Green European Journal

The rush to mine the deep seabed for resources needed for green technologies could have profound ecological consequences. As world governments now meet to negotiate decisions on the future of the international seabed, global protocols to halt deep-sea mining plans will only go so far unless human society fundamentally changes its growth-at-all-costs model. 

Nestled in the ocean floor are vast quantities of minerals – metals like cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements, which are crucial for batteries, electronics, and green technologies. These resources ensure that the deep sea, which covers more than half of the Earth’s surface, is fast becoming a key point of interest for the green transition. That in turn raises the prospect of an intensification of deep-sea mining (DSM). Although technological advancements have made exploration activities increasingly feasible over recent decades, the deep sea remains one of the least explored and understood ecosystems.  

The dangers that come with deep-sea mining are many. It risks harming undiscovered species and disrupting intricate food webs that have evolved over millennia. Disturbing these ecosystems may furthermore compromise their role in regulating global climate patterns, including the sequestration and storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  

The DSM industry often promotes new technologies as being safe for biodiversity. However, these claims lack comprehensive, independent scientific validation. The deep-sea ecosystem is complex and largely unexplored, and even seemingly small disturbances can have significant and unpredictable impacts on biodiversity and ecological functions. They may generate changes in species composition, for instance, which in turn threatens food webs and commercial fish stocks. Coastal communities that depend on healthy marine ecosystems for their livelihoods could therefore face unprecedented disruptions. The ocean, a source of food and income for these communities, might be turned into a battlefield for resource extraction, with few benefits trickling down to those who need them most. That is why scientists are warning of large-scale and irreversible damage to the marine environment.  

Solving one problem within the same extractive and colonial paradigm that created the problem in the first place is bound to fail.

Yet the question is larger than ocean protection. It is about how we manage all the world’s resources, whether or not they lie in the deepest reaches of the ocean. The rush to secure access to deep-sea minerals may even divert attention and resources away from improving practices and mitigating the impacts of on-land mining, which already has a long record of generating conflicts with local communities and indigenous populations in mining areas. This diversion could lead to increased social, human rights, and environmental violations in already vulnerable communities and ecosystems where terrestrial mining is prevalent. 

The irony is stark. The rush to manufacture technologies that we see as solutions to our environmental crisis – electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels – means we are repeating, on the seabed, the very same patterns of exploitation that have so degraded terrestrial resources. Solving one problem within the same extractive and colonial paradigm that created the problem in the first place is bound to fail. Instead, we should pursue a more sustainable and equitable approach to resource management that addresses the root causes of conflict and promotes the well-being of both terrestrial and marine environments. 

The European Critical Raw Materials Act, hailed as a landmark achievement of the previous EU mandate, aims to diversify Europe’s supplies by ensuring a steady flow of critical minerals both from within Europe and through strategic partnerships. Built on the assumption that constant growth and increasing material consumption are both necessary and inevitable, the Act promotes the extraction of raw materials through various measures.  

But there is an alternative to the assumption that we need to delve deeper into the Earth’s crust. What if, instead, we chose to address the root cause of our resource demands? 

The UN Global E-Waste Monitor shows that global electronic waste has reached record highs and is increasing five times faster than recycling rates. The recycling rate for rare earth elements in e-waste is only around 1 per cent. If we look at smartphones alone, about 16,000 tonnes of cobalt are lost annually due to inadequate collection and recycling of these devices, which represents approximately 10 per cent of the global cobalt production. There should be huge economic interest in turning waste into valuable secondary or tertiary products, yet the transition to a circular economy seems slow. Despite the EU boasting a circularity rate of 11.5 per cent in 2022 – indicating that Europe consumes a higher proportion of recycled materials than other world regions – progress in the EU has stagnated, and it continues to fall far short of its ambition to double the circularity rate by 2030. 

The battery industry is among the highest consumers of minerals. Yet its demands are changing. Traditional lithium-ion batteries are being replaced by lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which do not require nickel or cobalt – two critical raw materials (CRM) that deep-sea mining proponents seek to obtain. By 2030, increased use of LFP batteries could reduce demand for nickel, manganese and cobalt by more than 50 per cent. Moreover, sodium-ion batteries, which avoid the constrained and often unpredictable supply chains of lithium, cobalt, and nickel are on the rise following positive research and innovation efforts. This kind of technology will prove significant for future energy storage systems too.  

However, circularity, substitution and technology development will not be enough to halt the increasing demand for CRMs. Here is where sufficiency comes into play. Sufficiency is all about finding a balance – meeting our needs without overstepping the planet’s ecological boundaries. It challenges the notion that more is always better, and asks profound questions about human needs. In this context, it would mean that we would not only ask how cars can be more efficient, but also ask whether we need to have two cars per household. For instance, car sharing can cut the materials used in transport by 50 to 70 per cent per passenger-kilometre. Yet greater reductions come with public transport, cycling, and walking. Public policies have the potential to transform the shift to transport sufficiency through, for instance, investments in public transport, improved urban planning, and railway networks stretching to rural areas. By emphasising needs-based consumption, sufficiency measures encourage the use of fewer resources without compromising functionality or quality. 

The transition to sustainable mineral resource management is a monumental task requiring engagement across multiple sectors. To this end, the latest Environment Council Conclusions suggested the implementation of an entirely new legal framework on resource management. Various suggestions on how to achieve this have been put forward, with increasing support. Suffice to say, there are high expectations on the new Commission’s proposed Circular Economy Act.  

In the face of an aggressive industry narrative, momentum is growing for a precautionary approach to deep-sea mining. Just three years ago, not a single country in Europe defended a moratorium, precautionary pause, or ban (the concepts are interchangeable) on deep-sea mining. Today, 12 out of 27 member states do. They share the European Commission and the European Parliament’s position that no DSM should proceed until knowledge gaps are filled, environmental safeguards are ensured, and governance issues are resolved. France and Germany stand out as virtuous actors. They have been particularly vocal against DSM, having driven the push for a moratorium, and having advocated for thorough environmental safeguards and governance before any DSM activities proceed. 

But significant actors still advocate DSM. In Europe, Norway and Poland have been particularly driven by their interests in exploiting seabed resources for economic gain and technological development. Key companies involved include Norway’s LOKE Minerals, which is interested in the Arctic, and Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), a subsidiary of Belgium’s DEME Group, whose focus is on the Pacific Ocean. Another significant player is Allseas, a Dutch company known for its offshore activities, including DSM research and technology development. 

In 2023 the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN-affiliated body mandated to manage the deep sea in international waters, has committed to advancing negotiations on a so-called mining code with a view for adoption by July 2025. This mining code would enable the ISA to begin issuing exploitation contracts, building on the 31 exploration contracts already granted. This accelerated timeline raises concerns that critical gaps in the scientific understanding of deep-sea ecosystems may not be adequately addressed before commercial activities commence.  

A study published in Marine Policy earlier this year pointed out at least 30 unresolved issues in its latest mining code draft. One of the most pressing concerns is how the ISA plans to effectively protect the marine environment from potential harm caused by seabed mining, as mandated by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Governance issues within the ISA itself pose additional challenges. Allegations of corruption and procedural irregularities have cast doubt on the authority’s ability to effectively manage and regulate DSM activities. 

Adding to the pressure, The Metals Company, a major player in the DSM sector known for extensive exploration in the Pacific Ocean, plans to submit a mining application this year. In a strategic move, they intend to invoke the so-called two-year rule within UNCLOS which allows expedited consideration of their application even without a mining code adopted. This move puts pressure on the ISA to fast-track the adoption of a mining code and, in turn, has intensified the push for a moratorium, with ISA’s structural and voting mechanisms favouring a potential application. 

We urgently need bold policies with ambitious material footprint reduction targets to shift business as usual.

This is why the ISA Assembly will next week discuss for the first time a motion to consider a General Policy for the protection and preservation of the marine environment, suggested by nine states. This is one legal tool by which a precautionary approach could be enacted, meaning that it would set the overarching conditions required to be fulfilled before DSM is considered.  

Historic examples, such as the whaling moratorium or ban on mining in Antarctica, show us that the international status quo can be altered through political will and decisive action. This raises hopes that the ISA too can be transformed into an international body which effectively ensures marine protection. 

As we stand at the brink of this new frontier, we must choose a path that reflects our responsibility to the planet and future generations. The debate over DSM forces us to confront a fundamental question: What kind of custodians of Earth do we aspire to be? Our current trajectory – one of endless extraction and consumption – is both unsustainable and morally indefensible. Instead of plunging into the abyss in search of resources, we need to cultivate a culture that values quality over quantity, repair over replacement, and conservation over consumption.  

The call to action is clear: we urgently need bold policies with ambitious material footprint reduction targets to shift business as usual. These targets must be followed up with a range of sufficiency initiatives across various sectors. There are plenty of ideas, creativity, and proposals on how to move forward. 

The global momentum behind a precautionary approach to DSM not only highlights the urgent need to address the environmental and social risks associated with the emerging industry, but reflects a shift in how we believe we should govern our natural resources. There is a growing recognition that the traditional, growth-at-all-costs approach is incompatible with our planet’s finite resources. Beyond the immediate action to adopt a General Policy in the ISA, we are seeing a larger understanding of the need for deeper systemic changes that reflect a true recognition of our planet’s limits, transcending the realm of international seabed management.  

Such a narrative would ensure that a precautionary pause on DSM does not create a gold rush in other mineable areas, but rather that financial streams would be redirected to research, innovation, and circular economy. To make this a reality, governments and international bodies must implement robust legal frameworks, invest in sustainable technologies, and prioritise education and public awareness about the importance of resource conservation. Collaborative efforts between nations, industries, and civil society will be essential to create a resilient and sustainable resource management system. This system can act as a catalyst for rethinking raw material dependencies, ensuring sufficiency, strengthening strategic autonomy, and promoting planetary wellbeing. 

In the grand tapestry of Earth’s ecosystems, the deep sea remains a dark, mysterious place, weaving its own intricate story of life. It is a story that has unfolded over aeons, far removed from human influence. As we ponder the depths, let us also consider the heights of our potential for stewardship.

O desenvolvimento tecnológico é frequentemente considerado como um produto natural da engenhosidade humana que nunca deve ser interrompido ou controlado. Mas a inovação também pode agravar os impactos sociais e ambientais. Poderá o decrescimento redirecionar a tecnologia para uma transformação inclusiva e ambientalmente consciente?

A ideia de que a inovação é a chave para o crescimento económico está profundamente enraizada na nossa sociedade. O número de patentes anuais que um país produz é frequentemente considerado como refletindo sua riqueza. Espera-se, no entanto, que as empresas de sucesso promovam uma cultura de inovação constante para sobreviver num mercado altamente competitivo. A inovação também está associada a uma série de qualidades positivas: criatividade, autonomia, flexibilidade, adaptabilidade e resiliência. 

Mas este enquadramento exclusivamente positivo da tecnologia ignora que a inovação, para além de melhorar a qualidade de vida, pode reforçar as estruturas de poder e opressão existentes e agravar os danos ambientais. Novas narrativas são necessárias para alargar o alcance do conceito de inovação. Deve ser entendido não apenas como uma questão de desenvolvimento das novas tecnologias, mas como um processo que envolve mudanças culturais e institucionais, bem como uma transformação da vida e da ordem social. 

A ciência e a mudança técnica já existiram em sociedades que não buscaram o crescimento económico e continuarão a existir em futuras sociedades sem crescimento.

Consenso de crescimento

O argumento de que a procura da prosperidade implica um crescimento económico infinito remonta à era pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial. O desenvolvimento sem precedentes da ciência e da tecnologia gerou um fluxo constante de novos produtos e serviços, materiais e processos, lançando as bases da sociedade de consumo moderna. A sensação de que o progresso tecnológico estava em constante aceleração alimentou a imaginação coletiva ao ponto de, na década de 1950, muitos acreditarem que os humanos em breve caminhariam em Marte ou construiriam bases na Lua. 

Os movimentos ambientalistas na década de 1960 começaram a expressar preocupações sobre os riscos associados ao uso excessivo da ciência e da tecnologia para aumentar a produtividade industrial e agrícola. Exemplo disso é o livro Silent Spring (1962), de Rachel Carson, que alertava para o crescente uso de pesticidas e fertilizantes químicos na agricultura moderna. No entanto, quando o histórico relatório Limites do Crescimento foi publicado em 1972 – o primeiro documento deste género a alertar para o perigo, entre outros, da industrialização excessiva e da utilização de recursos – a maioria dos economistas tentou desacreditá-lo. O consenso era que a ciência e a tecnologia nos permitiriam ultrapassar quaisquer restrições ao crescimento económico decorrentes dos limites biofísicos do planeta – posição que ainda hoje prevalece. 

Nas últimas décadas, a visão dominante da economia de que a inovação deve continuar sem restrições foi complementada por uma ênfase na criação de redes e interações entre instituições públicas e privadas para promover a inovação. Os governos nacionais e regionais competem para conceber programas cada vez mais atrativos para impulsionar as capacidades de inovação, enquanto o programa de investigação Horizonte 2020 da União Europeia dedica uma parte considerável do seu orçamento à promoção da inovação entre os seus membros. 

Estas iniciativas baseiam-se na crença de que os danos causados ​​pela inovação e pela mudança tecnológica são compensados ​​pelos benefícios sociais; que a inovação cria um maior número de empregos melhores e mais satisfatórios; que permite uma maior mobilidade social e uma melhor distribuição da riqueza; que mais inovação significa mais crescimento económico; e que a inovação é necessária para enfrentar os grandes desafios que a humanidade enfrenta, como as alterações climáticas, a pobreza ou as crises sanitárias globais. 

Mas estas suposições baseiam-se em noções de determinismo tecnológico e produtivismo. O determinismo tecnológico é a ideia de que as inovações tecnológicas emergem espontaneamente dadas as “condições certas”: concorrência de mercado, valores e cultura empresarial, leis rigorosas de propriedade intelectual e democracia liberal. Além disso, o determinismo interpreta o desenvolvimento tecnológico como uma evolução linear de artefatos e sistemas mais simples para outros cada vez mais complexos. 

No entanto, estudos de ciência, tecnologia e sociedade (CTS) têm mostrado que esta interpretação linear é problemática. A mudança técnica, longe de ser um processo neutro e autónomo, reflete os valores, as ideologias e as visões do mundo da sociedade em que se desenvolve. O progresso tecnológico é historicamente determinado, mas não determinístico. Isto significa que não existe uma trajetória previsível que a tecnologia deva seguir na sua evolução. Em vez disso, a tecnologia avança através de uma série de avanços e períodos de estagnação. Os estudos CTS mostram que, muitas vezes, coexistem múltiplos caminhos de mudança tecnológica. No entanto, alguns destes caminhos podem tornar-se hegemónicos devido a dinâmicas políticas, culturais e socioeconómicas complexas. 

Uma vez que isto acontece, inicia-se um processo de naturalização, em que um determinado caminho de desenvolvimento tecnológico é percebido como o progresso inevitável da engenhosidade humana. Mas o que parece “natural” é, muitas vezes, o resultado de interesses convergentes, de relações de poder assimétricas e, em muitos casos, de sistemas de dominação e violência. É por isso que os discursos sobre a inevitabilidade da mudança tecnológica e a superioridade da tecnologia ocidental são por vezes utilizados instrumentalmente para impor mudanças nos sistemas de produção das (ex) colónias de uma forma que beneficia apenas as potências coloniais. 

A segunda suposição problemática relacionada com a inovação é que esta conduz sempre à prosperidade económica – criando novos empregos e produtos e serviços mais eficientes – e deve, portanto, ser considerada boa em si mesma. No entanto, embora a inovação tenha trazido inúmeros benefícios à sociedade contemporânea, também gerou uma série de paradoxos e tensões. 

Por exemplo, a inovação é vista como uma fonte de crescimento económico e competitividade, mas também pode conduzir à precariedade laboral e à desigualdade social. As novas tecnologias e a automatização podem conduzir à perda de postos de trabalho em determinados setores, criando novas oportunidades noutros. Isto pode resultar em uma incompatibilidade entre as competências exigidas pelos novos empregos e as possuídas pelos trabalhadores despedidos. Além disso, os benefícios da inovação nem sempre são distribuídos uniformemente. Por um lado, plataformas como Uber ou Airbnb concedem independência a usuários e trabalhadores, enquanto, por outro, corroem os direitos dos trabalhadores, impulsionam a gentrificação nas cidades e aumentam as desigualdades. 

Outro paradoxo é que, embora a inovação seja frequentemente vista como uma solução para os problemas ambientais, também pode contribuir para a degradação ambiental através do consumo de recursos e da geração de resíduos. Exemplos incluem projetos de “gigafarms” eólicas e solares na Europa, que podem perturbar a paisagem natural e ameaçar a vida selvagem. 

Além disso, a ênfase na inovação contínua e no crescimento económico pode criar uma cultura de consumo excessivo, onde a procura constante de produtos novos e melhores leva a níveis insustentáveis ​​de utilização de recursos e de geração de resíduos. As consequências dramáticas disto são visíveis no bairro de Acra, no Gana, onde grandes quantidades de lixo eletrónico proveniente da Europa aguardam para serem processados ​​por crianças e outros grupos vulneráveis. 

