Renewed protests against the expansion of a lignite mine have taken place in an ancient spot of German woodland. But bad weather and police restraints put a dampener on the demonstration.
Image: Reuters/W. Rattay
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Thousands of anti-coal protesters on Sunday gathered in cold, rainy conditions in Hambach Forest, near the western German city of Aachen, to demonstrate against the expansion of an open-cut lignite mine in the area of woodland.
Organizers said some 7,000 attended the protest — 2,000 more than expected — but police have not verified the figure.
DW's Louisa Wright was at the protests and filmed the activists carrying trees through the wood:
A court on Saturday confirmed a ban on the original "woodland walk" planned by organizers, saying it was likely that a number of walkers would break off from the stroll to join activists, leading to a large-scale demonstration that could not be properly secured. Authorities thus allowed only a fixed demonstration at one location.
The forest was bought by German utility RWE decades ago to expand lignite mining. Protests were triggered after the company announced plans to clear the forest further as of fall to make way for mine enlargement.
Activists trying to protect the forest have been living in tree houses there, some for as long as six years. Some two weeks ago, police began taking down some of the around 50 tree houses — citing "fire-safety concerns" — after first removing ground-based structures used by the activists.
For many people, the Hambach Forest has become a symbol of the struggle between industrial greed and the fight against climate change, with critics of the planned mine extension saying that if the mined lignite is burned, it will make it almost impossible for Germany to meet its commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
6 years of coal protest coming to an end at Germany's Hambach forest?
Activists have uprooted their lives to save a German forest from being sacrificed to a gigantic coal mine. Now, German police are overseeing the clearing of the Hambach forest as the plans for mining go ahead.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Primal forest
At the heart of Europe, in western Germany, near the border to France and Belgium, a scrap of ancient forest holds thousand-year-old trees along with abundant wildlife. But there's another species living there in the forest as well — our own.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Life among the treetops
About 150 people currently live in what's left of Hambach forest, many in makeshift tree houses. Although living in a tree house may appear idyllic, many of the environmental activists have uprooted their lives for the better part of six years — living without electricity and running water — to protect the forest, and take a stance against the power of the fossil fuel industry.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Bildfunk/C. Gateau
Evictions begin
Several hundred police officers accompanied RWE workers for protection as they visited the forest on Wednesday, September 5, to expel the protesters in preparation for clearing. Although the operation was mostly peaceful, one activist was arrested after resisting police.
Image: DW/I. Banos-Ruiz
Nonviolent resistance
Activists joke about their "dangerous weapons," such as an empty fire extinguisher. Just days before the police action on September 5, Herbert Reul, the interior minister for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, warned that police and RWE staff in the Hambach forest were dealing with "extremely violent left-wing extremists." Members of the protest group have denied Reul's description.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Not the first forest confrontation
Over the years, police have clashed with protesters in the Hambach forest. In 2017, police employed pepper spray to disperse protesters in advance of planned logging. The looming eviction is likely to result in the largest confrontation there yet.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M.Becker
Trees for coal
Here is the result of a recent RWE clearing campaign, which ran from October 2016 to March 2017. In the background, the smokestacks of the Niederaussem power station can be seen. With a CO2 output of more than 29 million tons yearly, this is Europe's third-dirtiest power plant. Due to massive toxic emissions such as mercury and sulfur, it is also considered Germany's second-most-toxic power plant.
Image: Elian Hadj-Hamdi
'Critical turning point' for climate policy
"Clumsy" has lived among the treetops in the Hambach forest since the resistance against the RWE coalmine project began in 2012. He believes the battle over the forest is a critical turning point for German climate policy, and the government's decision is one between "giving in to the lignite hardliners, [or] protecting our life support basis on this planet."
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Small forest with big stakes
Only about 10 percent of the once sprawling Hambach forest has survived the mine's onslaught. What's left appears miniscule in comparison to the vast expanse of the mine, which already covers about 85 square kilometers (33 square miles). But environmentalists say the forest holds enormous ecological value, and is home to abundant and biodiverse ecology, including endangered animal species.
Ever-hungry coal industry
The Hambach mine, located between Aachen and Cologne, is Germany's largest open-cast mine. Here, RWE uses enormous excavators to extract brown coal, also known as lignite, from the earth. Lignite is among the fossil fuels that emit the most carbon dioxide when burned. What remains of Hambach forest is the last bastion in a long battle against the expansion of the mine.
Image: Michael Goergens
Save the forest, save the world
Environmental activists have undertaken nonviolent resistance against the RWE coal mine expansion for more than six years. Through their actions, they claim to not only want to save the Hambach forest from destruction, but also send a message to the world about the dangerous consequences of prioritizing fossil fuel extraction over important ecological sites.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
Global support
Activists from all over the world have supported the action by staying for days or weeks at a time. Over the past six years, activists have literally built up an alternative community within the forest. Although it is still unclear what exactly will happen in the struggle between the protesters and the fossil fuel giant, potential eviction is an ever-present possibility for the forest dwellers.
Image: DW/G. Rueter
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Calls for suspension
Activists and some politicians have been calling for a suspension of clearing activities until a panel of experts and politicians, known as the coal commission, has come up with a plan for the country to drop its use of coal for energy in a "socially acceptable" manner.
The chairwoman of the environmentalist Green party, Annalena Baerbock, told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency that continuing clearing the forest at the current time was a "deliberate provocation" in view of the commission's deliberations.
"It cannot be that a wood is cleared when in the end this is no longer needed for energy purposes according to the decision by the coal commission," she said.
The company has previously said the coal commission's work did not justify a suspension as it was concerned only "with the medium- and long-term prospects for coal-fired power generation."
RWE CEO Martin Schmitz said late on Thursday that not going ahead with the clearance would cost his company some €4 billion to €5 billion ($4.7 billion to $5.8 billion).
Schmitz told public broadcaster ZDF that "the assumption that the forest can be saved is an illusion" and that if the forest were not cleared, the existing mine edges would have to be stabilized using huge quantities of rubble, adding that he did not believe this was technically possible at the moment.
Neighboring villages have also already been removed to make way for the mine, and a further one is scheduled for demolition under current clearance plans.
"Hambach Forest Stays!" Germany and the Coal Industry
