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Movements Shaping Climate Futures: A Systematic Mapping of Protests Against Fossil Fuel and Low Carbon Energy Projects

Author(s): Leah Temper, et al.

In: Environmental Research Letters, Vol 15, No 12, 2020, pp. 1-24

This articles provides a systematic mapping of resistance movements against both fossil fuel (FF) and also against low carbon energy (LCE) projects. Hydropower projects dominate in the LCE category, causing both social and environmental damage.  The authors find that over a quarter of the projects encountering social resistance have been suspended or delayed, that low carbon renewable energy projects cause conflict as much as fossil fuel projects, and that both disproportionally impact socially vulnerable groups such as rural communities and indigenous peoples. The authors also find that repression and violence against protesters and land defenders was widespread, and that assassination of activists occurred in 10 per cent of all the cases analyzed.