Tag: Sakshi Aravind

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Guest post

Court in a trap: of #climate activism and hopes of legal salvation

This is a guest post by Sakshi Aravind (full bio at end of post).

Dr Sakshi Aravind

Where should we look if we must begin to believe adjudication is one of the ways to achieve climate justice? Investing hope in courts may appear unrealistic if, for instance, one were to look at UK courts. This February, the Inner Crown Court sentenced an activist with Insulate Britain to prison for contempt of court.

From what has appeared in the press, the presiding judge had asked the defendant not to refer to climate change as motivation for their actions (where the defendant, along with three others, had blocked a busy junction in the City of London on the 25th October 2021 as a part of Insulate Britain climate campaign). The defendant appears to have referred to climate change in his closing speech, thereby earning the absurd wrath of the Court.

Now, on the face of it, the outcome appears preposterous. This was, after all, a case where people were being prosecuted for protesting on climate change grounds. Surely, they can argue on an accurately reasoned ground that explains why they were blockading the junction in the first place? Was this an instance of misreporting, or did the judge relinquish the need for reasoning, let alone legal reasoning? I can only find out if someone is willing to fill in a wordy form to obtain the transcript from the Court and pay the fees, just like the Digital Support Officer from the registry tells me I should do.

One can imagine why the question of courts, justice and accessibility remain narrowly interpreted and do not extend to interrogating the aftermaths of litigation, including holding the judges accountable in a way that makes more than legal sense.

Should I bother with this little absurdity when the higher courts in the UK have consistently thrown out most of the climate-related strategic litigation in the last few years, even as most other jurisdictions are turning to innovation and curiosity?  

On 16th February, it appeared that the Wolverhampton Magistrate Court assumed a different approach to the Just Stop Oil protestors, who were before the Court for blocking the distribution of oil from the Esso Fuel Terminal in Birmingham in April 2022. While the defendants were given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs, the presiding judge was also sympathetic towards their motivation. The judge was alert to the realities of climate change and termed the defendants’ actions one with an “admirable aim”. However, the Court believed that the necessities of consistency and legitimacy—those that characterise the rule of law in the UK—had to be upheld and the defendants convicted. To quote from the sentencing remark:

“Trust in the rule of law is an essential ingredient of society, and it will erode swiftly if judges make politically or morally motivated decisions that do not accord with established legal principles. Indeed I would become the self-appointed sheriff if I acted in such a way.

…

if good people with the right motivation do the wrong thing it can never make that wrong thing right, it can only ever act as substantial mitigation.”

We only have access to this sentencing remark because the Judicial Office contacted the media to clarify after Just Stop Oil went on a gloating spree misquoting the judge. Not unusual for predominantly white activist groups in the UK to do something cringe-worthy now and then. 

Why do the first and the second instance feel equally absurd? Should one look for hope in environmental movements in the wrong place and lie to themselves and others until the very thing they are hoping for materialises miraculously? Is strategic litigation successful only when a judge pats you on the head and provides a cinematic twist in adjudication?

Whatever the answer to these questions, investing hope in courts must be clear about two things.

First, adjudication is a refined strategy, which may or may not always provide the best possible outcome. But when it does, it is going to be significant and lasting.

Second, where the legal cultures are restrained, one must have realistic expectations about the kinds of environmental litigation that goes to courts.

While self-proclaimed environmental activists are prosecuted, not all cases can be considered environmental litigation, despite how damning such cases may turn out for the domestic criminal justice system. So, there is no need to be disingenuous about the judicial outcome. If we desire indulgence from legal systems and teary-eyed judges, we distract ourselves from the real problem—that of an impenetrable legal system and absurd procedural apparatus that can sweep you away from the system for the most inconsequential of faults.

If we use adjudication for our ends, we must focus on the content and strategy and less on the actors. Unlike the BIPOC fighting for environmental rights elsewhere against murderous regimes that do it lucidly, those in privileged spaces might require some practice. But it is entirely worth the effort.

While hope and optimism are a matter of individual and collective responsibility to some extent, when there comes the point where we must say “F*** hope!” like Australian academic Chelsea Watego tells us, we must understand and wholeheartedly endorse that moment.

Bio:

Sakshi is a Lecturer in Law and Social Justice at the Newcastle Law School, where she teaches environmental law, land law, constitutional law and jurisprudence. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge and her BCL at the University of Oxford. She works on comparative environmental law, legal theory, political economy, and climate justice.