Por último, embora a inovação seja frequentemente vista como uma fonte de capacitação e autonomia, também pode conduzir a um maior controlo e vigilância. Por exemplo, o desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias, como megadados e inteligência artificial, pode permitir aos Estados e às organizações privadas monitorizar e controlar o comportamento dos indivíduos de formas sem precedentes. Isto pode levar a um aumento da vigilância e do controlo, minando a autonomia e a privacidade individuais. Por exemplo, o software de IA “Lavender”, utilizado pelo exército de Israel para identificar e eliminar automaticamente suspeitos de terrorismo, resultou em inúmeras vítimas civis durante o genocídio em curso em Gaza.  

O determinismo tecnológico e o produtivismo são visões que impedem a compreensão da inovação como um processo construído pela sociedade, pela cultura e pela política. O determinismo tecnológico nega a pluralidade inerente a qualquer processo de inovação e aos seus múltiplos e diversos resultados potenciais, enquanto a posição produtivista ignora as questões políticas que o rodeiam. Por exemplo, quem decide o que é bom ou mau? Quem ganha e quem perde quando é introduzida uma inovação e através de que mecanismos de poder? 

A inovação não é um processo inerentemente benéfico – produz vencedores e perdedores. 

Na década de 1970, surgiu a visão de que o desenvolvimento tecnológico deveria ser reorientado para longe do crescimento económico, em direção à justiça social, liberdade e equilíbrio ecológico. Entre os defensores disto estava o filósofo Ivan Illich, cujo livro Tools for Conviviality (1973) analisou explicitamente a ameaça da expansão económica descontrolada alimentada pelos avanços tecnológicos. A visão refletiu-se também na noção de “tecnologias apropriadas” do economista Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, no livro Ecology as Politics (1978) do filósofo André Gorz e na ideia de “tecnologia libertadora” de Murray Bookchin. 

Illich defende em Tools for Conviviality que o crescimento tecnológico pode chegar a um ponto em que se torna incompatível com a sustentabilidade planetária. Aponta as ameaças do crescimento excessivo, incluindo a degradação biológica, o monopólio radical, a polarização e a obsolescência. Para combater estas ameaças, Illich defende a “tecnologia de convívio”, que se refere a tecnologias que preservam ou melhoram os ecossistemas, “permitem a autonomia e o controlo dos utilizadores, interompem relações de poder desiguais e são robustas e duráveis”. 

Abandonar as inovações pró-crescimento em favor de tecnologias de convívio orientadas para objetivos não significa “regressar às cavernas” ou assumir posições tecnofóbicas. Pelo contrário, implica repensar o que a ciência e a tecnologia devem ser: não motores de crescimento material sem fim, mas instrumentos para melhorar o nosso bem-estar. Um exemplo concreto desta visão alternativa da tecnologia é o Plano Lucas. Em meados da década de 1970, milhares de postos de trabalho na Lucas Aerospace, um fabricante de aviões britânico, estavam programados para serem cortados, em grande parte porque as mudanças tecnológicas na indústria estavam a tornar redundantes as competências dos trabalhadores. Em resposta, os trabalhadores liderados por delegados sindicais do Sindicato dos Trabalhadores dos Transportes e do Sindicato dos Trabalhadores da Engenharia elaboraram um plano corporativo alternativo centrado em produtos socialmente úteis e ambientalmente sustentáveis. 

O plano incluía inovações como turbinas eólicas, carros híbridos e dispositivos médicos concebidos para atender os mercados locais e regionais. Apresentou um dos primeiros exemplos de iniciativas lideradas pelos trabalhadores voltadas para democracia industrial e a uma economia verde. Apesar do seu engenho e do apoio generalizado que obteve entre os grupos laborais e ambientais, o plano acabou por ser rejeitado tanto pela administração da empresa como pelo governo do Reino Unido. Meio século depois, o Plano Lucas ainda permanece como um monumento a um modo alternativo de inovação e organização da produção que poderia ser replicado a vários níveis na UE. 

O período que decorre desde o boom pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial é a prova de que a inovação não é um processo inerentemente benéfico – produz vencedores e perdedores. E há mais de 70 anos que a tecnologia e a inovação estão ao serviço do capitalismo expansionista nas sociedades industriais. 

No entanto, esta não é a única, nem a mais desejável, forma de compreender a tecnologia e o seu papel na sociedade. Na verdade, é possível que a inovação alcance resultados socialmente úteis sem estar subordinada ao imperativo do crescimento económico. Para isto, é necessário abandonar o determinismo tecnológico e o produtivismo e imaginar novas formas de inovação não suportadas pela necessidade de valorização. Hoje, investigadores, profissionais e ativistas dentro do movimento emergente pós-crescimento estão a esforçar-se por imaginar uma cultura de inovação enraizada na criatividade, cuidado, reparação e manutenção. 

Aquellas personas que se encuentran en una situación precaria y de inestabilidad económica son las que pueden inspirar la descarbonización de la industria y la creación de empleos que sean respetuosos con el medioambiente. Contamos con una historia sólida de iniciativas obreras que han superado despidos, así como una serie de colaboraciones recientes entre activistas, sindicatos y trabajadores, que sirven de ejemplos concretos de transición empoderada.

En el año 2023, una ola de calor sin precedentes que recibió el nombre de Cerbero (el sabueso tricéfalo de Hades) arrasó toda Europa, lo que llevó a la clase trabajadora a organizarse para exigir medidas de protección contra el calor extremo. En Atenas, el personal empleado en la Acrópolis y otros enclaves históricos se declaró en huelga durante cuatro horas al día. En Roma, el servicio de recogida de basuras amenazó con ir a la huelga si se les obligaba a trabajar durante las horas de mayor calor. En otros lugares de Italia, los empleados del transporte público exigieron vehículos con aire acondicionado y la plantilla de una fábrica de baterías en los Abruzos amenazó con ir a la huelga en protesta por la obligación de trabajar bajo un “calor asfixiante”.

Casi se podría decir que los antiguos griegos vaticinaron la crisis climática actual cuando denominaron a Hades, el dios de los muertos, con el eufemismo de “Plutón”, el dador de riqueza. Su nombre es una alusión a los materiales (la plata en su época, los combustibles fósiles y los minerales indispensables en la nuestra) que, una vez extraídos del inframundo, acaban llenando los bolsillos de los plutócratas.

La estructura plutocrática de la sociedad moderna explica la pasmosa lentitud de la respuesta al colapso climático. La tan anunciada transición ecológica apenas avanza, al menos en lo que respecta a la concentración atmosférica de gases de efecto invernadero. Estos no sólo siguen aumentando, sino que lo hacen incluso de forma acelerada, y lo mismo ocurre con el ritmo del calentamiento global. La transición sigue dependiendo de instituciones poderosas y acaudaladas que, aun dejando de lado la avaricia o la codicia de estatus, están obligadas por el sistema a anteponer la acumulación de capital a la habitabilidad del planeta.

En este contexto, la política de la transición implica una lucha de clases que va más allá de la lucha de la clase obrera en defensa de sí misma y de sus comunidades frente a las emergencias meteorológicas. Obviamente, eso también forma parte del paisaje, pero la lucha de clases se manifiesta de manera más evidente cuando el poder intenta transferir los costes de la transición a las masas. Así es como surge, inevitablemente, la resistencia. La pregunta es: ¿qué forma adoptará?

En algunos casos esta resistencia adopta la forma de una reacción antiecologista, instigada o dominada por fuerzas conservadoras y de extrema derecha. Aunque se autoproclaman aliados de las “familias trabajadoras”, estas fuerzas denigran la necesidad más básica de todo trabajador: un planeta habitable. En otras ocasiones adopta una forma progresista, como es el caso emblemático de los llamados “chalecos amarillos” en Francia. Cuando el Gobierno de Macron subió los “impuestos ecológicos” sobre los combustibles fósiles como incentivo para que el consumidor comprara coches más eficientes, las clases media-baja y trabajadora de las zonas rurales, incapaces de permitirse ese cambio, se enfundaron unos chalecos amarillos de seguridad y se movilizaron. Aunque el sector radical del movimiento obrero francés se unió a la causa, no consiguió aglutinarse en una fuerza política capaz de ofrecer otras soluciones a la crisis social y medioambiental.

Los peligros climáticos ya se han integrado en las luchas obreras de todo el mundo, sentando así nuevas bases de movilización

El análisis de las formas de lucha, los movimientos y las acciones de la clase obrera en relación con el cambio climático nos permite entrever cómo se podría reorientar la transición ecológica siguiendo una línea social liderada por la clase trabajadora. En este contexto, el término “lucha de clases” se emplea en un sentido general para abarcar cuestiones como la ecología, la reproducción social, la sexualidad, la identidad, el racismo, etc., todas ellas relacionadas con la calidad de vida y tan relevantes para la “mano de obra” como el salario y las condiciones laborales.

Mazzocchi, el líder sindical estadounidense que acuñó el término “transición justa”, criticó el contrato social de posguerra por el que los dirigentes sindicales renunciaban a participar en las decisiones sobre el proceso de producción a cambio de mejoras salariales. Su radicalismo rojiverde brotó de la convicción de que era necesario transformar la totalidad de la vida laboral y social para lograr la salud y el bienestar de la clase trabajadora.

El colapso climático está dejando una huella cada vez más honda en las diferentes formas de lucha de clases. Los peligros climáticos ya se han integrado en las luchas obreras de todo el mundo, sentando así nuevas bases de movilización. Además, la preparación ante situaciones de emergencia ha ido escalando posiciones en cuanto a prioridades en las agendas de los comités de seguridad de los sindicatos.

La investigación de Freya Newman y Elizabeth Humphrys sobre los trabajadores del sector de la construcción en Sidney explora la percepción que tienen los obreros del estrés térmico como una cuestión de clase. “Cuando hace un calor infernal, nuestros jefes no salen nunca de sus oficinas con aire acondicionado”, se quejaba uno de los entrevistados, “y eso que nos hacen trabajar en unos sitios espantosos a unas temperaturas demenciales”. Según los investigadores, en los lugares donde la conciencia de clase es mayor y los sindicatos han conservado cierta importancia (a pesar de la tendencia general a debilitarse durante la era neoliberal), la presión de la clase trabajadora ha logrado las mejoras más notables en materia de salud y seguridad en el marco de la crisis climática.

Las movilizaciones por una mayor protección frente a los riesgos meteorológicos, como las que tuvieron lugar en Atenas, Roma y la región de los Abruzos, evidencian la estrecha relación que existe entre las luchas obreras y la degradación del clima y el colapso ecológico. Otra de las reacciones es la resistencia contra las repercusiones “indirectas”, un concepto muy amplio que incluye las revueltas revolucionarias que se produjeron en los años 2010-12 en Oriente Próximo y el Norte de África, donde la inestabilidad meteorológica provocó un ascenso vertiginoso del precio de los alimentos, y, más recientemente, las protestas de los agricultores en la India.

Teniendo en cuenta que los vehículos eléctricos, las energías renovables y el transporte público son piezas clave para la transición ecológica, ¿qué ocurre con aquellas personas que trabajan en los sectores más contaminantes?

Algunas de las historias más inspiradoras sobre la transición nos llegan del sector del automóvil y de la industria armamentística. A principios de los años 70, los movimientos obreros y sindicales de todo el mundo se volcaron en la defensa del medio ambiente. Así fue como los “rojos” y los “verdes” adoptaron una lengua común. En Estados Unidos, por ejemplo, el líder del sindicato United Automobile Workers, Walter Reuther declaró que “la crisis medioambiental ha alcanzado unas proporciones tan catastróficas que el movimiento obrero se ve ahora obligado a llevar esta cuestión a la mesa de negociación de cualquier industria que contribuya de forma cuantificable al deterioro del medio ambiente en el que vivimos”.

Pues bien, eso es precisamente lo que hicieron los trabajadores de Lucas Aerospace, un fabricante británico de armas con sede en Gran Bretaña. La dirección de la empresa empezó a despedir a su personal amparándose en la automatización y en la disminución de los pedidos por parte del Gobierno. Ante esta situación, los trabajadores crearon un sindicato no oficial con el nombre de Combine en representación de los empleados que trabajaban en las 17 fábricas de la empresa. Su principal objetivo era frenar la hemorragia de despidos presionando al Gobierno laborista para que invirtiera en maquinaria para la vida y no para la muerte.

En el año 1974 redactaron un documento de 1.200 páginas en el que detallaban diversas propuestas para reorientar sus habilidades y maquinaria hacia una actividad productiva que fuera útil para la sociedad como, por ejemplo, máquinas de hemodiálisis, turbinas eólicas, paneles solares, motores para vehículos híbridos y trenes ligeros, es decir, tecnologías de descarbonización que eran prácticamente desconocidas en aquella época. El plan fue rechazado por el Gobierno laborista de entonces y por la dirección de la empresa, que descalificó a sus creadores como “la brigada del pan integral y las sandalias”. Sin embargo, la historia de Combine sigue vigente.

En el año 2021, Melrose Industries compró GKN, una de las principales empresas de la industria automovilística, y anunció el cierre de sus fábricas de componentes para transmisiones de automóviles ubicadas en las ciudades de Florencia y Birmingham. Por un lado, más de 500 trabajadores de la fábrica británica respondieron con un voto a favor de la huelga, exigiendo que la fábrica se convirtiera en una planta de producción de componentes de vehículos eléctricos. Frank Duffy, el coordinador sindical de Unite, explicó: “Nos dimos cuenta de que, si queríamos lograr un futuro ecológico para la industria automovilística británica y salvar nuestros puestos de trabajo cualificados, no podíamos dejar el asunto en manos de nuestros jefes. Teníamos que tomar cartas en el asunto nosotros mismos”. Además, haciéndose eco del Plan Lucas de forma deliberada, añadió: “Hemos elaborado un plan alternativo de 90 páginas en el que se detalla la manera en que podemos reorganizar la producción” para así asegurar los puestos de trabajo y acelerar la transición al transporte impulsado por motores eléctricos.

En la factoría hermana de Campi Bisenzio, en Italia, la transición desde abajo llegó mucho más lejos. Los trabajadores de la planta ya partían con ventaja tras haberse organizado en un comité industrial democrático (collettivo di fabbrica). Ocuparon las instalaciones y expulsaron a los guardias de seguridad, que habían recibido órdenes de intervenir. De esta forma, y en colaboración con académicos y activistas por la justicia climática, los trabajadores trazaron un plan de reconversión del transporte público sostenible y reivindicaron su implementación.

Decenas de miles de personas tomaron las calles una y otra vez en movilizaciones constantes, respaldadas por sindicatos y comunidades locales, así como por grupos ecologistas como Extinction Rebellion (XR) y FFF. La ocupación de Campi Bisenzio, que ha cumplido ya su tercer año, es la más larga de la historia de Italia. Después de que sus esfuerzos por obligar a Melrose a cancelar el cierre de la planta fracasaran, los trabajadores cambiaron de táctica y formaron una cooperativa que actualmente produce bicicletas de carga. Gracias a este cambio de rumbo, han conseguido mantener un empleo seguro para una parte de la plantilla original, ofreciendo así un ejemplo sobre la manera en que podrían dar comienzo los programas de descarbonización impulsados por los propios trabajadores.

En estos ejemplos que hemos ofrecido sobre la industria automovilística, el proceso de transición parece sencillo, al menos desde el punto de vista material. Así, una fábrica de componentes para automóviles con motor de combustión interna puede reconvertirse en una fábrica de vehículos eléctricos, transporte público o bicicletas. Pero, ¿qué ocurre con otras industrias para la que no existen unas tecnologías alternativas viables? ¿Cómo han de responder los trabajadores de estas industrias ante esta situación?

Las luchas de clases que se libren a lo largo de este siglo decidirán la habitabilidad de la Tierra durante los próximos milenios.

Algunas propuestas, modestas pero audaces, surgieron en Gran Bretaña en plena crisis del covid-19. Magowan y el equipo de Green New Deal para Gatwick proyectaron las múltiples formas en que las distintas categorías de competencias de los trabajadores de Gatwick se podían adaptar a otros puestos de trabajo en sectores en vías de descarbonización. Gracias al respaldo del Sindicato de Servicios Públicos y Comerciales (PCS), encontraron apoyo en la plantilla de trabajadores, entre los que se encuentra un piloto que supo sintetizar de maravilla todo lo que está en juego:

Volar ha sido el sueño de mi vida. Nos asusta mucho enfrentarnos a la posibilidad de perder esta parte tan importante de nuestras vidas, ya que perder nuestro trabajo es como perder una parte de nosotros mismos. Ahora bien, como pilotos, nos valemos de nuestras habilidades para identificar esta amenaza existencial para el mundo natural y para nuestras vidas. Si esto fuera una emergencia en pleno vuelo, hace ya tiempo que nos habríamos desviado a un destino seguro. No podemos volar a ciegas rumbo al destino previsto mientras la cabina de vuelo se llena de humo. El impacto de nuestra industria a nivel de emisiones globales es irrefutable. Las supuestas soluciones para “ecologizar” la industria en su escala actual se encuentran a décadas de distancia y no son ni global ni ecológicamente justas. Dado el aumento de la conciencia medioambiental, el sector de la aviación está abocado a contraerse, ya sea por medio de una “transición justa” para los trabajadores, o como consecuencia de una catástrofe. Debemos encontrar la manera de posicionar a los trabajadores a la cabeza de la revolución verde y así garantizar la posibilidad de reencauzarnos hacia los empleos ecológicos del futuro.

