Police say they are close to clearing the last remaining activist tree houses from the Hambach Forest. Energy firm RWE, which wants to raze the woodland to expand its mine, says there's no way the trees will be spared.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Young
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Police said Sunday they had dismantled some 77 tree houses from a patch of ancient woodland in western Germany and were nearing the end of an operation to evict anti-coal protesters.
Environmental activists have been camping out at Hambach Forest near Cologne — some of them for up to six years — in a bid to stop German energy company RWE from clearing trees to make way for the expansion of its open-cut lignite mine.
Police began taking down the tree houses about three weeks ago, initially estimating they were dealing with some 60 structures. A spokesman told German news agency dpa they were close to completing the job, but stressed it might still "take some time" to find and remove less-exposed huts.
In comments carried by the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper, RWE CEO Rolf Martin Schmitz said there was no room for compromise.
"There's no possibility of leaving the forest standing," he told the paper, adding that allowing part of the woodland to remain untouched is "technically impossible. We need the ground beneath the remaining forest in order to keep the embankments stable."
The Greens have sharply criticized RWE, accusing Schmitz of being "indifferent to the opposition of thousands of citizens," and not caring about "reaching a compromise in the dispute over Hambach Forest."
Schmitz claims the German government has left his company in the lurch by failing to deal with "criminal" protest actions. He says his main responsibility is to the 5,000 employees who depend on the Hambach mine.
Germany continues to remain heavily reliant on coal, partly to offset Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision in 2011 to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Earlier this year, the government tasked a panel of representatives from business, unions and politics with designing a strategy for phasing out coal. The so-called coal commission is expected to submit its recommendations by the end of 2018.
Activists, and some members of the panel, have urged RWE to delay logging in Hambach until the commission agrees on a coal exit deadline and a plan for the economic future of mining regions.
"Hambach Forest Stays!" Germany and the Coal Industry
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But the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the state where Hambach is located, told the Tageszeitung newspaper that the commission's decision on a deadline "has nothing to do with Hambach."
NRW Premier Armin Laschet also said it had been a mistake to let protesters camp there for as long as they had: "Such an unlawful situation is wrong. It will now be eliminated."
German author and ecologist Peter Wohlleben, who was in the forest on Sunday, called on Premier Laschet and Chancellor Angela Merkel to "send a clear signal for green democracy."
Activists say they plan to hold a major protest on Saturday against the forest clearance.
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.