Before he turned 22, Christian Bergemann had already spent ten days in preventive detention. His home had been raided by the authorities in Germany and he was under criminal investigation in Austria. His crime? Raising the alarm on the climate emergency—an existential crisis he did not create but inherited from the generations before him now represented in positions of political power.

Climate Rights International spoke to Christian during research for a report which analyses the disturbing trend of disproportionate responses by democratic countries to peaceful climate protests. A member of Letzte Generation, Christian said he had joined the group because he felt compelled to do more to secure a liveable future. Yet rather than acting on scientific warnings concerning climate change and protecting the rights of activists such as him, governments across Europe have wielded the criminal law against those peacefully calling for urgent policy action to safeguard the planet.

Dual failure

This crackdown on climate activists represents a dual failure. First is the blatant violation of international human-rights law. The freedoms of expression, assembly and association—rights enshrined in national laws, constitutions and treaties—are being violated and undermined. The right to protest, to speak up in peaceful dissent, is a cornerstone of democracy. And yet, in countries that pride themselves as guardians of human rights, these basic liberties are being eroded in the name of ‘maintaining order’.

The second failure is no less damaging—to act to address the climate crisis. It is the responsibility of democratic governments to enact policies to protect the planet, to explain why change is necessary and urgent to safeguard the rights and livelihoods of present and future generations. Instead, that role has fallen to climate scientists, economists and activists such as Christian, maligned and punished for filling the void left by political inaction.

Countries such as Germany may take pride in their renewable-energy initiatives and their efforts on behalf of a green transition. But these historically high greenhouse-gas-emitting countries are still not doing nearly enough to avert the looming catastrophe.

Instead of silencing the voices of activists, governments should be echoing their calls to action. Yet far too many ministers and lawmakers are opting for strategies that blissfully ignore scientific facts and sideline the urgency for action, clinging to the comfort of short-term political popularity over the long-term survival of the planet.

The climate crisis not a distant threat—it is a current reality. Every year, rising global temperatures intensify extreme weather events, from scorching heatwaves and raging wildfires to devastating floods and prolonged droughts. Communities around the globe are already feeling these effects.

The frustration is palpable. People around the world are demanding an immediate halt to new fossil-fuel extraction projects and an end to the billions in subsidies governments still pour into the industry. No government can claim to lead on climate while relying on, and in many cases even expanding, fossil-fuel production. The science is clear: ‘business as usual’ will have disastrous consequences.

Landmark cases

Activists and protesters are coming together to hold governments to account. They are pushing for genuine and comprehensive policy action—not tomorrow but now. Faced with official stonewalling and weak excuses, many are taking cases to the courts, which have increasingly become a battleground for climate justice. Landmark cases around the world have revealed the extent to which governments are failing to meet their obligations under international law aimed at addressing climate change and respecting human rights.

In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in favor of Urgenda, a citizens’ initiative, declaring that the Dutch government was not doing enough to protect its citizens from the dangers of global warming. Similar rulings have emerged in countries such as France, where courts found the government liable for failing to meet its climate commitments, and Germany, where the Constitutional Court ruled that the government’s climate laws were insufficient to protect present and future generations. And earlier this year the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland had violated basic human rights by failing to adopt adequate climate policies.

Yet despite these legal victories, governments and corporations—through their actions and inactions—continue to fall short of enacting the transformative changes needed and continue to wreak havoc against the environment, biodiversity and climate. The resulting harms are being felt across the world with the most vulnerable populations, countries and communities—those least responsible for the climate crisis—bearing the brunt of the carnage.

That is a why some smaller states, together with legal and environmental advocates, are pushing to expand the scope of individual criminal accountability for such grave offences against the natural environment, calling for the codification and criminalisation of ‘ecocide’ at the international level. This proposal, if ultimately adopted, would allow the International Criminal Court (ICC) to hold corporate executives and government officials criminally responsible for acts that cause severe, widespread or long-term environmental harm.

Earlier this year, the European Union took an important step by adopting a new Environmental Crime Directive, which includes crimes ‘comparable to ecocide’. Within the next 18 months, all 27 EU member states must incorporate these crimes into domestic legislation and ensure their criminal-justice systems have the expertise and capacities to investigate and adjudicate them. They should team up with like-minded nations and work for amendment of the ICC’s Rome Statute to add ecocide as a fifth international crime, alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.

Operating with impunity

In conversation Christian discussed how he felt about the disproportionate consequences of his actions:

“When my house is raided or when I’m being detained, I always ask myself if I should be the one in this position right now. And if it shouldn’t be the people who destroy our future every day, politicians who don’t acknowledge the reality that we’re facing in the climate crisis, if it shouldn’t be the rich people in fossil-fuel companies who’ve been denying the effects of climate change for decades now. I ask myself if these people shouldn’t be the actual criminals, those being charged and those being detained.”

While he and other climate protesters are being charged with crimes and even vilified for their peaceful efforts, those responsible for the climate crisis continue to operate with impunity. It is time for the scales of justice to shift—for the legal system to recognise that the true danger to society stems not from those warning of the crisis but from those who profit, politically and financially, from ignoring it. It is time for governments to be leaders, not jailers.