La revolución verde de Gatwick no logró despegar en su primer intento. Sin embargo, fue capaz de generar una atmósfera de posibilidad. Durante la fase de “emergencia” de la pandemia, cuando la intervención gubernamental estaba a la orden del día, el GND de Gatwick estableció vínculos con otras iniciativas lideradas por trabajadores para sustituir la aviación de corta distancia por alternativas de transporte terrestre. Esta unión permitió despejar el horizonte para una transición radical impulsada por los trabajadores y recordarnos lo que está en peligro.

Las luchas de clases que se libren a lo largo de este siglo decidirán la habitabilidad de la Tierra durante los próximos milenios. Podemos inspirarnos en las reivindicaciones que unen a los activistas por el clima y a los sindicatos. También podemos inspirarnos en las huelgas escolares contra el cambio climático, que han introducido el concepto de la huelga entre las nuevas generaciones.

No obstante, también deberíamos tener en cuenta que los ejemplos más destacados de militancia rojiverde se produjeron hace medio siglo. Y no es casualidad. Los años sesenta y principios de los setenta fueron testigos de una coyuntura revolucionaria mundial, en la que surgieron la militancia obrera y los movimientos sociales que desafiaban la opresión, la injusticia y la guerra. Este fue el terreno fértil en el que pudo germinar la alianza entre el ecologismo y el radicalismo obrero, una unión que quedó plasmada en el plan Lucas y en el activismo ecosocialista de Mazzocchi, así como en otras iniciativas pioneras como las prohibiciones ecológicas, donde se luchaba por los objetivos medioambientales a través de la huelga.

Cabe esperar que la crisis climática y la transición justa cobren protagonismo de varias formas en cualquier nueva oleada de lucha de clases que se produzca. Entre estas formas habrá retrocesos reaccionarios, pero también movimientos progresistas, ya que los grupos de trabajadores dejarán de percibir la política climática como el patio de recreo de las élites distantes para convertirse en un campo en el que su intervención colectiva puede ser decisiva.

Růst globálního zábavního průmyslu poškodil jak blahobyt jednotlivců, tak zdraví planety. Je závislost na okamžitém uspokojení z online zábavy nevyhnutelná, nebo můžeme upřednostnit hlubší prožívání přirozeného času a tělesných zkušeností?

Herní a hračkářský průmysl od pandemie setrvale roste. První v tomto roce očekává tržby ve výši 416,2 miliardy eur, druhý 118 miliard eur, což představuje roční nárůst o osm procent, respektive 2,5 procenta.

Nejsou to jediná odvětví, která zaznamenala výrazný růst: celosvětový průmysl kasin, sportovních sázek a hazardních her dosáhl v roce 2023 hodnoty 472 miliard eur, a to zejména v důsledku rostoucí obliby online hazardních her. Také příjmy globálního zábavního a mediálního průmyslu, který zahrnuje všechny typy televizního a rozhlasového vysílání a vydavatelskou činnost, i přes nedávné zpomalení nadále dosahují bilionů dolarů. Růst příjmů je obecným trendem, který lze pozorovat na všech kontinentech.

Částečně k tomuto trendu vedla — jak u dospělých, tak u dětí — potřeba rozptýlení a aktivity během lockdownů. Online a digitální hry, stejně jako různé formy médií nebo sázení, nahradily přímější a tělesnější formy socializace.

Důsledky této změny jsou dvojího druhu: na jedné straně umožňuje online a digitální transformace globalizovanější způsob vytváření společenství a podporuje kulturní výměnu. Na druhé straně sebou nese zvýšené riziko izolace, nadměrného trávení času u obrazovky a trvalých kognitivních změn — zejména u mladých lidí.

Třetím aspektem je dopad takovéto digitální transformace na životní prostředí — vyžaduje totiž velké množství přírodních zdrojů. Četné jsou i potenciální politické a sociální důsledky celospolečenské závislosti na obrazovkách a neustálém rozptýlení.

Ekologické náklady a vykořisťovatelské praktiky hračkářského průmyslu jsou dnes všeobecně známé. Investigace v čínských továrnách na hračky odhalily realitu nízkých mezd, přepracování a sexuálního obtěžování. Ve městě I-wu, kde se vyrábí více než polovina všech vánočních ozdob a doplňků na světě, jsou dělníci běžně vystaveni toxickým chemikáliím včetně olovnatých barev.

Portréty dělníků, které v čínských továrnách na hračky pořídil v roce 2004 německý fotograf Michael Wolf, jsou znepokojivou vizuální ilustrací tamějšího každodenního života. Mnozí z dělníků byli přistěhovalci z venkova, kteří trávili celé dny tím, že na panenkách kroutili nohy, ruce a hlavy s jemnými tvářičkami, mrkajícími řasami a dětskými poloúsměvy.

Součástí projektu nazvaného „Skutečný příběh hraček“ byla také celosvětová série výstav, na nichž se vystavovaly plastiky slepené Wolfem a jeho kolegy z tisíců plastových hraček zakoupených v USA spolu se snímky z továren. Podle organizace China Labor Watch se mnozí z dělníků v hračkářském průmyslu s otřesnými pracovními podmínkami potýkají dodnes.

Světoví výrobci hraček, jako je americký výrobce panenek Barbie Mattel a německý Ravensburger, začali uvedené problémy zohledňovat, k čemuž přispěly i protesty veřejnosti, které investigace vyvolaly. Výrobci se snaží snížit svou závislost na Číně tím, že přesouvají výrobu do zemí, jako jsou Indie, Mexiko, Vietnam a Malajsie.

Přesuny se však podle všeho zakládají spíše na ekonomických než morálních ohledech: v Číně prudce roste cena pracovní síly. A samozřejmě neexistuje žádná záruka, že pracovní podmínky v jiných zemích jsou lepší.

Evropská unie mezitím podnikla kroky k větší bezpečnosti hraček. Zakázala používání škodlivých chemických látek v hračkách prodávaných v rámci celé Unie. Podobná regulace existuje také ve Velké Británii a dalších zemích mimo Evropskou unii, včetně USA a Kanady. Předpisy se však ne vždy dodržují a evropský trh tak stále zaplavují nekvalitní hračky vyrobené za hranicemi Evropu.

V roce 2023 úřady různých členských zemí, zapojené do projektu pod společným vedením Evropské agentury pro chemické látky, zjistily, že ze zhruba 2400 analyzovaných spotřebitelských výrobků jsou hračky z hlediska nesouladu s právními předpisy Evropské unie hned na druhém místě. Horší je jen elektronika.

Kromě toxických chemických látek zvyšuje dopad hračkářského průmyslu na životní prostředí i jeho závislost na globálních obchodních a přepravních řetězcích. Nehoda v severním Pacifiku v roce 1992, kdy během bouře z nákladní lodi unikly do moře tisíce gumových kačenek, byla surrealistickou ilustrací toho, jak hračkářský průmysl přispívá ke zbytečnému znečištění oceánů plasty. Některé kačenky pluly po světě několik let a ještě deset a půl roku od havárie byly k vidění vyplavené na plážích ve Velké Británii, na Aljašce nebo v Austrálii.

Děti a mladí lidé si však již dnes dávno nehrají jen s hračkami. Celosvětovou popularitu herního průmyslu dokládají jeho mamutí zisky. Odhaduje se, že více než dvě miliardy lidí na celém světě se věnují nějakému druhu hraní, ať už na počítačích, konzolích nebo mobilních telefonech.

I když se někteří domnívají, že videohry a všeobecný přechod na digitální média by mohly snížit dopad zábavního průmyslu na životní prostředí — a také podnítit reakci na klimatickou krizi prostřednictvím her, které například vyzývají hráče k obnově suchem postižené krajiny — i hraní ve virtuální má své zcela hmotné důsledky v reálném světě: společenské i environmentální náklady na těžbu elektronických materiálů nebo padesát tun elektronického odpadu, který každoročně končí na skládkách po celém světě.

Dalším závažným problémem je spotřeba energie pro servery a datová centra, stejně jako pro herní zařízení v domácnostech. Přestože některé platformy nyní nabízejí uživatelům možnost hrát online, bez nutnosti použití velkého hardwaru, čímž se snižuje množství elektronického odpadu, materiální dopad spotřeby energie spojené s hraním zůstává.

Bezpodmínečně bude také potřeba řešit kolosální spotřebu energie generativní umělé inteligence, již herní průmysl rovněž využívá. A stejně jako u hraček, ani hernímu průmyslu nejsou cizí nepřijatelné pracovním podmínky — průzkum UNI Global Union z roku 2022 mezi pracovníky v devětadvaceti zemích odhalil jako klíčové problémy nízké mzdy, povinné přesčasy i diskriminaci.

Další oblastí, na kterou je třeba se zaměřit, jsou tematické a zábavní parky. Celkový dopad těchto provozů, náročných na půdu i vodu, na člověka a životní prostředí, není zatím zcela jasný. Přímo ale souvisí s neudržitelným masovým turismem. Parky samy o sobě nabízejí svým návštěvníkům oddělený svět, zcela odizolovaný od okolní krajiny a komunit.

I v nich se objevují problémy spojené s pracovními podmínkami a vykořisťovatelskými pracovními praktikami: šetření Equal Times z roku 2018 například ukázalo, že pracovníci v Disneylandu v USA vydělávají mnohem méně, než kolik podle odhadů výzkumného institutu MIT činí minimální důstojná mzda.

Nakonec je tu masivní nárůst online hazardních her, který je částečně umožněn rostoucím používáním mobilních telefonů. Tuto oblast je třeba podrobovat zkoumání také z hlediska jejích dopadů na lidské zdraví. Evropská komise se nyní snaží vytvořit pro online hazardní hry regulační rámec. To je ovšem složité v neposlední řadě proto, že hazardní hry přinášejí také značné příjmy do státních pokladen.

Tvořivost a vynalézavost jsou základními prvky změn, které potřebujeme provést, abychom dospěli k zdravé rovnováze mezi naší potřebou hrát si a povinností pečovat o životní prostředí.

Negativní sociální dopady hazardních her jsou však mimořádné: ve Velké Británii a Irsku, dvou v tomto směru nejliberálnějších evropských zemích, výzkum University College Dublin odhalil jejich významný podíl na šíření osamělosti, rozpadu vztahů a duševních problémech. Ve Velké Británii výzkum příslušného regulačního úřadu dokládá, že třiačtyřicet procent lidí, kteří používají sázkové terminály v pohostinských zařízeních, jsou buď problémoví, nebo rizikoví hráči.

Zábavní průmysl obsluhuje naši potřebu zábavy, stimulace a rozptýlení. Pozdní kapitalismus je závislý na repetitivních smyčkách zábavy, na nadprodukci médií a dalších produktů a na reklamních a marketingových praktikách, které se jako „červi“ zarývají do našich mozků, pronikají do mysli a usídlují se v ní.

Očekáváme a toužíme po stále větší porci zábavy, stejně jako po cestování a turistice. Vytváření umělých spotřebitelských tužeb je všudypřítomným společenským rysem a odvětví související se zábavou a pobavením v něm hrají významnou kulturní roli.

Souvislost mezi kapitalistickou výrobou a spotřebou zábavy vystihl francouzský filozof Guy Debord. Podle Deborda je spotřeba „spektáklu“ (doslova: podívané) v podobě informací, propagandy, reklamy nebo zábavy „společensky dominantním modelem života“. V příkrém kontrastu k „chlebu a hrám“ minulosti se ovšem dnes převládající formy zábavy odehrávají v prostoru definovaném extrémním individualismem.

Koloseum a hippodrom se nám slily v obrazy přímo před našima očima. Reprezentace, stimulace a hyperrealita existují s námi — nosíme je neustále v sobě. Naše mentální zkušenost je jimi neustále přetvářena. Propojením konzumace s tvorbou vlastního obsahu se pak stáváme zároveň diváky i podívanou — spektáklem.

Psychologické a kognitivní dopady této skutečnosti jsou potenciálně obrovské. Výzkumy v oblasti rozptylujícího účinku technologií jsou dosud poměrně omezené. Dosavadní studie — například z Centra pro humánní technologie — ale naznačují souvislost mezi nadměrnou stimulací a zvýšenou úrovní stresu, úzkosti a závislosti.

Podobně jako u závislosti si náš mozek zvykne na určitý výsledek, který nám na krátkou dobu uleví. Když je předmět nebo chování odstraněno, začneme po něm toužit a vzniká začarovaný kruh rozptýlení a uspokojení. A stejně jako u všech návykových chování se věčně unikající pocit nasycení stává předmětem nekonečného hledání, které má nebezpečné a nezdravé důsledky.

Jak bychom se mohli tomuto aspektu moderního života vhodně přizpůsobit a jeho dopady řešit? Jak přemýšlet o proměně našeho vztahu k zábavě — ke hrám, které hrajeme, k množství vizuálních médií, která sledujeme, a k hračkám, které kupujeme?

Východiskem by mohly být etické principy opětovného používání, obnovy, nerůstu, ekonomiky dobrého života, udržitelnosti nebo takzvaného „znovuzdivočení“. Zelení politici a aktivisté se musí touto otázkou zabývat a nabídnout protipól dominantním přístupům, založeným na růstu, vykořisťování a extraktivismu, které ze zábavy činí trvalý a snadný zdroj zisku.

Inspirace se dá najít v tradičnějších druzích společenského života, stejně jako v zážitkových venkovních hrách a formách zábavy, které využívají a rozvíjejí hravost a tvořivost. V popředí takovýchto pokusů musí být důraz na fyzickou zkušenost, kterou online prostředí nemůže nahradit, a hledání cest k tomu, jak se mohou lidé lépe vyrovnávat s absencí stálých podnětů.

Uvažovat lze také o řadě politických návrhů, zaměřených na proměnu a snížení dopadů způsobu, jakým se bavíme. Korporace, které ze zábavy v online světě profitují, by měly převzít odpovědnost za její dopad a zajistit, aby jejich dodavatelské řetězce splňovaly vysoké pracovní a ekologické standardy. Na místní úrovni by mohly hrát klíčovou roli přístupy zaměřené na obnovu a podporu společenství, jako jsou takzvané „knihovny věcí“, kde mohou lidé sdílet nástroje, vybavení a další předměty.

Na evropské a státní úrovni je třeba účinně dohlížet na environmentální poplatky na dovoz hraček a přísné dodržování předpisů týkajících se například pracovních podmínek. Dobrým nápadem by byly pobídky, jako jsou daňové úlevy a dotace pro podniky, které investují do výzkumu a vývoje udržitelných materiálů v hračkách a inovativních her. Veřejné finance by měly být přesměrovány k regenerativním volnočasovým aktivitám s nízkými nároky na technologie.

Účet musí začít skládat také herní průmysl. Jedním z malých, ale potenciálně účinných opatření by mohlo být zavedení poplatku, který by platily telekomunikační a elektronické společnosti za každé stažení herních aplikací. Společnosti vyrábějící elektroniku a hardware musí také nést odpovědnost za úklid vlastního odpadu, podobně jako by ji měly nést firmy vyrábějící plasty.

V případě hazardních her, kasin a zábavních parků by mohl být přístup mnohem radikálnější. Je třeba zvážit postupné ukončení provozu zábavních parků, podobně jako je tomu u zoologických zahrad. Jsou pozůstatkem minulé éry, svátku průmyslového využívání půdy a vody, nadměrné spotřeby a masové zábavy konce devatenáctého století.

I v jiných podobných oblastech jsme svědky změn, které byly ještě nedávno nepředstavitelné: není to tak dávno, co bylo vykořisťování zvířat v cirkusech považováno za normální. Nyní je v mnoha zemích zakázáno. A přestože zákonná omezení sázek a hazardních her jsou částečně komplikována finanční účastí států na tomto odvětví, je třeba k online hazardním společnostem a kasinům přistupovat stejně jako k tabákovému nebo alkoholovému průmyslu.

Zatímco úplný zákaz hazardních her a zábavních parků lze považovat za neliberální a možná i kontraproduktivní, škodlivé činnosti by měly být stále více znevýhodňovány. Pokud můžeme argumentovat pro omezování fosilních paliv, můžeme totéž dělat i u dalších významných ekonomických aktivit s obrovským negativním sociálním a ekologickým dopadem.

Individuální spotřebitelská volba má svou roli, nicméně je třeba se vyhnout úplné individualizaci odpovědnosti. Potřebné změny jsou systémové a sociokulturní povahy, podobně jako změny v zemědělství, dopravě, energetice, stravování a obecných vzorcích spotřeby.

Tvořivost a vynalézavost jsou základními prvky změn, které potřebujeme provést, abychom dospěli k zdravé rovnováze mezi naší potřebou hrát si a povinností pečovat o životní prostředí. Umožnit naší vlastní pozornosti a duševním obzorů „znovu zdivočet“ v tomto směru znamená obnovit prostor, osvobozený od neustálé záplavy „obsahu“ a otevřený myšlenkovým procesům, které se dějí v přirozeném čase, s uspokojením, jež někdy přijde až s časovým odstupem.

