Protest camps and climate activism

Environmental protest and activism has been a mainstay of environmental politics in the UK for some years. Between 2006 and 2011 the Camp for Climate Action played a central role in connecting radical political action, climate change education and sustainable lifestyles. Ethnographic and scholar-activist research carried out during this period analysed the Climate Camp as a contested space where different emphases on environmental and social priorities were negotiated, democratic ways of decision-making were popularised and new forms of political activism were developed.

Project timeframe

2006 - 2011

Project aims

To study the emergence of a new cycle of radical environmental activism.

To examine the form, content and debates of this new protest cycle.

Project findings and impact

This research contributed to our understanding of climate activism in Britain and highlighted some of its features that distinguish it from earlier environmental protest cycles. In particular it highlighted an epistemological shift that had arisen with the arrival of climate change as a dominant frame of environmental protest in Britain.


After the exposure of undercover police officers who had infiltrated the activist spaces of British environmental protest during the period that this research was carried out, the emphasis shifted towards studying the policing of climate activism. A new project focusing on undercover policing and political protest is currently under way: Protest Networks and the Pitchford Inquiry.

Project team

Raphael Schlembach

Output

Russell, Bertie, Schlembach, Raphael and Lear, Ben (2017) Carry on camping? The British Camp for Climate Action as a political refrain In: Brown, G., Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F. and McCurdy, P., eds. Protest camps in international context: spaces, infrastructures and media of resistance. Policy Press, Bristol, UK, pp. 147-162. ISBN 9781447329411

Schlembach, Raphael, Lear, Ben and Bowman, Andrew (2012) Science and ethics in the post-political era: strategies within the Camp for Climate Action Environmental Politics, 21 (5). pp. 811-828. ISSN 0964-4016

Schlembach, Raphael (2011) How do radical climate movements negotiate their environmental and their social agendas? A study of debates within the Camp for Climate Action (UK) Critical Social Policy, 31 (2). pp. 194-215. ISSN 0261-0183