The Earth Uprisings, a disturbing environmental movement

Demonstration against the dissolution of the environmental movement Les Bouleements de la Terre in Angoulême, western France, April 19, 2023. AFP - YOHAN BONNET

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Born in 2021 in Notre-Dame-Des-Landes, the movement Les Soulèvements de la terre, is in the eye of the government's sights. The latter holds him responsible for the clashes that occurred at the end of March in Sainte-Soline during a banned demonstration against the existence of water reservoirs. The environmental organization that claims concrete actions to defend the environment is accused of ecoterrorism and could be dissolved.

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Several invasions of companies, several strong abuses against the police, several destruction of property, hundreds of gendarmes or police injured, several calls for insurrection, so I decided to initiate the dissolution of the Earth Uprisings": these are the words of Gérald Darmanin in front of the National Assembly on March 28, three days after the clashes that broke out between police and demonstrators in Sainte-Soline, in the Deux-Sèvres.

The object of anger: gigantic water reserves to meet the needs of agribusiness facing climate change. For environmental activists, these stockpiling increase pressure on water resources and harm biodiversity. Several people were injured on both sides who blame each other for the violence.

►Also listen: Violence in Sainte-Soline: "A minority seeking confrontation"

The Earth Uprisings are a heterogeneous group, not formally declared as an association with the public authorities. Their supporters, farmers, urban youth or trade unionists, intend to mobilize for the protection of the environment through strong local actions. They want to harden the mobilization in a context of climate emergency. Among their recent mobilizations, that of Sainte-Soline, that in the Tarn against the Castres-Toulouse motorway project, but also that of Villefranche-sur-Saône in March 2022 on the Bayer-Monsanto site, or on the Lafarge sites in June 2021.

The #A69 will not pass!

At the call of the collective @LaVoieEstLibre_, @xrToulouse, the @ConfPaysanne and the @lessoulevements, more than 8200 people demonstrated this Saturday, April 22 against the #A69 motorway project between Castres and Toulouse.

Here is our joint ⤵️ press release pic.twitter.com/5R6LO7tskB

— Earth Uprisings (@lessoulevements) April 24, 2023

► Read also: France: ecologist mobilization against a motorway project between Toulouse and Castres

Local actions and arm wrestling

Their strategy: go on the ground to establish a balance of power with the state or with "ecocidal" companies. They therefore claim sabotage operations with the presence of radical elements to pose a threat, in the wake of other groups such as Dernière Rénovation, Just Stop Oil, or Extinction Rebellion.

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We do not describe ourselves in themselves as a pacifist movement, after very clearly, we have never called and we will not call to attack people," said Benoît Feuillu, one of the spokespersons for the Earth Uprisings movement.

Nothing very new about this civil disobedience. In 1999, José Bové, leader of the Confédération paysanne, which fights against globalisation and wants to defend farmers against US retaliatory customs measures on foie gras and Roquefort, ransacks a famous fast-food restaurant in Millau. He repeated the exercise in 2004 by destroying a plot of transgenic maize in southwestern France.

According to a police source interviewed by AFP, the novelty lies rather in the "multiplication of protests on projects of lower intensity, for example a motorway ramp or an Amazon warehouse", with a "level of violence (which) is now rising very quickly".

Stronger repression

In October 2022, during a first demonstration against megabasins in Sainte-Soline, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin used the term "ecoterrorism" and thus criminalized those mobilized. According to a 2022 study by Sciences Po Law School, there is indeed a real rise in the repressive arsenal to counter the disobedience of activists: "special offenses", "more restrictive procedures" or "specialized gendarmes cells", "abusive police custody". Anti-terrorism laws are thus applied to environmental movements.

On April 13, several activists from the Soulèvements de la Terre collective went to Place Beauvau to file their written observations and contest the dissolution. "The government is violating both freedom of expression and freedom of association," argue the movement's lawyers.

Many personalities, researchers, activists and scientists support the collective. Director Cyril Dion refutes the accusations: "We are not violent people and we absolutely do not call for violence, but for responsibility to stop this systematic destruction of life on the planet." Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a French paleoclimatologist, for her part, says she defends "all forms of freedom of expression, knowing that mass movements for climate justice play an important catalytic role in relation to the inertia of action for climate and biodiversity". For Philippe Descola, an eminent anthropologist, "revolted by the grabbing of land for the benefit of a minority, by the diversion of common goods – also for the benefit of a minority – by the artificialization of territories", the repression of the movement is against the current of the ecological emergency. (To read on the website Reporterre, the media of ecology).

On 19 April, in Nantes, Chambéry, Dijon, Montpellier, Angoulême, Orléans, Lyon and Lannion, demonstrations of support took place. On the signs, "We are the Uprisings of the Earth".

► Read also: What education on global warming?

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