Zdaleka nejde o strohý a puritánský přístup, založený na odpírání si „zábavy“. Jde naopak o pěstování radosti, která pramení z života v přítomnosti a zapojení do smysluplných, vzrušujících společných aktivit. Do středu pozornosti je potřeba postavit pojem „dostatku“, a to nejen kvůli naší pozornosti a duševnímu zdraví, ale i kvůli zdraví planety.

What do we do with our borders? The right-wing shift in the European political climate in recent years has meant a higher degree of securitisation. At the same time, some are calling for border controls to be reduced or even abolished. Perhaps the answer lies in a change of perspective; a new outlook free from the shackles of capitalism and inspired by degrowth.

Recent national and European elections have marked a shift to the right in European politics. While the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) failed to win a majority in France’s parliamentary election, it will still be the most represented party in the French Parliament. In other European countries, such as Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands, radical right forces have formed coalition governments.

One of the driving factors behind the success of right-wing forces has been their framing of migration as a key security issue. In the run-up to the European elections, a survey in Germany found that 41 per cent of the population considers refugees, immigration, asylum politics, and integration as the most important problem for the European Union. This widespread perception of out-of-control immigration to the EU has also led once-moderate political forces to promise stricter border enforcement and rapid deportations, in an (often unsuccessful) attempt to take votes away from the far right.

In December 2023, France passed a controversial bill toughening its immigration policies, while in March this year, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) expressed its support for Rwanda-style deportation deals with non-EU countries. Moreover, In April, the EU adopted the new Asylum and Migration Pact after eight long years of negotiations; and shortly before the European elections, Brussels signed a new agreement to contain immigration from Lebanon.    

Right-wing narratives have also linked migration to climate change. While far-right forces are known for their scepticism towards anthropogenic climate change, they have progressively shifted away from pure denialism towards instrumentalising global warming and ecological crises for political purposes. These narratives advocate for tighter border protection by casting migrants as responsible for environmental degradation and framing climate-induced migration as a security threat.

Ahead of the 2019 European elections, the Rassemblement National’s Jordan Bardella stated that “borders are the environment’s greatest ally; it is through them that we will save the planet.”

This emergent discourse of “ecobordering” draws on (neo-)colonial, racialised, and neo-Malthusian logics to present borders as environmental protection and climate solutions. As researchers Joe Turner and Dan Bailey explain, the aspiration behind ecobordering is to “obscure the primary driving causes of the ecological crisis in the entrenched production and consumption practices of Global North economies”, blaming ecological degradation in the Global South instead.

Through the divisive strategy of scapegoating “the other”, these narratives seek to hide responsibilities for a long history of colonialism, exploitation and violence that extend into the present.    

In recent years, the degrowth movement has increasingly taken issue with global power dynamics and structural drivers of inequality. There is a growing understanding that if degrowth does not converge with demands from the Global South, it risks turning into an “inward-looking, provincial, localised, and eventually exclusive project” that perpetuates the “imperial mode of living” of the Global North.

However, degrowth has yet to develop a comprehensive border perspective that goes beyond local solutions like open localism. Such a perspective must take into account the capitalist system’s fundamental need for borders, as well as the rise of ecobordering narratives.    

In the current capitalist system, the “deep hegemony of borders” is perceived as common sense across a wide spectrum of political actors. In Europe, for example, liberal and progressive actors have justified increased border protection with the need to protect and promote “our European way of life”.

If it wants to challenge the capitalist system of global exploitation, degrowth needs to call into question the border apparatus through which this system protects and perpetuates itself.

The mainstreaming of securitisation discourses has also led to higher spending in the border security and surveillance industry. In 1990, there were no fences at the external borders of the EU/Schengen area. In 2014, the length of border fences was 315 km. By 2022, it was 2,048 km – 13 per cent of the EU’s external land borders. 

A degrowth border perspective should be built on the acknowledgement of historic and present-day responsibilities, as well as principles of solidarity and humanity.

Reflecting this shift in border policies, the budget for the European border and coast guard agency Frontex rose by 2,763 per cent between 2005 and 2020. From 2021-2027, the agency will be provided with 5.6 billion euros – a 194 per cent increase compared to the previous budgetary cycle. Rich countries currently spend 2.3 times more money on border securitisation than on climate finance.

Given that one of the aims of degrowth is to downsize those branches of the economy that are socially and ecologically harmful, border enforcement needs to be put under the spotlight. Indeed, besides its huge human costs, the border security industry has been found to be “profiteering from climate change”. While prospects of climate-induced migration have played a role in border securitisation, another important factor is the nexus between fossil fuel firms and border policing: the same private industries that provide border protection to rich countries also offer their services to the oil industry. This shows how “climate inaction and militarised responses to its consequences increasingly work hand in hand.”    

So far, degrowth has engaged only marginally with the topic of borders and (im-)migration. In his book Degrowth (2018), Giorgos Kallis dedicates a small section to the issue, dismantling the claim by American economist Herman Daly that immigration poses a threat to a steady-state (or post-growth) economy. ‘

According to Daly, the population growth associated with migration inflows leads to more economic growth. Daly draws on American ecologist Garett Hardins’ “lifeboat ethics”, which claims that each state, similarly to a boat, can only take a certain number of people before exceeding its social and ecological capacities. Kallis rejects that assumption based, among other things, on the observation that countries are not closed containers whose environmental impacts are confined to their national boundaries. He concludes that there is no ecological case for closed borders and no evidence that immigration poses a risk to degrowth.

At the same time, Kallis warns against understanding degrowth as being in favour of open borders, as such a policy might fundamentally undermine the nation-state. While its role continues to be debated within the degrowth community, the state is still seen by many as an essential actor for a social-ecological transformation. The call for open borders or the slogan “No borders, no nation” has also been criticised from the Left for acting as an “empty provocation” that risks to steer and increase existing fears around the competition for public goods, leading to anti-immigration sentiments and the rise of the far-right. 

Drawing attention to the narrow scope of the ongoing debate around degrowth and borders, German sociologist Miriam Lang argues that it is not enough to simply ask for open borders. According to Lang, such a call must consider and criticise how the “imperial mode of living” of rich countries, its associated North-South relationships, and the dominant understanding of a good life are linked to the overall structural crisis of capitalism and the current climate catastrophe.

This debate shows that degrowth still needs to develop a coherent border perspective as part of its project of deep socioecological transformation. What is clear, however, is that a degrowth case for open borders cannot be based on neoliberal or utilitarian considerations that frame immigration as a solution to demographic decline, ageing populations, or a shortage of skilled labour. Rather, a degrowth border perspective should be built on the acknowledgement of historic and present-day responsibilities, as well as principles of solidarity and humanity.

Concrete proposals could include providing safe passages, revising visa and residence laws, and building necessary social infrastructures. The money currently being spent for the securitisation of borders could be redirected towards socially useful projects to assure that everyone has the right to decent housing and the means to adapt to the consequences of climate change.

Global freedom of movement entails the right to move, but also the right to remain – that is, the assurance that one’s livelihood is not endangered by the advance of the capitalist system and the economic growth of rich countries. A degrowth border perspective based on these principles can act as a strong counter-proposal to the divisive narrative of ecobordering.

In recent years, the suppression of LGBTQ+ rights in Hungary has placed Victor Orbán’s government on a collision course with European institutions. At the centre of the controversy is a 2021 law known as the “Child Protection” act. The bill has attracted international condemnation for enabling the subjugation of the rights of sexual minorities, but that is not the full story. Analysing the effects of the law shows how its complex nature has led to a stifling atmosphere of uncertainty.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz government are seen as outliers in the European Union because of their gender-phobic and homophobic ideology. The European Commission even took Budapest to court in 2022 over an anti-LGBTQ+ law known as the “Child Protection” act.

The controversial law, which passed on 15 June 2021 under the guise of protecting children, implicitly conflates LGBTQ+ individuals with child abusers. It also simultaneously contains a US-style registry of paedophilic sex offenders and a Russian-style ban on exposing minors to so-called LGBTQ+ propaganda in the context of sexual education and general representation in education, media, and advertisement.

The law was widely criticised domestically and abroad for undermining equality, fundamental rights, freedom of expression, and the right to information. What is more, by blurring the lines between sexual minorities and child molesters, the bill suggests that both categories deserve similar social judgement. The new law has been subjected to further criticism for not clearly defining the focal theme of “LGBTQ+ propaganda”, leaving it open to subjective interpretation and enabling confusion and potential misuse.

Since the act was ratified, Hungary has made international headlines for its LGBTQ+ censorship. While these reports often paint a picture of consistent ideological persecution of sexual minorities, the reality is that the government’s approach to censorship is far less consistent and much more complex.

The law prohibits making content available for children under the age of 18 that “promotes or displays sexuality for its own purposes, or that promotes or displays gender/sex change or homosexuality.” Further guidelines published by the main regulator – the Media Authority – stipulate that children should not be exposed to topics of gender reassignment and homosexuality if these subjects are emphasised as central, essential, or indispensable parts of the content. The recommendation also states that the presentation of such themes as social norms and appealing lifestyles constitutes propaganda, which is allegedly aimed at spreading LGBTQ+ “ideologies” and influencing minors.

Despite including provisions regarding the representation of homosexuality and transgenderism in the law, the document from the Media Authority also addresses general gestures of affection in a subsequent paragraph. Without specifying the genders or sexes involved, it states that expressions of affection such as kissing, hugging, or holding hands should not be deemed problematic as long as these gestures are not portrayed for their own sake, are not the focal point, or are not prominently featured.

While the Media Authority provides a short list of productions to be restricted, such as the American drama series The L World and Queer as Folk, or Pedro Almodóvar’s comedy-drama film All About My Mother, these explanations do not clarify what constitutes “propaganda” and what determines whether queer elements are central to a work of art. In the absence of precise definitions, accurate guidance can only be drawn from previous decisions of the Media Authority and the courts.

In principle, the Media Authority does not directly supervise or control Hungarian publicity. However, it has been involved in cases that have either drawn public attention or have been pursued after reports from the Consumer Protection Authorities. Yet, the Child Protection bill is by no means uniformly enforced.

For instance, the Media Authority’s website has an easy-to-fill-out anonymous reporting form. In the six months between June 2021 and the end of the year, 84 notifications were received from citizens referring to the Child Protection act, but in the first eight months of the following year, only 12 notifications were sent.

As the regulator told journalists, none of the 96 complaints delivered by citizens was followed up with. This may explain why there was a sharp drop in the number of notifications.

The law’s effectiveness is further hampered by domestic and international legal environments. The provisions of the Media Act only apply to media service providers residing in Hungary, excluding foreign media services available in the country. Regardless, in 2022, the Media Authority objected to streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+. The streamers disregarded these complaints, but the Media Authority argued that these companies are “responsible” to comply with Hungarian law even though they are not obliged to do so. 

The same thing applies to social media platforms and websites hosted on non-Hungarian servers, where it is arguably more likely for children to encounter harmful content. The government and the pro-government media simply ignore this glaring contradiction. Moreover, they fail to advocate for improving children’s media literacy or creating programmes to help teachers and parents to protect children. Instead, the Media Authority targets Hungary-based curated institutions with well-defined profiles and audiences – domestic analogue media, museums, and bookshops – only to fail before the national courts.

Examples of these contradictions abound.  While Netflix, based in the Netherlands, is freely streaming the gay coming-of-age series Heartstopper, in July 2023, the Líra book distributor in Hungary was fined 30,000 euros for displaying the original Heartstopper novel in the youth literature section. The bookstore challenged the decision in court and, in February 2024, won due to a punctuation error in the law. (Although the problem was discovered last October, the government failed to replace the missing comma until recently.)

There are also other inconsistencies in the way bookshops are targeted. Líra has been fined an additional 12,500 euros for displaying the volume Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls as youth literature since the story of a transgender girl is featured among the 100 female biographies told in the volume. However, the court dismissed the case alongside the Heartstopper fine. Another bookshop was fined only 2,500 euros for the same book on February 13, 2024.

There was no argument in court about how the authorities planned to collect the fine in light of the recently lost case, nor was there an explanation for why there was such a significant difference in the amount of the fine imposed for selling the same book. Unsurprisingly, the second bookstore has also promised to take their case to court.

In the face of these developments, bookstores have repeatedly indicated that it should not be their responsibility to decide which book is punishable under the text of the ambiguous law. The vagueness of the Child Protection bill and the regulatory attention of the Media Authority risks seriously affecting bookshops’ business, which could essentially cease the distribution of some titles.

Larger businesses have their own coping mechanisms when it comes to navigating the uncertain realities of the Hungarian market. In response to a question from Amnesty International Hungary, large multinational corporations replied that their international LGBTQ+-related or Pride Month advertisement campaigns are simply not worth presenting in Hungary any longer, since they see no reason to risk penalties that can climb up to 1.2 million euros. On the other hand, the television network RTL reported regular pre-emptive consultations with the Media Authority to avoid punishment.

The anti-LGBTQ+ law has created controversy in both national and municipal institutions. In 2023, the extreme right-wing Mi Hazánk (“Our Homeland”) party’s leader raised attention to a World Press Photo exhibition displayed in the Hungarian National Gallery that included images of elderly gay men living in a retirement home. He claimed that the national institution is breaking the child-protection law by promoting homosexuality in an exhibition without an age restriction. In reaction to these claims, the minister of culture ordered the Fidesz-appointed director of the gallery to only let legal adults visit the exhibition.

As museums have no authority to ask for visitors’ IDs, László L. Simon rejected the request. This prompted the minister of culture to fire him on the grounds of “a lack of leadership skills”. There were no further explanations about how the images in question would threaten the development of minors. Perhaps even more importantly, authorities did not address the fact that the Child Protection law has no relevant section about museum exhibitions.

L. Simon himself had voted for the Child Protection act as a member of the Hungarian parliament for Fidesz in 2021. He continued to champion the law after being fired, criticising only its loose application. The World Press Photo exhibition at the National Gallery saw record attendance after the controversy.

Parallel to the National Museum’s scandal, the Museum of Ethnography closed a section of its running exhibition featuring photographs of homosexual men to avoid possible consequences. The museum management was not held responsible in this case. However, a United Student Front activist group member who demonstrated for students’ rights and freedom in the arts, information and education received a 200-euro fine for visiting the part of the museum that was cordoned off. The student took the case to court, and a final decision is now pending.

While this preventive practice of self-censorship can feel absurd when it is done by an institution that wishes to avoid punishment, it can amount to downright mental and psychological torture for the individual.

This was the case for Gideon Horváth, a renowned sculptor whose work is often grounded in theoretical frameworks of queer ecology or queer history. Since 2021, the artist has repeatedly faced warnings from art institutions’ authorities. In 2022, the director of an autonomous Budapest municipal museum attempted to censor Horváth’s explanatory texts from a group show.

The following year, within the framework of the Veszprém-Balaton European Capital of Culture, Horváth was invited to a residency programme. His work plan on queer ecology was accepted initially, but he later encountered pressure to remove some words to comply with the “political climate.” He refused and, after a prolonged debate, managed to have his works’ descriptions published without change.

A similar incident occurred in September 2023, in the programme of the Budapest City Gallery’s public art biennale, which initially had the support of the anti-Orbán political leadership of the Hungarian capital. Citing the Child Protection law, the vice-director of the autonomous municipal Deák17 Gallery – which was hosting a subsection of the biennale – attempted to prevent the descriptions of Horváth’s work from appearing in the exhibition.

After extensive discussion, Horváth managed to display his texts, albeit with LGBTQ+-related words blacked out. In this way, he showcased the impact of censorship in a performative manner. A similar text appeared uncensored in public space in another section of the same festival.

Subsequently, Horváth was nominated for a prestigious prize by the independent Esterházy Foundation. Dr. Júlia Fabényi, the Fidesz-appointed director of the state-funded Ludwig Museum in Budapest, is a member of the Board of Trustees that grants the prize. In defiance of Horváth’s arguments, the director decided to censor his accompanying text when the shortlisted artists’ works were exhibited in the Ludwig Museum.

In the end, Horváth won the prize, but the event hosts did not ask the winners their traditional questions. This was an apparent attempt to prevent the artist from speaking. (Since then, however, the museum has purchased some works from Horváth.)

Afterwards, Horváth reported on social media that, apart from enduring repeated censorship, he was tormented by his otherwise anti-establishment critics. They accused him of legitimising government-enforced institutional censorship by taking part in the exhibition rather than sanctioning it in protest. These censures implied that Horváth’s moral responsibility was to give up an important opportunity for his career, including the nomination, the prestigious exhibition opportunity and the chance to win the prize.

The truth, however, is that Horváth risked his future career opportunities each time he publicly revealed the details of his experience with censorship. He never received public support from leading autonomous institutions or professionals in the Hungarian cultural and political field.

The laws are a political tool designed to serve the interests of Orbán’s government by sowing division in society and distracting the public from Fidesz’s failures.

Perhaps it is this last example that best illustrates the burden placed by the extreme vagueness of the illogical law and its inconsistent application on individual creators, NGOs, publishers and other businesses. Every time they consider publishing or displaying something that can be linked even marginally to the portrayal of sexual minorities, they face extreme uncertainty.

