Judicial advice says RWE's right to clear Hambach Forest depends on conditions that haven't been met. Are German police evicting protestors to make way for illegal activity by the energy company?
Image: Michael Goergens
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It is there in black and white, in the planning approval for opencast mining in Hambach: Woods and other natural habitats "should be preserved in their ecological capacity for as long as possible," and forest clearance "should be limited to what is necessary to carry out operations."
German energy company RWE plans to start felling Hambach Forest next month. Police have clashed with environmental activists, whom they are attempting to remove from the forest so RWE can bring its diggers in access the seams of coal beneath.
Yet doubts are being raised as to whether RWE really did exhaust all other possibilities at its opencast lignite — or brown coal — mine to fulfill the statutory requirements of preserving the old-growth forest for as long as possible.
On Monday, the "felling the forest isn't necessary" argument was bolstered by a legal opinion from Greenpeace. According to lawyer Cornelia Ziehm, author of a report commissioned by the environmental organization, "there is no existing law that allows RWE to clear Hambach Forest under any circumstances, at any time and to any extent."
So is RWE's planned forest clearance, supported by the regional government in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, illegal — rendering the huge police deployment there unnecessary?
Critics wonder whether the huge deployment of police at Hambach Forest is really necessaryImage: DW/G. Rueter
Is RWE moving too fast?
RWE is permitted to clear the forest two years in advance of their planned excavation. Over the last few years, the diggers have been advancing toward the forest at a speed of less than 120 meters (131 yards) per year, meaning that under certain conditions, clearing forest up to 300 meters from the current edge of the pit could be considered lawful.
However, satellite images show that the distance between the pit and the edge of the central section of the wood is between 450 and 600 meters. The closest the remaining Hambach Forest comes to the edge of the pit is around 330 meters at its eastern tip, while the western end is 370 meters away from the mine.
So how can forest clearance reaching a kilometer from the opencast mine be legitimate?
Legality of forest clearing is a question of time
RWE boss Rolf Martin Schmitz says around 100 hectares (247 acres) of woodland in Hambach Forest is to be felled this fall.
DW wanted to know why this clearance plan was necessary for RWE's operations, and therefore legal, and asked for relevant proof. But despite several requests from DW, RWE hadn't supplied the requested information at the time of writing.
According to Ziehm, the legal position is clear: If RWE starts clearing woodland in Hambach Forest in October, as planned, it will be in violation of the law.
"Hambach Forest Stays!" Germany and the Coal Industry
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The legality of the forest clearance depends on concrete evidence that using land within Hambach Forest "is necessary, or rather essential, regarding the timescale," Ziehm wrote.
She says there is no need to start clearing forest in October 2018 — something even RWE itself has admitted. In a press release, RWE said that forest clearance is only necessary for its operations from 15 December 2018.
Ziehm has therefore suggested that environmental organizations take RWE to court over this timing, should the regional authorities fail to order a ban on forest clearance for October.
Optimizing the lignite mine
Questions over the need for deforestation have also emerged from a technical perspective.
In an analysis of the Hambach opencast pit commissioned by Greenpeace, mining consultancy Plejades said modifications could enable the excavation perimeter to stay in place for longer than stated, so the Hambach Forest could remain untouched for longer.
Claudia Kemfert, energy and environment expert at the German Institute for Economic Research, said the planned forest clearance doesn't make sense from an energy perspective, either.
"Lignite mining isn't needed for energy supply security," Kemfert said. "The firm could manage without the opencast mine in Hambach Forest until next year." What's more, a fast fossil-fuel phase-out, which environmentalists say is essential for Germany to meet its domestic emissions targets and commitments to the Paris Agreement, could make the clearance "totally void."
Kemfert suspects RWE is counting on escalating the issue "to bring about the collapse of the coal commission on the one hand," she said, referring to Germany's task force charged with planning for the country's phase-out of coal, "and on the other to use blackmail to eventually get large compensatory damages."
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.
