Greenpeace Activist Demonstration Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

May 1 2023

Location: 

Greenpeace, Belgium

Fourteen Greenpeace activists have been held for more than 48 hours after trespassing into and occupying a liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal in Zeebrugge, Belgium

Greenpeace Belgium said it was working for their release. Valerie Del Re, director of Greenpeace Belgium, said: “It’s not our activists, but gas companies like Fluxys who are the criminals in this story.

“They continue to invest in new fossil gas infrastructure, which is a disaster for human rights and for the climate. It is impossible to understand why environmental activists would be detained for so long.”

On Saturday morning, activists from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK sailed inflatables into the terminal, operated by Fluxys, a Belgium LNG transportation company.

They climbed on to the quays used for loading and unloading LNG tankers and displayed a banner reading “Gas kills” while others entered on kayaks. They maintained the occupation for six hours before they were removed by police.

“We applaud the courage of our activists and we are doing all we can to help them in these difficult times.”

Greenpeace said the action was to raise awareness of the role of gas operators such as Fluxys in the massive increase in LNG imports to Europe from the US. The environmental protest organisation said it was calling for all new gas infrastructure to be stopped and for a European plan to phase out gas by 2035.

According to research by Greenpeace, Europe increased its imports of LNG from the US by 140% in 2022, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Eight new LNG terminals are under construction in the European Union, and plans for a further 38 are under consideration, the group said.

Greenpeace’s latest protest comes as climate activist groups have been staging road block protests all over Europe. Just Stop Oil sister groups, all funded by the same US philanthropists, the Climate Emergency Fund, now operate in 11 countries.

External sources: 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/01/greenpeace-activists-held-in…
Posted by iws2010 on May 8 2023

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.
The long term goal here seems to strive for a hinderance in gas and oil usage specifically from the rigs occupying the waters in and around Greenpeace. Climbing rigs, planting signs, and trespassing in front of the rigs were meant to shut down its function to let larger fuel corporations ponder if what they are doing is truly efficient and effective.

Notes

Greenpeace said the action was to raise awareness of the role of gas operators such as Fluxys in the massive increase in LNG imports to Europe from the US. The environmental protest orgnization said it was calling for all new gas infrastructure to be stopped and for a European plan to phase out gas by 2035. This was a successful spectacle simply because of the extents the activists managed to take to get their images seen.