And yet, despite the government’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people in Hungary has not decreased in recent years. In fact, the results of an IPSOS 2023 international survey show the exact opposite: support for same-sex marriage in Hungary has risen from 30 to 47 per cent in the past 10 years. In the same period, support for adoption by same-sex couples rose from 42 to 59 per cent. Has the entire anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda failed?

When the Child Protection law was passed in 2021, it sparked widespread speculation about whether the government had any intention to enforce it or whether it was just a calculated component of Fidesz’s communication strategy aimed at dividing the public.

Even if we accept the government’s explanation that the law is meant to protect children, its inconsistent enforcement exposes Fidesz’s blatant hypocrisy. The act cannot be interpreted in terms of ideological rigour, but only as political opportunism. While Hungarian activists, creators, and distributors are busy interpreting the law, the government revels in the opportunities created by a persistently unclear situation.

As expected, the Fidesz government is simply exploiting the law and the reactionary critical voices to legitimise its symbolic fight against the alleged attempts of the European Union to subjugate Hungarian sovereignty and destroy national cultural identity. 

For the government, creating an uncertain situation is enough to drive a wedge into the fabric of society based on gender-phobic ideology, and to demonise and further alienate LGBTQ+ organisations and their political and social allies from the social mainstream. Furthermore, the law allows Fidesz to suppress opposition parties and the liberal intelligentsia who support  LGBTQI+ causes.

The persistent focus and agenda-setting around this issue serve to frame those who support the rights of sexual minorities as anti-national actors aiming to destroy Hungarian sovereignty, thus committing a form of quasi-treason. For this strategy to succeed, the Hungarian government does not need a well-thought-out law that can only be enforced with a large financial and infrastructural investment. It is enough that such a bill exists and can be referred to in certain situations where the government’s ethos requires it.

Of course, these occasions are not isolated but are integrated into the broader aggressive propaganda against the LGBTQ+ groups pouring out from the pro-government media. These channels regularly dehumanise members of sexual minorities and engage in targeted character assassination of known Hungarian LGBTQ+ members. When the opportunity arises, the Child Protection act is routinely adapted to daily political issues.

Recent events exemplify this opportunism particularly well. The reputation of the Fidesz government was badly damaged at the beginning of this year when President Katalin Novák, also known as the face of Orbán’s family policy, was caught up in a scandal. For reasons that are still unclear, Novák granted a presidential pardon to a man who had repeatedly forced children to withdraw cases of sexual violence brought against the director of a state children’s home.

Following the scandal that led to the swift resignation of the president and the minister of justice, the Fidesz government embarked on a series of strong actions in the form of regulations and legislation. Among other things, the new regulations make perpetrators or accomplices of child sexual abuse ineligible for a presidential pardon. In addition, the recreational activities of workers in children’s homes will be monitored. Internet service providers will also be obliged to provide internet filtering services to ban pornographic sites at the request of parents. The filtering would be based on a constantly updated “blacklist” of the most visited pornographic sites, drawn up by the Media Authority.

What’s more, other parts of the media law have also been amended. For example, the government replaced the comma that has been losing lawsuits against bookshops for months. In addition, the responsibility for deciding on the appropriateness of the content of books is now being transferred from bookshops to publishers. Publishers now have to answer questions such as “is the representation or promotion of gender non-conformity, gender reassignment or homosexuality a defining element of the book?” Still, even with further explanations, the act remains as ambiguous as it was in June 2021.

The new laws are nothing more than a political tool designed to serve the interests of Orbán’s government by sowing division in society and distracting the public from Fidesz’s failures. Their effectiveness lies in their inconsistent application, which creates a climate of absolute uncertainty.

As Hezbollah and Israeli forces continue to trade fire in the wake of October 7, the possibility of a full-blown war between Israel and Lebanon has never seemed stronger. Given the extremely high stakes and the gravity of the situation, the EU must do everything in its power to defuse tensions, prioritising Lebanon’s long-standing needs over its own short-term benefits.

On June 19, 2024, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened Cyprus with retaliation if it allowed Israel to use its airports and bases to attack Lebanon.

Cyprus, the European Union’s (EU) easternmost member, is within range of Hezbollah’s missiles. This means that in the event of a spill-over from the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the island nation – and by extension the EU – could be drawn in. Aware of that risk, Nicosia promptly assured Lebanon that it would not allow attacks against it from its territory. 

These developments highlight Lebanon’s delicate position: tensions with Israel have continued to simmer following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. Since then, tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border amid a heavy exchange of fire. Recently, with strikes growing more frequent and the Israeli army positioning itself for potential conflict, fears of a full-blown have increased.

These concerns are worsened by the tumultuous and conflict-ridden history of the Israel-Lebanon relationship. The 1982 Lebanon War took tens of thousands of lives and led to the rise of Hezbollah. Nearly 25 years later, an intense 34-day conflict triggered by a Hezbollah cross-border raid on an Israeli patrol resulted in more than 1000 casualties and widespread destruction.

Further escalation could be disastrous for the Middle East and the EU, especially as other countries might get involved. Hezbollah has strong ties to Iran, which has suggested its full support in the event of an Israeli aggression against Lebanon. The Iranian mission to the UN threatened that “an obliterating war will ensue” and warned that “all options, including the full involvement of all Resistance Fronts are on the table.”

The Resistance Front is an alliance of Iran-backed armed groups, including Hamas, Yemen’s Houthis and Iraqi Shiite militias. Iran’s new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has signalled that there will be no change in his country’s policy towards Israel, while also reiterating the Islamic Republic’s support for Hezbollah.

In addition, Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said that his country stands in solidarity with Lebanon and urged other regional countries to do the same. Two other important regional actors, namely Syria and Jordan, could also be pulled into the conflict due to their proximity and historical tensions with Israel.

Beyond the Middle East, the US – Israel’s closest and most powerful ally – could also be drawn into the conflict, even though it has warned Israel that it might not be able to defend it against an all-out war with Hezbollah.

For the EU, the stakes couldn’t be higher. While the threat of a Hezbollah attack on Cyprus currently appears more like inflammatory rhetoric than a realistic possibility, if such an attack were to occur, it would have far-reaching consequences. An escalation of this sort would trigger the EU’s collective defence obligations, which would require a bloc-wide response at a time when internal cohesion is already strained, with leaders like Hungary’s Orbán blocking decision-making processes.

To prevent that scenario, the EU has been keen to maintain Lebanon’s stability. In January, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visited Lebanon to discuss the border situation and stress the importance of avoiding regional escalation. Last month, Borrell further expressed support for the ongoing mediation efforts, “led by the US and France to mitigate confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah, and for Lebanon and Cyprus, which have been threatened by Hezbollah.”

An Israel-Lebanon war would represent another significant diplomatic failure for the EU and the West, further eroding their global credibility in the wake of the Gaza conflict. Moreover, it would likely trigger a devastating humanitarian catastrophe, with the potential for extensive civilian casualties. The toll could be dramatically higher if additional regional actors join the conflict.

Lebanon would be particularly vulnerable, given Hezbollah’s strategic presence in villages and civilian areas and Israel’s superior military capacities. Civilian infrastructure would also likely suffer severe damage, making post-war reconstruction extensive and costly.

The impact of a war between Israel and Lebanon on the EU would be multifaceted. Beyond endangering the security of Cyprus, an all-out conflict could mean a substantial refugee influx for the EU as Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world. Apart from Syrian asylum seekers, Lebanon has also historically hosted a large Palestinian refugee population, with around 475,000 registered with the UN in Lebanon. They have been forced into Lebanon in successive waves since 1948, when many Palestinians fled or were expelled by Zionist forces.

An Israel-Lebanon war would represent another significant diplomatic failure for the EU and the West, further eroding their global credibility in the wake of the Gaza conflict.

Moreover, a war between Hezbollah and Israel could also have a domino effect, triggering a massive exodus of refugees – Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, and potentially from across a destabilised Middle East– towards the EU. This would mirror the Syrian civil war when millions of refugees fled to the EU, challenging the bloc’s ability to manage aid as well as integration and resettlement processes.

The EU’s current diplomatic efforts in the region are narrowly centred on preventing migration. Brussels recently signed a deal with Beirut providing one billion euros over three years to support the Lebanese economy and enhance border management cooperation, in exchange for preventing irregular migrants from coming to Europe. Three-quarters of the funds were earmarked for assisting Lebanon as a host country for Syrian refugees and other displaced people.

The agreement was announced amid a surge of Syrian refugees coming to Cyprus from Lebanon, which pressured the EU to intervene. In the first three months of 2024, over 2,000 people arrived in Cyprus by sea, compared to around 80 in the same time frame in 2023.

Similar agreements with Egypt and Tunisia reveal a broader EU strategy: deflect migrant processing to third countries and keep migrants from entering the EU, as the bloc further tightens its borders.

Critics argue that the EU’s recently brokered migration deal primarily serves its own interests, neglecting Lebanon’s need for significant economic and structural reforms. They warn that “any deal that avoids tackling Lebanon’s deep problems will fail to stabilise the country and will not address the reasons that push people towards Europe.” The deal does not even properly cover the cost of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon: According to the Lebanese Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar, handling Syrian asylum seekers costs the country 1.5 billion Dollars a year.

While the effectiveness of the EU’s approach is questionable, one thing is certain: Lebanon urgently needs support for handling its migrant and refugee population. The current level of assistance, with Lebanon receiving only 27 per cent of global funding for the Syrian refugee response in 2023, is woefully inadequate.

Apart from a widespread humanitarian crisis, an Israeli-Lebanese war could also lead to extensive and severe economic ramifications by disrupting trading routes and affecting energy supplies. The EU has already taken a heavy hit in this area following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Hezbollah and its allies have the ability to disrupt the Red Sea energy route, which is crucial for international oil and natural gas flows into the EU. Already under attack by the Houthi fighters since the start of 2024, with a full-fledged war, the route could be completely compromised, especially if Iran involves the Houthi fighters in a possible war.

Recent moves from key energy players underscore the gravity of the situation in the Red Sea. In January 2024, QatarEnergy, a major supplier to Europe, quickly halted shipments through the crucial waterway to consider alternative routes. Similarly, the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company temporarily suspended passages through the Red Sea due to the Houthi attacks.

These trade disruptions could fuel inflation by driving up energy costs, similar to what happened after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Lebanon’s problems are further complicated by the fact that the country is teetering on the brink of failed statehood. Beirut has been crippled by a political and economic meltdown since 2019, with the Lebanese Pound losing more than 90 per cent of its value. This has led to soaring prices for basic goods and services and pushed almost 80 per cent of the population under the poverty line.

The ongoing crisis has led to social unrest and a growing sense of despair, leaving Lebanon vulnerable to factions and militant groups. As the government has been unable to provide people with basic needs such as electricity and fuel, Hezbollah has used the opportunity to fill the void and boost its popularity.

The EU’s actions, or inactions, will have a profound impact on Lebanon’s future and, perhaps, the Middle East.

What’s more, Lebanon faces rampant corruption at all levels, ranking near the bottom globally – 149 out of 180 – in Transparency International 2023’s Corruption Perception Index.  For instance, despite international pressure, no government official has been held accountable for the devastating explosion that rocked Beirut airport in 2020, killing 2018 people.

To make matters worse, Lebanon has not had a president since 2022, when former head of state Michel Aoun’s term ended. Since then, the deeply divided Parliament, with different factions opposing each other, has failed to nominate a candidate with enough votes to succeed him. While presidential vacuums are not new in Lebanon, this one coincides with a simmering border crisis with Israel and a devastating four-year economic meltdown, creating a perfect storm of instability.

As the spectre of escalating tensions hangs heavy over Lebanon, the EU faces a critical question: can it prevent a devastating conflict that would send shockwaves through the Middle East (and beyond) and trigger a massive refugee crisis?

Without a doubt, Brussels must ramp up its current diplomatic efforts, fostering dialogue between all parties involved in the ongoing tensions. This means that the EU should approach even countries that have proven difficult to cooperate with – like Iran – but which have a stake in the situation nonetheless. These regional actors have an undeniable influence on the developments in and around Lebanon, and their voices must be heard at the negotiating table.

At the same time, the EU should strongly advocate for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. This urgent step must be coupled with sustained efforts towards a viable long-term solution for Palestine. Resolving the Palestinian issue is not only critical in its own right but would also significantly reduce tensions between Israel and Lebanon, averting a potential wider conflict.

However, diplomacy alone won’t suffice. To prevent Lebanon from collapsing entirely, the EU needs to invest in the country’s future. It cannot simply funnel resources into areas of its own interest, like the recent migration deal. Lebanon’s needs must take centre-stage in any cooperation.

The foundation for a stronger relationship already exists. Since 2006, the EU and Lebanon have been partners through their Association Agreement. This deal granted Lebanon free access to the EU market for its industrial goods and most of its agricultural exports. By 2022, the EU had become Lebanon’s biggest trading partner, accounting for nearly a third of the country’s total trade.

Other initiatives, like the 12-million-euro project launched in 2023 to enhance the integrity, transparency, and accountability of the Lebanese public administration, must be further bolstered. The EU should also apply targeted sanctions against the Lebanese elites undermining democracy and the rule of law in the country, as the EU framework for such a move has been in place since 2021.

The EU’s actions, or inactions, will have a profound impact on Lebanon’s future and, perhaps, the Middle East. Whether the bloc will step up and help Lebanon weather this storm remains an open question. One thing, though, is certain: time is short, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. 

From a raging pandemic to war on its doorstep, the EU has experienced multiple costly crises over the past few years. As the economy has taken a hit, the green transition has lost impetus in the public debate, and competitiveness has dominated the conversation instead. But can competition policy actually help the EU achieve its sustainability targets?

As the dust of the European elections is slowly settling on the continental right-wing drift, the fate of the Green Deal haunts the EU conversation. This ambitious set of comprehensive strategies and detailed policies aiming at the carbon neutrality and ecological transition of the EU’s economic model of production and consumption ranked very high among the concerns that drove the mobilisation of defiant, disgruntled voters to the polls.

Despite the recent changes in Europe’s political landscape, the Green Deal has already set the trajectory for radical change. However, whether the goals of the landmark legislation can be achieved depends entirely on how member states deliver on their obligations. A key element in this effort is finance, and the Green Deal requires a massive budget.

Yet, as the EU and its member states can only finance so much, the regulatory environment they provide for private economic actors is also critical. Successfully pairing public funding with private investment in service of the Green Deal will require a sweeping paradigm shift in economic regulation. The need for change is perhaps nowhere as evident as in the foundational principles of market competition itself, embodied in the legal framework of EU competition law.

Historically a driver of European integration and a pillar of the Union’s original social market economy model, competition policy was, in principle, supposed to allow the EU to balance the benefits of its market economy with the protection of the democratic fabric of society from unchecked corporate power.

That has not, however, been the case. Under the EU’s competition policy, there have been massive levels of industrial consolidation across the economy. This has led to an increase in unsustainable practices across many industries, such as in the seeds and agrifood sectors – or the media industry (to the point of prompting action from the Commission), to mention another aspect of the continuum.

This growing concentration of corporate power has led to calls for meaningful changes to the EU’s competition policy, but the European discussion on this matter seems to focus exclusively on economic notions of European and global “competitiveness.” Social and climate sustainability are rarely part of the conversation.

In 2023, the European Council commissioned former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta to write a key report on the single market. The report came out earlier this year, calling for an improved and reinforced single market to meet the EU’s pressing challenges, namely the sustainability of its economic model and its defensive autonomy. However, when the Council discussed its “new competitiveness deal” in April, member states mostly focused on competition between themselves and neglected most of Letta’s other recommendations; namely to put “a fair, green, and sustainable transition at the core of the EU’s Single Market”, integrating social and ecological goals into it.

The obsession with national and European competitiveness seems to overshadow the urgency of putting sustainability at the core of the reflection on economic competition.

Additionally, a highly expected report on the future of Europe’s competitiveness due in September and entrusted to the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is set to recommend the consolidation of national industries into more European ones with the aim of enhancing the Union’s competitiveness on the global stage. Again, the ecological crisis seems to come only second as a priority.

In the current political landscape, the general obsession with national and European competitiveness seems to overshadow the urgency of putting sustainability at the core of the reflection on economic competition. Thus, it is important to ask if the EU’s competition policy can serve the transition to a sustainable economy, and to what extent.

The global competition powered by the strategic rivalry between the US and China, two heavily subsidised economies scrambling for supremacy over green technologies and industries, has intensified the pressure on the EU and its member states to catch up to the race.

However, the EU faces significant hurdles on this path. Cash-strapped national budgets are still affected by the financial consequences of the pandemic and a prolonged economic crisis, which means that financing the green transition is beyond the capacities of both the EU and individual member states. What is more, the social and political risks of a complete overhaul of the current industrial production structure are posing further challenges. To achieve a higher level of sustainability, the EU must address the structure of the economy, the organisation of the market and, potentially, the emergence of new economic players challenging the dominant position of established entities.

As the shift towards a more sustainable economy challenges our industrial organisation, it inevitably raises the issue of the EU legal framework. Whether it is about the Stability and Growth Pact imposing austerity on eurozone balances, the preference for market instruments, or the principles of competition policies, the set of rules that have driven the EU’s economic model for seven decades are being brought into question by the new “climatic regime”.

