University of Bristol Lead Applicant: Dr Oscar Berglund in the School for Policy Studies
International Collaborators: Professor Greg Martin (University of Sydney, Australia), Dr Cesar Bazan (Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
The last few years have seen efforts to criminalise protest across a range of countries, and much of this criminalisation has focused on climate and environmental protest. This has received much attention in the media, by international organisations like the UN, and by NGOs like Amnesty International and Global Witness. There is, for example, now a UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders who recently wrote a report on the multifaceted criminalisation of climate protests in the UK and other European countries. However, academic research on national legal and policy developments is scant, and academic international and comparative analyses of these new laws, new state powers, and measures is even more limited.
In an attempt to address these research gaps, our Bristol team of four researchers, published a report in December 2024 mapping the criminalisation of climate and environmental protest internationally. We found that the criminalisation is intensifying through the use of both new and existing laws, widespread use of arrests, police violence and, in the most extreme cases, killings. Whilst the nature of criminalisation and repression varies across countries, most forms span the Global North and the Global South, making international analysis of it essential.
The analysis allowed us to identify UK, Australia, Peru and the Philippines as case studies for a new grant proposal to the ESRC. With the aim of putting together this grant proposal, we invited one colleague from each of the three other countries to a workshop in Bristol in February 2025. The seven of us are an interdisciplinary team, covering Policy Studies, Criminology, Law and International Relations. We used our week together in Bristol to develop the foundations of a research funding proposal, to be submitted to the ESRC in 2025. We also met with representatives of the NGO Global Witness, who will be a project partner.