You can read her previous guest post on All Our Yesterdays (on environmental racism in NGOs) here, and an interview “Indigenous resistance to extractivism and academic allyship” FULL of insights and also links to post-colonial and indigenous thinkers here, on the Environmental Politics website.

Categories
Environmental Racism, Guest post Social Movements

Environmental Racism – then and now… Guest post by @SakshiAravind

Sakshi Aravind is a PhD student at University of Cambridge. (see her review of Andreas Malm’s book “How to blow up a pipeline” here, and see an interview here) reflects on the 32 years since this-

1990 Shabecoff, P. 1990. Environmental Groups Told They Are Racists in Hiring. New York Times, 1 February. WASHINGTON, Jan. 31— Several members of civil rights and minority groups have written to eight major national environmental organizations charging them with racism in their hiring practices

After thirty-two years, it is a small relief that we do not have to write letters about discriminatory hiring practices in environmental organisations. We have traversed some distance. Let us make past this momentary sense of satisfaction. We can sit down for a hard-headed debriefing about whether this ‘distance’ was noticeably significant in any particular direction or just self-congratulatory posturing about having made it past our front yards. Since I am writing about a small but exceedingly significant letter written in the year I was born, I cannot dismiss all that peoples’ persistence has achieved in these years. The concept of ‘environmental justice’ has found a strong foothold and bided its time in the social, political, and juridical spheres. Social movements for environmental justice, fair and equitable environmental policies, and opportunities for democratic participation are very vibrant. The environmental organisations do not have visible and impenetrable walls obstructing BIPOC members. The phrases ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’ seem boundlessly desired even by vampiric corporations. While it is easy to pin down ‘what changed’, ‘what did not’ is worrying. What have we done with the achievements, transformations, and progresses of the last 32 years as the nature of planetary collapse worsens?

When the racist hiring practices were seemingly remedied, how did the people responsible for those changes define the problem? What did they imagine they were solving when they hired a more representative workforce and opened their membership for all? It is important to document and assess the changes we have witnessed in the last three decades to classify what problems are fully addressed and what others have shapeshifted into another version of themselves. Whilst environmental movements and groups appear to be more representative, ‘representation’ does not fill the shoes of ‘recognition’. Even ‘recognition’ can be a lopsided concept if it is not constructive and does not allow for a plurality of voices across race, class, gender, etc. The big question of what changed between then and now should be: whether the change of heart in environmentalism confronted the entrenched whiteness (and consequently coloniality) that underlies the collective understanding of environmental injustices, policy choices, and the general direction of environmental movements. The problem of racism and coloniality in environmental movements is also structural. Hence, cosmetic changes in representation can only have incremental benefits and not the epistemic shift we need to counter the rapid destruction of the planet. Mercifully, we did not regress. However, environmental organisations also did not build on their knowledge on a required scale. There are no visible and invisible forms of environmental racism and environmental colonialism. There are either visible aspects that are hard to deny or the aspects that are wilfully ignored and diminished without any accountability—through entrenched knowledge and epistemologies that are vital to the sustenance and reproduction of colonial, white supremacist, capitalist nations.      

If environmental movements and organisations had understood how ‘spaces’ (emphasis on structures as opposed to a handful of institutions) exclude BIPOC workers, activists, members, and environmentalisms, our responsibilities at the moment would have been lighter despite the number of challenges regarding environmental destruction and climate change. Something as simple as how wilderness is defined, what opportunities are available to benefit from the environment—even simple pleasures such as birdwatching—and what autonomy does BIPOC have on controlling and governing land, natural resources are steeped in relationships of expropriation and elimination. Therefore, it is still easy to please many people with Don’t Look Up as if it were the pinnacle of artistic expression. At the same time, Global South prepares for the worst of climate crises that have been building up due to imperialist plunder. In 1990, they were concerned about the absence of People of Colour in key organisations. Now, we are concerned about the absence of constructive voices that would define climate change as anything but a specific event; dismantle structures of accumulation, theft, and exploitation; demand reparations and imagine world-making practices in terms of kinship, care, cooperation, and justice.

If we think long and hard, a lot changed for the good. Nevertheless, the ways in which environmental injustices have been defined are still largely in the clutches of those who command the resources—social, political, capital et al. Effectively, the epistemic resources need redistribution along with material redistribution. Moreover, epistemic justice must follow environmental justice close at hand. Meanwhile, we keep writing and conversing in the hope that we might have done a little more towards the things we care for than what we inherited thirty years later.