In this context, the legal niche that is competition law could prove to be much more important for the European Green Deal than is currently recognised. Competition policy has the potential to act as a fundamental element – or complement, or catalyst – for broader industrial policy, and there are various ways in which the green transition can engage with competition.

Firstly, in the EU, state investment into private enterprise must comply with rules on state aid and foreign subsidies, whether it is a direct grant, tax relief, or another kind of benefit. However, the EU has demonstrated a willingness to show some flexibility on its competition rules to accommodate green initiatives, as has been the case with the approval of funding for Swedish and German decarbonisation projects. We can expect to see governments wielding many such enticing carrots over the coming years. 

Second, climate adaptation will stimulate sectoral reorganisation and, thus, trigger mergers and acquisitions (M&A) which will come under review by competition authorities.  Up to now, the benchmark used to authorise M&As has been the “consumer welfare standard,” which purports to protect consumer interests. In reality, though, the consumer welfare principle embodies a bias towards concentrated power which can harm consumers, citizens and businesses.

However, the EU Commission has updated its position vis-à-vis M&As through the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which entered into force in 2023. The new rules require companies to provide more comprehensive and transparent sustainability reporting in line with the Green Deal, and to avoid mergers that reduce green innovation.

Third, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we witnessed another instance of sustainability being prioritised over competition due to a need for exceptional collaboration, with the EU temporarily greenlighting alliances to address the need for improving the supply and distribution of scarce products. In the face of increasingly recurrent extreme weather events, we could again find ourselves having to bend competition laws to mitigate harm and speed up climate adaptation.

While few are paying attention beyond the technocratic circle, current debates around the intersection of competition law and climate have generally focused on the narrow question of whether and to what extent relatively superficial collaborations between big companies should be permitted. Although this didn’t happen in the EU, a good example is an agreement by a coalition of the UK’s biggest supermarkets to jointly purchase Fairtrade bananas and coffee, which the country’s competition watchdog has greenlighted.  

At the same time, competition policy is generally hostile towards looser, more decentralised forms of coordination, such as cooperatives of small businesses. This bias is also being called into question by anti-monopoly activists in favour of a more decentralised, resilient, and democratic market economy. One can easily imagine circumstances in which dispersed and localised forms of coordination may need to become commonplace. For example, there could be an urgent need for local food production and distribution cooperatives in the event of a food shortage.

Again, the content of the rules for permissions and exemptions on the one hand and prohibitions on the other will determine the resulting mix of collaborations. It is time to bring a broader group of commentators, embodying a wider set of values, into the debate on collaboration.

Fourth, the current competition laws could allow companies to occupy a temporary position of monopoly when there are supply chain disruptions as a result of climate-driven economic emergencies. This is similar to what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, when profiteering led to an increase in the price of hand sanitisers, face masks, and certain food products.

Oligopolistic firms use such circumstances as a cover for tacit collusion to create excess profit, as captured by the term “sellers’ inflation” or “greedflation.” These practices can lead to macroeconomic consequences, and it falls on competition authorities to investigate them. In turn, these probes can then contribute to sustainability by forming the basis for taxing excess profits or imposing windfall tax policies. The mandate of competition authorities currently includes such responsibilities, but there is a risk that companies could avoid accountability with the help of regulatory loopholes.

Fifth, competition law is a powerful tool, giving authorities and courts formidable powers of discovery and remedy. The European Commission can fine law-breaking companies up to 10 per cent of their worldwide turnover, and it has, for example, initiated proceedings against tech giants Meta and Apple for their alleged infringements of the EU’s anti-trust rules and unsustainable market practices. As a result, companies pay attention to competition law because it goes right to the heart of their business model, financial planning and bottom line.

Competition policy is a board-level concern, meaning that it has the potential to be used as a powerful tool for reordering the economy. This raises crucial questions about the use and potential misuse of competition law. In the US, for example, the threat of antitrust action has been weaponised by lobby groups to intimidate coalitions of investors engaging in perfectly legal, commercially self-interested decisions to divest from fossil fuels.

There is also a sixth reason why competition policy can serve the transition to a sustainable economy: in systemically important sectors – such as fossil fuels, food, transportation, shipping, and banking – concentrated market structure and the resulting market failures impact emission levels, land use, and ecosystem protection, and determine the viability of potential solutions. For instance, just 57 countries have been responsible for 80 per cent of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere since 2016.  Within the existing EU framework, competition policy acknowledges its role in influencing market structure to an extent, but not in contributing to other market failures. 

Lastly, economic conflicts are often accompanied by intense interest group lobbying. A cautionary example is how the agricultural lobby, representing large, multinational agrochemical companies, has channelled the justified anger of farmers in Europe into a false dichotomy between farmers’ livelihoods and the protection of nature. In reality, it is multinational enterprises and their representatives, not the farmers, that oppose the Green Deal because the existing system serves them well; and eventually, when the current system does inevitably change, these large firms will also be the ones with the resources to adapt.

Meanwhile, small-scale farmers see their incomes and way of life threatened. Many of them are already unable to continue with their profession and are leaving farming altogether, even without the added costs of complying with green regulations.

Competition policy shapes market structures and has enabled the relentless consolidation in the agricultural sector over recent decades. By allowing unrestrained economic growth, competition laws are indirectly responsible for the lobbying power of agrochemical companies, as well as dominant players in other climate-relevant sectors. This means that competition policy can also be indirectly leveraged to address existing imbalances by targeting the economic power of market giants.

In other words, competition policy can be used to ensure that the private sector remains governable and accountable to the public, and that it does its part in the efforts to bring sustainability to the European economy.

But there are limits to what can or should be achieved through competition policy. Competition law comes with its own doctrinal baggage, and there is nothing as difficult to dislodge as a set of bad ideas embedded amongst an international community of technical experts and academics.

Without democratic oversight, the competition regime has evolved in harmful ways. In the name of “freedom”, markets around the world have become dominated by powerful actors; a “competitive” market can be one dominated by just a few behemoths; “consumer welfare” is sought through low prices, even if that implies low wages and appears to serve corporate welfare better; big companies are regarded as “more efficient” even if they are better able to exploit workers and nature.

That international community of experts will not willingly relinquish their hold on the highly powerful lever of economic policy that they currently wield, even as they disclaim their responsibility for the social, economic, and ecological consequences of the mass consolidation of industry that their policies have created.

Fundamentally, competition policy is part of a wider set of tools for capital governance that will shape, both passively and proactively, how economic resources are channelled in the context of the green transition, and the responsibilities and obligations of companies for their role in it.

In addition, current and future competition enforcement will have a bearing on some crucial questions: What will food distribution look like beyond 2030? What technologies will we use to connect with each other and share information when weather or health events make it impossible to meet in person? How is AI being used to spread climate disinformation?

All this raises the issue of democratic accountability. While the urgency of the green transition is undeniable, it may be used to override the objections of local communities to projects like power plants, wind farms or mining operations. Although the European fossil fuel energy system has been undoubtedly technocratic and top-down, the transition towards a decarbonised energy system and a more sustainable economy presents an opportunity to empower citizens and local communities.

However, the EU still needs to address the democratic dimension of its Green Deal. Across Europe, grassroots citizens’ initiatives are increasingly demanding a say in the implementation of the green transformation. Competition policy tends to see citizens only as consumers, but there might be another dimension to entertain in the face of our current crises.

Still, the trend remains towards centralisation. Notably, the current EU legal framework does not guarantee NGOs or the public a right to challenge European decisions on granting state aid when they are contrary to environmental laws. As such, the EU is not in compliance with the Aarhus Convention when it comes to citizens’ right to live in a healthy environment. (A pillar of environmental democracy, this international agreement to which the EU is part of requires that the public – whether NGOs  or citizens – are granted access to information, participation and even justice, should they consider that EU decisions do not comply with EU environmental law.)

Interestingly, the Commission could – under the pretence of complying with the Aarhus convention and seeking to protect citizens’ right to a healthy environment – choose a procedure that would exclude the European Parliament from the legislative process to the benefit of the EU Council. This would likely result in a structural power imbalance in favour of national governments, practically limiting the reach of civil organisations.

It is true that a citizen or NGO petition to the European Parliament can only have a limited impact. However, bypassing the only democratically elected body of the EU would ensure that competition policy remains in the dark, closed rooms where corporate interests meet governments’ (not necessarily democratic) preferences.

Averting, mitigating, and adapting to climate catastrophe and biodiversity collapse will demand an unprecedented deployment of resources and economic coordination, whether through private or public means. The crucial policy questions of our generation revolve around the mix of resources we deploy, and how and when we do it. Whether the green transition is just and democratic depends on who decides on the deployment of those resources, and in whose benefits those assets are mobilised. Competition policy might very well be where the next battle for a sustainable European economy takes place.

La più grande foresta tropicale e uno dei principali serbatoi di anidride carbonica al mondo, l’Amazzonia gioca un ruolo chiave nel mantenere abitabile il nostro pianeta. Sebbene la minaccia ambientale ai danni del bacino amazzonico sia nota, i dati scientifici da soli non bastano a cambiare percezioni e comportamenti. Lo scambio culturale, quando va oltre i pregiudizi e le prospettive coloniali, aiuta a colmare quel vuoto.  

Lo spettacolo teatrale Antigone in Amazzonia, del regista svizzero Milo Rau, è la riproduzione e il racconto di un adattamento della tragedia di Sofocle che è stato realizzato in Brasile con interpreti indigene. Questo sdoppiamento degli eventi è rispecchiato da uno sdoppiamento sensoriale: parte dell’azione è svolta da attori europei sul palco, mentre la parte amazzonica è registrata e proiettata su uno schermo, introdotta e commentata dalla testimonianza degli attori presenti. La scena di Antigone che muore si vede due volte, in video e dal vivo.  

Nel raccontate il mito di Antigone, Milo Rau lo sovrappone anche a un evento storico recente: la strage di Eldorado do Carajás, nello stato del Parà, dove la polizia, nel 1995, uccise 19 manifestanti del Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (“Movimento dei Lavoratori Agricoli Senza Terra”, MST). Durante lo spettacolo, uno striscione del movimento è appeso sopra l’ingresso della platea. 

La storia dei lavoratori del MST uccisi dopo aver occupato un ranch privato è molto diversa da quella di Antigone, entrata in contrasto con le leggi della città di Tebe per aver deciso di dare sepoltura al fratello Polinice, reo di aver combattuto contro la città. Entrambi i casi, tuttavia, riguardano il conflitto tra ordine civile e principi di giustizia che lo mettono in discussione.  

La trasposizione del classico greco in un contesto geografico e storico diverso serve quindi a metterne in evidenza l’attualità e la rilevanza politica: oggi, le lotte dei lavoratori e dei popoli indigeni contro l’appropriazione e lo sfruttamento dell’Amazzonia hanno un’importanza decisiva per le sorti del pianeta.  

L’azione teatrale subisce però un’interruzione: dal palco viene letta la dichiarazione di una delle interpreti indigene, che afferma di aver rifiutato di venire a recitare la sua storia in uno spettacolo destinato al pubblico europeo. Si pone così un problema: come raccontare oggi la più grande foresta del pianeta? Chi può farlo? Come tenere insieme la prospettiva di osservatori esterni al mondo amazzonico e quella dei popoli indigeni che da secoli lo abitano? 

L’Amazzonia, la più grande foresta tropicale della Terra, ospita il 10 per cento delle specie viventi. Sul piano ecologico, il bacino amazzonico ha una funzione fondamentale per l’umidificazione e il raffreddamento dell’atmosfera, e nel suo bacino immagazzina l’equivalente di 15-20 anni di emissioni globali di CO2.  

Da decenni, tuttavia, oltre il 20 per cento del territorio amazzonico è stato disboscato o si è inaridito a causa dello sfruttamento agricolo (piantagioni e pascoli per l’allevamento intensivo) e dell’estrazione mineraria. Questo processo, insieme al riscaldamento globale già in atto, ha ridotto l’umidità della foresta e la sua capacità di assorbimento. Diversi studi prospettano il rischio che circa la metà del territorio amazzonico diventi una savana arida nel giro di trent’anni, con conseguenze su tutto il pianeta. Inoltre, l’industria dell’allevamento, presente soprattutto nell’Amazzonia brasiliana, è responsabile del 3,4 per cento delle emissioni globali. 

La presidenza di Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) ha consentito un’accelerazione senza precedenti della deforestazione. Il governo Bolsonaro ha ignorato le appropriazioni illegali di terreno, legalizzando successivamente molte di esse in base a una retorica della “bonifica” di un territorio presentato come incolto e non civilizzato (negando quindi l’esistenza delle civiltà che da millenni abitano la foresta).  

Il negazionismo climatico e il razzismo di Bolsonaro, sostenuto dagli interessi di aziende multinazionali che operano in Amazzonia, sono un modello della linea adottata da altri esponenti politici, come l’ex-Presidente e attuale candidato alla Casa Bianca Donald Trump. Con il ritorno al potere di Lula nel 2023 il ritmo del diboscamento è calato, e le comunità indigene hanno ottenuto maggiore rappresentanza, ma lo sfruttamento della foresta non si è interrotto, e rimane un caso esemplare dello stretto rapporto tra politica, economia e ambiente che riguarda tutta la Terra.  

In questo contesto, l’obiettivo primario dello spettacolo di Milo Rau è il pubblico occidentale. Il regista sostiene che “l’ordine simbolico dell’Occidente debba essere messo in discussione e cambiato dall’esterno, dalle periferie del sistema capitalistico.”  

L’approccio di Rau si pone in continuità con una tradizione secolare di discorsi e rappresentazioni che hanno mirato a far pensare l’europeo evocando figure altre: dai cannibali del saggio di Montaigne al “nobile selvaggio” del teatro di John Dryden, dall’americano del romanzo L’ingenuo di Voltaire all’“uomo naturale” del Discorso sull’origine della disuguaglianza di Rousseau, fino a tanti personaggi esemplari dell’etnologia del Novecento.  

Comprendere la realtà delle persone a cui quei discorsi si riferivano, delle loro civiltà distrutte, del loro territorio occupato, pone il compito di ricostruire il loro autentico pensiero oltrepassando i limiti delle narrazioni tutte europee. Tentativi recenti in questo senso sono  la ricerca storica di David Graeber e David Wengrow sulle testimonianze dei missionari sugli indigeni nordamericani ne L’alba di tutto, o il film Todos Los Males della compagnia Anagoor, che cerca di ricostruire le figure degli Incas partendo dal libretto dell’opera-balletto settecentesca Le Indie galanti del compositore Jean-Philippe francese Rameau. Ma quel che si ricava dall’esperimento di Milo Rau è che ascoltare direttamente la parola dei nativi dell’Amazzonia è ormai un passaggio inevitabile per evitare di ricadere in schemi di pensiero d’origine coloniale. 

Questo rischio è ancora evidente in molta etnologia contemporanea, anche quando questa intende rovesciare il senso di superiorità che attraversava la disciplina un secolo fa, “decolonizzare il pensiero”, e rivalutare le prospettive amazzoniche sulla realtà. Un esempio è la ripresa della categoria di “animismo” nell’opera di uno dei più importanti etnologi francesi, Philippe Descola. Per Descola, l’animismo è uno “schema” di pensiero radicalmente diverso dal “naturalismo” scientifico dominante in Occidente, il, e consiste nell’attribuire agli altri animali un pensiero in tutto e per tutto analogo a quello degli umani. Questa concezione intende salvaguardare l’irriducibile originalità della visione indigena, che già il maestro di Descola, Claude Lévi-Strauss, ammirava per il fatto che nega l’eccezionalità dell’uomo in natura.  

Simili rivalutazioni, che hanno portato diversi etnologi a celebrare la saggezza “ecologica” dei popoli amazzonici, risentono però di una tendenza a ridurre la dinamica storica di questi ultimi. Come hanno mostrato studiosi come Susanna Hecht e Alexander Cockburn, conoscere la storia millenaria delle civiltà amazzoniche mette in luce profondi mutamenti che hanno coinvolto le popolazioni native in secoli di incontri e scontri con gli occidentali. Chi oggi va in Amazzonia osserva il risultato di queste vicende: le varie forme tradizionali di “animismo” non sono che un elemento, spesso enfatizzato in contesti turistici, di società composite e in rapida trasformazione, dove saperi e tecnologie d’origine coloniale sono quasi sempre fatte proprie.  

Io stesso l’ho osservato in diverse regioni: oggi le comunità amazzoniche usano vestiti di fabbricazione industriale, cellulari, pannelli solari e barche a motore, gestiscono ecolodge per il turismo sostenibile, organizzano procedimenti legali contro chi ha inquinato il loro territorio, gestiscono piattaforme giornalistiche. I loro portavoce scrivono libri, rilasciano interviste, parlano in radio, , espongono dipinti nei musei delle città di tutto il mondo. 

