, a program manager at a local NGO called Sustaining the Wild Coast.
The region’s coastal waters provide habitat for dolphins, whales and many species of migratory fish. Communities in the area depend on fishing and ecotourism for their livelihood.
“When you talk about the ocean to the people of the Wild Coast, the ocean is our home.” Mrs Mbuthuma said. “The ocean is the economy.”
Seismic testing can harm wildlife: damaging marine animals’ hearing, altering their natural behaviors, and causing them to leave affected areas. Studies of smaller invertebrate species such as lobsters, scallops, and zooplankton have found that some species become injured or sick enough to die after exposure to seismic air guns.
Both coastal and inland communities in the region mobilized to oppose the project, “speaking with one voice to say no to oil and gas,” Ms Mbuthuma said.
Ms Mbuthuma and Mr Zukulu, along with other community members, lodged a legal challenge against the environmental approval of the project, arguing that local people had not been properly consulted. In 2022, the South African High Court ruled in its favor and rescinded Shell’s permit.
Shell did not respond to a request for comment, but appealed the court’s decision.
The Mpondo people are concerned not only about direct threats to their livelihoods and local pollution, but also about global climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels, Zukulu said. “It wasn’t just us on our land, in our little corner,” he said. “It’s a global challenge.”
Similar local struggles are being waged around the world. In rapidly developing countries, energy demand continues to rise as more people gain access to electricity and economies grow.
In India, more than 70 percent of electricity currently comes from coal, and more than 20 percent of that coal comes from the state of Chhattisgarh.
For years, India’s central government has been going back and forth on whether to open the Hasdeo Aranya state forest to coal mining or declare it a “no-go” zone. The forest is home to dozens of rare and endangered species, including the Asian elephant. Some 15,000 Adivasis in the region depend on the forest for their traditional ways of life.
But Hasdeo Aranya also sits atop one of the country’s largest coal reserves.
“It represents a unique microcosm of all the environmental and social justice movements that exist in India,” Alok Shukla, another recipient of this year’s Goldman Prize, said through a translator. Mr. Shukla helped found the local Save Hasdeo Aranya Resistance Committee and also convenes an alliance of grassroots movements in the state called the Save Chhattisgarh Movement.
With the help of Mr. Shukla and other organizers, residents of the region have protested the proposed mines for years and have successfully lobbied for the establishment of a protected elephant reserve in the forest. In 2020, the government announced a new series of land auctions for potential coal mines, sparking a new wave of protests.
Neither India’s Coal Ministry nor the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change responded to requests for comment.
In October 2021, 500 villagers held a 10-day march towards the state capital, Raipur. The following spring, women from several villages began a week-long tree-hugging protest, employing a tactic used to stop deforestation in northern India in the 1970s.
That summer, the Chhattisgarh state legislature adopted a resolution against mining in the region.
Other winners of this year’s Goldman Prize include a lawyer from Spain who obtained the legal rights to Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon; a US activist for working to limit carbon emissions from trucks and freight trains in California; and a journalist from Brazil who traced the beef supply chain to illegal deforestation, persuading major supermarkets to boycott illegally obtained meat.
In Australia, Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, a young indigenous Wirdi woman, also won the Goldman Prize for her work blocking coal mining on her community’s lands. Ms Maroochy Johnson argued in court that the greenhouse gases released by this mine would violate the human rights of First Nations across Australia.
Shukla hopes his actions inspire others around the world.
“There is a way for local communities to resist even the most powerful corporations using only their determination and peaceful, democratic means,” he said.