An activist journalist died after falling from the bridge of a treehouse during a police eviction, according to environmentalists; law enforcement denies this.
A man has died to protect a forest, reminding us once again of the value of civil disobedience — that is, "the right to refuse obedience and to resist the government when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and intolerable", as Henry David Thoreau wrote — and that law and justice do not always go hand in hand. It happened on 19 September in Germany, around fifty kilometres from Cologne, where the ancient Hambach Forest stands. The woodland, or rather what remains of it, is one of the few surviving examples of the mixed forests that once covered central Europe and is destined to be razed to the ground to allow the expansion of an enormous lignite mine — the largest open-cast mine in Europe — owned by the energy company Rwe.
Since 2012, to prevent the destruction of the forest, dozens of environmental activists have occupied the woodland, building treehouses and creating a colourful suspended village. The energy company has, however, decided that the time has come to fell the trees — the felling is scheduled for October — and to do so the activists must be removed. On 24 August, the eviction of the area by German police began, amid clashes and arrests, and it is still ongoing. Yesterday the first fatality was recorded: a media activist, an activist who had long been documenting and reporting on the resistance of Hambach Forest as a freelance photojournalist. His name was Steffen Meyn, a German citizen aged 27.
According to testimony from the environmental collective Hambi Bleibt, the man fell from a height of over fifteen metres while crossing a bridge between trees, during the arrest of another activist in the course of an eviction operation by the German special forces unit Sek. Meyn was taken to hospital and died in the evening from his injuries. The German police, however, denied this account, maintaining that the incident did not occur during a police operation. In any case, Herbert Reul, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, confirmed the temporary suspension of police activities in the area.
During the past week, riot police from Aachen — according to the authorities themselves — cleared 39 of the 50 treehouses that activists had built and inhabited over the past six years, on the pretext that they "do not meet fire safety requirements". Accounts from the hundreds of activists present, who had come from various parts of the world, describe a brutal and violent eviction. This case once again raises the dichotomy between law and justice. By law, those people should not have been there, and the energy company could have cleared the forest without hindrance, destroying a precious habitat and accelerating climate change. It may not be lawful, but it is right that they tried to oppose the destruction of a common good whose destruction would benefit only the coal lobby.
Beneath Hambach's ancient forest — a unique ecosystem home to a great variety of fauna and flora — lies a large lignite deposit, a solid fossil fuel containing significant quantities of carbon. Rwe holds extraction rights for the Hambach mine until 2040; opponents of the mine's expansion have accused the company of placing profits above people and the environment. German environmentalists, who are calling for an end to coal exploitation and a full transition to renewables, have submitted a petition to the state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, urging the government to intervene and save the forest. What is at stake in this conflict, however, appears to go beyond the (already considerable) intrinsic value of the forest; many regard the struggle over Hambach Forest as a symbol of the fight for the planet's future. "Hambach Forest, for us a symbol of a future-oriented society, now threatens to become a memorial to the destruction of our future," said Andreas Büttgen of the Initiative Buirer für Buir committee.
Germany appears to have committed decisively to renewable energy, with renewables meeting 36.3 per cent of national demand in the first six months of 2018. And yet coal use remains massive, which is why in June the government established a dedicated commission — known as the coal commission — to manage the definitive phase-out of coal without causing severe economic disruption in the affected regions. According to Kai Niebert, head of the environmental group Deutscher Naturschutzring and a member of the coal commission, the expansion of the mine will almost certainly prevent Germany from meeting its commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement. In the meantime, the federal government has yet to intervene.
Clive Spash, an economist specialising in environmental issues, highlighted to the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle the government's inconsistency, arguing that it is now exploiting as much of its lignite resources as it can while it still has the opportunity. "They've emphasised the fact that they're moving to renewables," Spash said, "but in reality they're increasing lignite extraction because they know that with the Paris Agreement they won't be able to do so in future, which is why they're trying to extract it as quickly as possible." Spash also offered his support to the activists peacefully resisting to save the forest, describing this type of activism as "essential in the fight against climate change. Governments don't act in the right way without pressure."