Del resto – come riconoscono gli stessi etnologi – animismo e scienza non possono essere considerati come forme di pensiero esclusive che apparterrebbero rispettivamente alla mentalità amazzonica e a quella europea. Da un lato i popoli della foresta comprendono la mentalità scientifica; dall’altro, pensiero magico, miti e animismo attecchiscono profondamente nelle nostre società. Il rischio è che, invece di “decolonizzare il pensiero”, l’apologia dell’animismo e la sua rivalutazione in chiave ecologica finiscano per rirpodurre fantasie d’età coloniale sulle società arcaiche dei “selvaggi”, tanto immutabili quanto affascinanti. 

Da secoli va avanti un doppio movimento di persone: quello degli indigeni che vanno a studiare, a vendere e comprare merce nelle città, e quello dei bianchi – funzionari, missionari, minatori, giornalisti, etnologi, turisti – che entrano nella regione con diversi scopi. Solo a partire da questo scambio è possibile una comprensione reciproca, come confermano diversi episodi. 

Un esempio è il lavoro congiunto dello sciamano Davi Kopenawa e dell’etnologo Bruce Albert, confluito tra l’altro nei volumi La caduta del cielo (2020) e Lo spirito della foresta (2023). Kopenawa appartiene al popolo Yanomami, che vive tra Venezuela e Brasile, ed è stato uno dei protagonisti di una lotta che nel 1992 ha portato al riconoscimento delle terre indigene da parte dello stato brasiliano. Nel corso della sua vita ha imparato il portoghese e appreso il cristianesimo, ha vissuto con i bianchi lavorando come lavapiatti, poi come interprete per la FUNAI (la Fondazione Nazionale dell’Indio). Ha osservato quella società diversa, poi ha deciso di tornare nella foresta. Il risultato di questa esperienza è un confronto che Kopenawa ha sviluppato in discorsi pubblici, divenendo una personalità nota a livello internazionale. A fronte del continuo disboscamento e dell’occupazione illegale delle terre Yanomami per l’estrazione mineraria, Kopenawa ha deciso di far trascrivere le sue parole su dei libri, o “pelli di carta”, con la collaborazione di Albert.  

Nei suoi discorsi, Kopenawa contrappone le parole dei bianchi, “popolo della merce”, a quelle tradizionali del suo popolo, che ispirano la protezione della foresta. Teme che i giovani indigeni siano sedotti dai beni materiali, che “si preoccupino troppo di discorsi e delle merci dei bianchi”, e prendano “paura della forza della polvere yãkoana”, col risultato di non vedere più gli spiriti. La polvere yãkoana è una sostanza psichedelica ricavata da una pianta, che tradizionalmente è assunta per produrre le visioni degli spiriti della foresta. Queste visioni costituiscono il fondamento di tutta la cosmologia Yanomami, fondata sul rispetto per una foresta vivente popolata dagli spiriti.  

Insomma, Kopenawa teme che i giovani si facciano tentare da un impiego tra i bianchi, per potersi comprare delle merci, e abbandonino il consumo degli psichedelici. Questa posizione si comprende nel suo contesto storico: il risultato distruttivo dell’arrivo dei bianchi con la loro civiltà fondata sul valore della merce, dalle epidemie che hanno decimato gli indigeni alla deforestazione, è la prova che conservare la “parole” Yanomami è questione di sopravvivenza. Ma il discorso di Kopenawa non è rivolto solo ai giovani Yanomami: il confronto tra società fondate su diversi principi – il valore della merce e quello della foresta, la produzione di beni e lo scambio con gli altri esseri viventi – è parte di un dialogo e di una sfida alle civiltà d’origine europea. 

La cosmologia Yanomami assume in questa doppia prospettiva un valore anche ecologico e politico. Kopenawa sottolinea questo punto, giocando con abilità con una nostra parola, ecologia: “Nella foresta, siamo noi esseri umani a essere l’ecologia. Ma, come noi, lo sono anche gli xapiri [gli spiriti della foresta], la selvaggina, gli alberi, i fiumi, i pesci, il cielo, la pioggia, il vento e il sole! È tutto quello che è venuto all’esistenza nella foresta, lontano dai Bianchi; tutto ciò che non è stato ancora circondato da recinzioni. Le parole dell’ecologia sono le nostre antiche parole. Gli xapiri difendono la foresta da quando esiste. I nostri anziani non l’hanno mai devastata perché li hanno al loro fianco. I Bianchi, che in passato ignoravano queste cose, oggi iniziano a capirle […]. Adesso dicono di essere gente dell’ecologia perché sono preoccupati di vedere che la loro terra sta diventando sempre più calda.”  

Alcuni etnologi, come Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, hanno sottolineato la difficoltà di una traduzione tra diverse prospettive sul mondo. Come mostra il caso del discorso ecologico di Kopenawa, la traduzione delle parole non è mai priva di scelte e possibili fraintendimenti – com’è inevitabile – ma la traduzione è senz’altro possibile, in base all’omogeneità di specie che rende capaci di oltrepassare o trasformare gli schemi di pensiero.  

Eliane Brum, giornalista e scrittrice brasiliana bianca, segue un cammino inverso a quello di Kopenawa: dalla metropoli di San Paolo si trasferisce ad Altamira, nel cuore dell’Amazzonia. Altamira è una cittadinatr di sfruttatori della foresta e di sfollati, vittime della costruzione della diga di Belo Monte sul fiume Xingu, che ha cancellato le loro case. Brum va quindi a vivere alla frontiera di una terra contesa e brutalizzata, dove lei stessa è straniera, trovandosi come vicini di casa gli stessi perpetratori dei crimini di cui si occupa come giornalista e attivista. La sua esperienza, raccontata nel libro Amazzonia. Viaggio al centro del mondo (2023), è prima di tutto corporea: ammalarsi, com’è inevitabile nella foresta, è un risveglio del “corpo cittadino, abituato a fingere di non esistere, così da potersi robotizzare davanti a un computer.”  

Brum descrive la violenza subita dalla foresta come uno stupro, simile a quelli praticati su tante donne indigene durante la dittatura militare che ha governato il Brasile dal 1964 al 1985. In proposito, Brum riporta la retorica degli sfruttatori, che hanno descritto la foresta come un “deserto umano”, negando la civiltà indigena. Erwin Kräutler, missionario e vescovo dello Xingu dal 1981 al 2015, celebrò la costruzione del primo tratto dell’autostrada Transamazzonica, che doveva finalmente portare vita in quel deserto, abbattendo un albero di noce alto cinquanta metri. Brum ricorda con parole aspre questo episodio simbolico, osservando che il luogo di quella celebrazione è noto ad Altamira “con un nome rivelatore: Pau del Presidente, il Cazzo del Presidente.”  

L’Amazzonia è descritta così come la vittima di una violenza sessuale di Stato, che Brum vive in prima persona: “La deforestazione, la distruzione della natura, la contaminazione del fiume con il mercurio e gli agrotossici sono diventate un’esperienza vissuta come violenza anche sul mio corpo, in me.”  

Per Brum, la vicenda che ha come epicentro Altamira – non lontana dal luogo del massacro dei lavoratori del MST – ha un rilievo globale. L’Amazzonia è il centro di una guerra tra “forze di distruzione”, incarnate dalla politica e dall’industria dei bianchi, e “forze di resistenza”, incarnate dai popoli della foresta, sia quelli originari sia quelli arrivati in seguito attraverso migrazioni interne al Brasile, come gli abitanti dei fiumi, i beiradeiros. La foresta è anche il luogo di un conflitto di interpretazioni e valori, per cui la ricchezza degli occidentali è considerata povertà, poiché è povero non chi manca di ricchezza accumulata ma chi è alienato dai propri desideri, per esempio sottoposto a un padrone per il proprio lavoro. Per gli abitanti della foresta, “la vita è vivere, non accumulare.” Povertà non è quindi scarsità di merce, ma “non avere scelta”. 

Da scrittrice e bianca, Brum si pone però un problema analogo a quello di Antigone in Amazzonia: chi può raccontare la foresta? La scrittura è stata il mezzo di un potere oppressivo, che col diritto e altri codici ha costruito barriere escludenti e legittimato l’appropriazione – un processo che non si è mai arrestato. Fare della scrittura uno “strumento per denunciare la violenza” apre una contraddizione inevitabile.  

Lo storico Carlo Ginzburg sostiene nel saggio “Etnofilologia” che scienze provenienti dalle civiltà dei colonizzatori, come filologia e storia, possono nondimeno essere rivolte a una migliore conoscenza di quelle oppresse. Ma il lavoro sul campo di Brum mira a favorire una presa di parola diretta dei “popoli-foresta” attraverso progetti come Sumaúma, una piattaforma giornalistica indipendente web e radio, trilingue, basata “sia sulla scienza climatica all’avanguardia, sia sul pensiero indigeno tradizionale”. L’ambizione di Brum è portare la democrazia a chi non l’ha mai davvero vissuta: non soltanto ai popoli-foresta, ma anche alle altre entità che compongono la foresta. A questo scopo è necessario che avvocati e pubblici ministeri non si occupino soltanto dei diritti delle popolazioni umane, ma possano “agire in nome di una persona non umana o di una foresta o di un fiume o di una montagna o anche degli oceani.” 

Qui animismo e diritto occidentale si fondono. Ma il progetto di Brum passa anche per una scrittura narrativa in prima persona, in cui i discorsi si incarnano nelle storie e le sensazioni degli individui. 

Kopenawa e Blum indicano una via alla diffusione di una nuova sensibilità rispetto all’Amazzonia che ha implicazioni e potenzialità politiche globali. Riattivare un dialogo interculturale andando oltre miti del passato, tradurre i saperi indigeni per innestarli nell’educazione della cittadinanza occidentale, e riconoscere la dinamica sociale e economica che ci lega all’Amazzonia sono passaggi indispensabili per un’azione politica che non si limiti alla riduzione dei danni ecologici. 

Come ha affermato il filosofo e attivista americano Dale Jamieson, fondatore del Dipartimento di Environmental Studies alla New York University, di fronte al cambiamento climatico “non c’è alternativa ai fatti, nessun sostituto per l’evidenza, nessun rimpiazzo per la ragione.” Eppure, sostiene Jamieson, “anche se riusciamo a pensare che qualcosa sia una minaccia, siamo meno reattivi che se sentiamo che è una minaccia.” Solo la ragione ci fa capire davvero cosa sta succedendo; ma senza il sentimento la ragione è inerte. A formare un diverso sentimento della natura dovranno contribuire non soltanto le conoscenze ecologiche, ma anche l’arte e la narrativa, i discorsi degli sciamani, gli spettacoli, le voci del giornalismo e dell’attivismo. 

In recent years, the EU has faced criticism for its approach towards greening trade, with third countries accusing Brussels of imposing rules on them unilaterally and without sufficient consultation. In light of this dissatisfaction from partner countries and fierce competition from the US and China, the EU needs to offer better solutions to its partners and take bolder steps to help them in their green transition. An interview with Hanne Knaepen and Alfonso Medinilla of the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM).

Xenia Samoultseva: In April, the EU reached an agreement on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which will oblige businesses to conduct environmental and human rights due diligence in their value chains. How will ​this ​affect the EU’s climate diplomacy? 

Alfonso Medinilla: We have already seen a lot of opposition from third countries. ​T​his resistance is not linked solely to the directive, but more broadly to the EU’s trade​-related climate​ measures and bills. These measures are usually applied unilaterally by the EU, but they may disproportionally affect businesses in third countries. There is a sense of under-consultation​,​​​​​ with countries and businesses feeling that they are being rushed into a transition process they ​​may not be ready for.  

The big challenge for Brussels is to balance the goals of these green initiatives with effective climate diplomacy ​in order to ​get ​other ​countries on board. Ultimately, we need a collaborative approach and a significant investment in accompanying measures.  

Compared to European companies, the administrative burden of the EU’s climate measures can be much heavier on local suppliers, especially in developing countries. In light of the bloc’s growing tendency to externalise European policies and regulations, it is important to create more space for dialogue with developing countries and step up efforts to pair EU trade measures with other solutions.  

Hanne Knaepen: That’s true. There is currently a perception of regulatory imperialism, with the EU imposing ​its ​measures and regulations on other countries. 

Another thing that affects the perception of the EU among third countries is that even within the EU there has been a lot of internal disagreement among member states about climate-related measures. Initially, CSDDD extended to companies with at least 500 employees, but this faced resistance from Germany and Italy, which were worried about increased red tape for business. Now, only enterprises with a workforce of 1000 and a turnover of 450 million euros will be required to follow the law, which will take effect in 2029.  

Another landmark piece of legislation, the Nature Restoration Law, also faced fierce opposition from some member states like Hungary and the Netherlands. Germany and Belgium were blocking discussions as well because they were afraid that some businesses would have difficulty getting permits. It has been difficult for member states to reach common ground in environmental and ecological disputes, and this can affect the credibility of the whole bloc in the eyes of its partners.  

So, the EU has been imposing rules without providing enough input to third countries, listening to their needs, exploring options to help with their green transition, and making sure they can comply with the bloc’s regulations. At the same time, extensive internal discussions and disagreements have weakened the credibility and, by extension, the global leadership position of the EU. 

The rise of various international players has given developing countries a more diversified pool of partners to pick from, diminishing the EU’s influence. Additionally, the bloc’s protectionist policies such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (​​CBAM) and its normative approach have contributed to rising tensions. How serious is this and is the EU doing anything to address it? 

Alfonso​ ​​Medinilla​: CBAM and the perception of protectionism that it conveys have become problematic for the EU’s partner countries. I think that, in a way, the bloc has been going through different phases as it learns from its past experiences.   

For instance, the story of the Global Gateway [an EU strategy to invest in infrastructure projects worldwide, with a key focus on advancing the green transition] started as a geopolitical competition narrative from the EU. initially, Brussels expressed a sense of loss of control in the developing world and stressed the need to come up with a competing offer to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, the EU toned down its language after this bad framing, focusing more on enhancing its offering rather than emphasising competition.  

That said, given the state of play with the US I​nflation ​R​eduction ​A​ct (IRA)​, the narrative that Europe must shift its industrial policy to become more competitive is becoming increasingly prominent. This perspective is likely to define the ​EU’s ​external engagements in the next couple of years, and I think we will have to deal with this new reality regardless of how it is perceived by the bloc’s partners.  

One big flaw in this framing is that the situation is presented as an either-or, as if developing countries must choose between trade with the West or with China. This is ridiculous and unrealistic because even Europe itself has very deep trade relations with Beijing. The EU has not yet fully followed the US model of extremely high tariffs on Chinese products. Instead, it sits in the middle. And that’s exactly why we need to look more carefully at how developing countries can position themselves within big green tech value chains.  

Rather than determining whether developing countries should pick China or the West, perhaps we should ask: how can developing countries attract meaningful investments in domestic industries through their diverse partnerships? And how can they work with different partners to reach those goals? Instead of simply looking at the security of European supply and value chains, we must focus on fostering processing and manufacturing capacities within developing countries and building stronger trade relations with them. 

In other words, to benefit both sides, we must explore ways to form a collaboration that is not purely extractive but works for the EU’s partners and aligns with their industrialisation objectives.  

Can Global Gateway compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? 

Alfonso Medinilla: We’re comparing apples and oranges when we’re talking about the BRI versus Global Gateway. The two projects have a very different model of mobilising finance.  

BRI, especially in the heyday of Chinese infrastructure finance, was closely linked to public funding but also with Chinese engineering, procurement and construction companies. Developing countries generally perceive that Chinese initiatives move much faster than those offered by Western counterparts. 

Another point to keep in mind about BRI’s financing, specifically concerning energy, is that the project previously focused on fossil fuels, low-income enterprises, and large-scale projects. There is now a shift towards renewables, which was already a focus of European energy finance. Now, the question for the Global Gateway is how the EU can adapt its offers rather than emulate what the Chinese are doing, so it can better secure its interests and meet the demands of those third countries. 

At the moment, there is a massive shortage of investment in some of our partners’ energy infrastructure, with many of them having outdated energy systems. In this context, the EU’s piecemeal approach is not going to cut it. Developing countries are looking for large-scale investments that can take them to the next stage. They require speed and scale, both of which Western finance has struggled to deliver in the past.  

Besides the Global Gateway, what initiatives has the EU undertaken to assist developing countries’ green transition and specifically adaptation efforts and how successful have they been? 

Hanne Knaepen: A lot of the EU’s finance goes to climate-related objectives. Under the current Multiannual Financial Framework for the period 2021-2027, there is a 30 per cent climate spending target. In 2022, the EU and the member states together mobilised 28.5 billion euros in public funding for developing countries. Over 54 per cent of that amount went to adaptation and cross-cutting, including climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives.  

There exist success stories of European adaptation finance. The EU supports many adaptation projects in, for example, African agriculture, but they are quite scattered.   

Generally, climate finance is an area where the EU has met criticism from African partners about a lack of transparency. If Brussels says 54 per cent of climate spending goes to adaptation and cross-cutting, it’s very difficult to understand how much exactly went to adaptation. Ideally, it should be 50-50. 

In addition, there are concerns about the quality of finance as well. One criticism here is that the EU packages funding already allocated or in the pipeline as if it’s new funding under a big flagship initiative. This is the case with projects like the Team Europe on Adaptation (amounting to one billion euros) or initiatives announced under the Global Gateway. 

African partners are tired of not having clarity and transparency about where the EU’s money flows from or how much of the committed funding will actually be disbursed. The EU has regularly talked about pooling efforts under Team Europe headings. But how beneficial will this be?  

To benefit both sides, we must form a collaboration that is not purely extractive but works for the EU’s partners and aligns with their industrialisation objectives.

To carry out adaptation successfully, it is required to have access to concessional adaptation finance. At the same time, there are a lot of discussions on involving the private sector in adaptation, for instance through blending mechanisms or the EU providing various types of guaranteed windows for the private sector to (co-)invest in climate-sensitive sectors such as water or agriculture in Global South countries.  

However, there are few good examples of how the EU, as a public sector, has involved the private sector in adaptation. Let’s not forget that the private sector aims to generate profit, so more effort is needed to prove that investing in adaptation can be bankable in the longer term, for instance through weather-based insurance mechanisms.  

Moving forward, it is essential for the EU to couple extraction with regeneration. For example, Europe needs to work on water diplomacy efforts, such as investing in large-scale water retention and landscape restoration projects. This will enable industrial expansion in water-stressed areas and, at the same time, will create the environment needed to work on adaptation. Currently, there remains a gap between these different areas of work. 

Do you think finance should be the central pillar of the EU’s climate diplomacy? 

Hanne Knaepen: Although the EU member states are the biggest climate finance providers, their contributions are insufficient in the face of the challenge of climate change. Just consider the scale of the needs and the support that is required for resilience, adaptation, and the energy transition. It’s impossible to expect the EU to close the gap in finance that African countries have. Still, the EU should make its climate target more ambitious, work on mobilising the private sector to scale up finance, etc. 

Climate action should be part of the entire socio-economic transition of countries. It must go beyond individual projects and instead become part of a completely integrated approach whereby climate, resilience, and energy efficiency become a central pillar of all the activities that countries undertake.  

I think that Europe and Africa are not there yet, but some Asian countries are more advanced in this regard. For instance, in Bangladesh, six to seven per cent of all government spending must be on climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Climate awareness exists on the highest political level because they feel the effects of climate change on a daily basis. You can consider this a success story.  

Vietnam is another good example as climate considerations are at the centre of all the country’s activities and line ministries. For the EU, it is instructive to study and understand what has triggered this attitude and how we can work towards similar models and mechanisms in African societies. 

Alfonso Medinilla: This reminds me of the overall tension that we are seeing in the EU’s approach to climate action and climate financing, between narrative and practice. The narrative has evolved to emphasise the need to plan strategy-driven finance that can transform economies in a way that links them to the European market, ultimately creating opportunities for industrialisation and economic development on both sides.  

The main intention here is to closely integrate European private-sector finance into climate-related projects through various means, but we are only at the start of this transition. In practice, institutions still view things through the lens of a portfolio of projects that are supposed to come together in a coherent strategic framework.  

Hanne Knaepen: Of course, we are criticising the EU from our own perspective, but African countries also need to have a clear picture of their partnership with Brussels. They must be able to clearly communicate their needs and their potential to address them, as well as their expectations from the EU. There should be a two-way dynamic in all climate-related projects, and in climate diplomacy more broadly.  

Could the rise of conservative factions after the European elections significantly alter the bloc’s climate diplomacy? 

Alfonso Medinilla: Conservatives can be a significant blocking factor in Europe against climate measures. We have seen this already with the role of, for instance, Hungary and Poland on key green issues in the past. 

I think European progressives have been trying to appeal to certain concerns around the European Green Deal by emphasising its affordances for fostering industrialisation and economic competitiveness. They have also sought to assuage fears that the landmark deal will increase net costs for societies, a concern raised often by European right-wing parties. However, I am not sure if these attempts are sufficient to bring back alienated voters.  

Killing the Green Deal would render Europe globally less competitive.

European progressives are generally preparing for the worst in the climate movement.  There has been a number of very important pieces of legislation, which will be difficult to dismantle. But the Right can create extended delays, and that has increasingly damaged the EU’s international credibility. It is especially bad when the EU enters global climate negotiations divided because this division will exacerbate some of the existing accusations and tensions.  

What’s more, I think a lot of internal European issues linked to the energy transition, nature restoration, and agriculture will increasingly dominate the political agenda. This may further dilute external international efforts, making them harder to sustain and manage. 

Hanne Knaepen: Europe already has some challenging political priorities, such as the various ongoing international conflicts and the need for the EU to build a stronger defence strategy as member states are wary of the risk of Russia’s war on Ukraine spilling out. These concerns have put a strain on the EU’s budget, and climate development assistance is likely to continue to fall victim to shifting priorities. 

This reality is apparent in the EU’s strategic agenda for 2024-2029, where there is little talk about climate change, ecological transition, or biodiversity. Instead, the agenda’s focus is mostly on defence and illegal migration.  

Still, now that the EU elections have wrapped up and Ursula von der Leyen seems likely to keep her job as Commission President, we can expect that the European Green Deal will stay on its course. Rolling back the measures laid out in the deal would be a major setback for European industries that have already started to invest in green and climate-proofed products. Killing the Green Deal would also render Europe globally less competitive vis-à-vis “green” frontrunners such as the US and China. 

Hopefully, this economic narrative can help convince the most stubborn among us in Europe. 

Touted as Europe’s largest infrastructure project, the Grand Paris Express promises better connectivity and improved public transport for the French capital. However, for Roma squatters and slum residents, the colossal project has meant forced evictions and further exclusion from society. With the Paris Olympics right around the corner, the trend has only worsened.  

One morning in April 2016, 27 private security agents arrived on the grounds of a rundown warehouse in Vitry-sur-Seine, a Parisian suburb, to evict the 29 people living there. All of them were Romanian citizens of Roma ethnicity. The agents came with three dogs and no judicial mandate.  

Daniel, a 25-year-old migrant, his wife, and their baby were among the residents who were told to leave the premises immediately. 

The warehouse was a 20-minute walk from the centre of Vitry, and the site of a train stop on the future line 15 of the Parisian metro. Vitry is just one of 45 towns that will be served by the Grand Paris Express, the first metro line connecting all Parisian suburbs. The southern branch, where Vitry is located, is expected to be the first to open, at the end of 2025. 

The warehouse belonged to real estate firm SCI Aten, whose owner had filed a request for the residents’ expulsion a week earlier. The court hearing was pushed to May, and the owner took matters into his own hands to remove the squatters. Before then, Daniel and his family had already been evacuated twice – in October and January 2015 – to make way for the metro line 15.  

The case of Daniel, who requested to change his name for security reasons, is not an exception. In Île-de-France, the greater Paris region, the past decade has seen an increase in expulsions with the rapid urban expansion transforming the landscape. According to the Defenseur des Droits, the French constitutional human rights body, Roma communities living in slums and squats are disproportionately threatened by the construction. Experts and activists say that the Grand Paris Express, a 40-billion-euro infrastructure project, exacerbates the social exclusion of people living in shanty towns around Paris. An investigation of nearly 50 evictions of Roma families in the southern suburb of Val-de-Marne revealed that the pattern of expulsions matches urban development and transport projects of Grand Paris Express, notably along metro line 15.  

“The Grand Paris Express is a project that develops with the construction of new train stops, but also with real estate speculation,” said sociologist Anne-Cécile Caseau, who wrote a report on Roma people’s access to adequate housing in Europe.  

“Marginal spaces are seen as potentially attractive in the future, and that puts pressure on the near and far suburbs [of Paris]. This pressure turns terrains that are vacant and forgotten into lucrative investments. So there are more expulsions from these terrains,” explained Caseau. “This ceaselessly pushes people farther. Evicted people are then displaced towards terrains which are densely polluted or significantly farther away [from the city],” she said.  

The cycle of eviction creates lapses in administrative support, employment, education, and medical services.  

Large bidonvilles, or slums, started cropping up around France in the 1930s, largely populated by Spanish, Portuguese and Italian workers. By the end of the 1970s, slum living was mostly eradicated in metropolitan France. The vast social housing programs developed over the ‘70s facilitated the relocation of these populations into permanent homes. But as new waves of migrant workers, from Eastern European and African countries, came in the late 1990s, they were relegated to improvised living conditions in bidonvilles, according to the Abbe Pierre Foundation. Today, city halls and regional administrations are still evicting people living in slums, offering them few alternatives afterwards.  

Like many slum residents, Daniel wished to integrate into French society. By 2015, he had already been living in France for seven years. He worked as a metal scrap seller and construction worker. Moving from one slum to another for nearly a decade, each time having to start over.  

The cycle of eviction creates lapses in administrative support, employment, education, and medical services.

In a police report filed two months after the eviction from the Vitry warehouse, Daniel recalled the security agents grabbing women and pushing children out into the street, including a crying baby in a stroller. Daniel demanded they be let in to collect their belongings, but the agents blocked the entrance.  

Their official documents, 600 euros in cash, car keys, clothes, silver jewellery, and other personal belongings were inside the building. After leaving in a hurry, Daniel returned hours later to try to retrieve the items, only to watch the security agents put them into a dumpster.  

In the poorer suburbs in the North, East and South of Paris, near former warehouses, train tracks, and the Seine riverbanks, communities of Roma people from Eastern Europe have settled since the 1990s.  

Roma people are Europe’s largest minority and have origins on the Indian subcontinent. A historically marginalised group, Roma people are confronted with high levels of housing, education, and employment discrimination in France and the rest of Europe. According to the National Consultative Commission of Human Rights of France (CNCDH), Roma people are among the most stigmatised minorities in the country.  

According to official data from 2021, there are over 430 shanty towns across metropolitan France, with over 22,000 people living there; half are European citizens, mainly from Romania and Bulgaria. While French census data is not broken down by ethnicity, the EU citizens living in shanty towns are largely understood by associations, authorities and researchers to be people of Roma ethnicity.  

The social exclusion caused by urban development projects has been well documented in Seine-Saint-Denis, the department to the north of Paris, which has the highest rate of people living in poverty in metropolitan France. The research shows that social inclusion projects suffer from “institutional inertia and contradictory policy goals” and that the most vulnerable populations are directly impacted by urban development.  

Constructions related to the 2024 Olympics have also accelerated this process for migrants and Roma living in informal housing (squats in abandoned buildings, slums, makeshift shacks, etc.). In April 2024, riot police squads evicted the biggest squat in France, located in the south of Paris, and housing over 400 people of African origins, many of whom had refugee status. Half of those evicted in April had come there after a previous eviction from a squat near the Olympic Village in the French capital’s northern suburbs.

Le Revers de la Medaille Collective estimates that the number of evicted people increased by 38.5 per cent from one year to the other in the areas of Olympic sites. In its June 2024 report, the collective says that Paris and Île-de-France authorities have led “one year of social cleansing” of “undesirable” people in preparation for the event and its spectators. 

“With the Olympic Games (…) that’s just one other pretext for pushing out people,” said Aline Poupel, president of Romeurope Val-de-Marne and a psychologist, who has worked with Roma communities in the area since the 1990s. “As soon as there’s been the start of a Grand Paris Express project, that brings evictions (…) especially around line 15. That line is going to pass everywhere, all the places where the Roma lived more than two years ago.”  

In the 2010s, following the eastward expansion of the EU, the number of inhabitants in bidonvilles surged. Around then, France started deploying aggressive campaigns of slum dismantlement, which included expelling EU citizens by taking Roma families to the nearest border and putting them on charter flights to Romania.  

Around the same time, the greater Paris region was lit up with the promise of urban renewal, economic prosperity, and increased connectivity for suburban residents. The Grand Paris Express, Europe’s “biggest infrastructure project”, was announced in 2012, and it aims to double the size of Paris’ metro system on a rollout schedule for 2024-2035.  

Since 2014, Aline Poupel has kept files detailing expulsions in Val-de-Marne. The folders contain hundreds of pages of printed biographical data, such as emails, legal correspondence, court eviction orders, and censuses of the slum inhabitants. From these documents, we mapped out where evictions occurred in the southeast of the Parisian region, the number of people affected, and who demanded the court-ordered expulsions.  

While most of the files included expulsion orders, some did not. This is not uncommon: the Observatory of the Expulsion of Informal Housing (OEIH) found that 26 per cent of eviction cases between October 2022 and November 2023 occurred without a legal basis. These are still carried out by law enforcement, and only in exceptional cases, like Daniel’s, private agents are hired by owners for an extrajudicial eviction.  

A lawful eviction is not a mere deployment of police forces to a slum; it needs to be requested by a public or private actor in a court of law, which can then decide whether to issue an eviction order.  

Our investigation reveals that, over the past decade, expulsions have persisted also to the South of the French capital, in a pattern that matches the Grand Paris Express construction sites. Our survey of the nearly 50 evictions in the Val-de-Marne department between 2014 and 2024 shows that 15 evictions from this period occurred one kilometre or less away from the trace of the southern branch of the future line 15 and the Southern expansion of line 14. One other evicted site is on the eastern section of line 15.  

Seven other evictions occurred between one and two kilometres away from Grand Paris lines. 

Note: for practical reasons this is a screenshot – Please consult the map here 

Most of the expulsions were in state-run or state-owned structures, several of which are directly linked to the Grand Paris projects, such as the national railway company SNCF, Grand Paris Aménagement, or DRIEA, the public agency tasked with studying the development of the neighbourhoods around Grand Paris Express train stops. 

Note: for practical reasons, this is a screenshot -please consult the interactive version here 

We shared our findings about the Grand Paris Express displacing Roma communities with Societé des Grands Projets, (SGP) which leads the construction of Grand Paris Express. In response, Jérémy Huppenoire, the organisation’s press relations manager, said that the SGP “acquires only the land needed for the construction of the Grand Paris Express, and if necessary, secures it to prevent any illegal occupation before work begins. If its land is illegally occupied, SGP may have to ask the authorities to evacuate it so that work can begin.” 

Huppenoire added that SGP will build 8,000 homes, 30 per cent of which will be social and intermediate housing with rents controlled by the state. Moreover, he said, the scheme will promote home ownership by selling apartments at below-market prices. Upon eviction, residents of bidonvilles are legally entitled to file a request for social housing, but people rarely receive one, according to the OEIH. 85 per cent of evictions come with no alternative solution for relocation, be it temporary or permanent. 

In 2018, a French government instruction promised to “give new impetus” to integrating bidonvilles inhabitants by “going beyond the evacuation-centric approach,” suggesting a more humane outlook. The government aimed to reduce the number of people living in slums, but since 2018, the number of slum residents in France increased by 37 per cent, according to the most recently available official data.  

Even though a 2021 progress report on the new framework indicated that more and more slum residents have been getting access to housing in 2019 and 2020, many Roma families remained in slums across the Paris region. Sociologist Anne Cecile Case notes that there are a multitude of factors that confine communities to a shanty town.  

“Roma people in makeshift housing have difficulty accessing private housing even when they have an income,” said Caseau. “We have a more general housing crisis that makes it complicated, but there is also the problem of owners discriminating against Roma tenants, but that isn’t always documented.”  

Associations say that the most common “solution” for evictions is short stays in social hostels, even after the 2018 framework. These hostels are paid for by authorities but operated by private enterprises. According to Poupel, the authorities offer victims of expulsions a stay of a maximum of three nights in a hostel. After that, they are left on their own. Poupel encourages the families she works with to go to the hostel, saying that some nights of sleep in a place with running water ought to serve as a respite from the intense stress of eviction. 

In 2015, when Daniel’s family was evicted from the slum on the land of the future Les Ardoines metro stop, a handful of other families were directed toward social hostels. We found records of four of them – all of whom were sent over 15 kilometres away– in hostels close to the edge of the department. 

Note: for practical reasons, this is a screenshot – please consult the interactive version here. 

One family was inadvertently separated by the temporary accommodation, according to Aline Poupel’s correspondence from the time. The couple and their two daughters were assigned to a hostel 17 kilometres away from their previous location, and even farther from the school where the children were enrolled.  

The correspondence shows that the father was the sole breadwinner of the house, selling produce at the food market in Vitry and making upwards of 50 euros per week. But the hostel was a 2-hour drive from the market and could not be easily reached by public transport – so he stayed behind, hoping to receive closer accommodation.  

According to associations that intervene in these areas, living conditions in shanty towns around Île-de-France are deplorable. Representatives from Romeurope and ASAV92, which accompanies people in shanty towns across the Hauts-de-Seine and Val d’Oise departments, told us that access to water is sparse and organised trash disposal is nearly non-existent. They note a high prevalence of illnesses like lead poisoning, diabetes, hepatitis B and C, and high blood pressure, which are caused or worsened by precarious living conditions and difficult access to medical care. Bad living conditions, however, are also often used as a pretext for fast evictions and little to no delays granted, said Aline Poupel, president of Romeurope Val-de-Marne.  

“Repeated expulsions have driven people further away from the urban zones,” said Luc Magistry, director of the ASAV92 association. “They are starting to settle in remote areas, [such as] around forests, and it becomes harder and harder to reach the slums and bring water [and] organise trash disposal, but also to enrol children in school and to go to work. One grave misconception is that people living in shanty towns do not work or want to work.”   

Poupel and other experts maintain that authorities are reluctant to supply water, toilets, or trash disposal services as they don’t want to give people a reason to stay. When asked about the interactions with the city halls, Poupel sighed. “We feel like we’re in a state of war. We have to fight for every morsel,” she said.