RAN Small-scale expert meeting - Preventing and countering of radicalisation leading to violence in the activist environmental movement, 16 April 2024

On 16 April, RAN Practitioners organised an online small-scale expert meeting to examine the potential for further radicalisation of segments of the environmental activist movement towards violent extremism and terrorism, and its implications for PVE and CVE. 

The meeting was exploratory in nature, aimed at benefiting all P/CVE practitioners dealing with cases involving individuals connected to the activist environmental movement. Therefore, the focus of the meeting was not on citizens and organisations using their fundamental right of assembly, demonstration and free speech to support climate change but rather the activist part of the environmental movement that could further radicalise, leading to violence carried out by the movement in demonstrations, or even acts of violent extremism and/or terrorism. 

Note that the majority of the meeting’s participants had a background in the police force or were currently working for a law enforcement agency. This was a coincidence, since the participants with different backgrounds (e.g. local authorities, online monitoring) that had accepted the invitation did not attend after all. 

The meeting’s key outcomes are as follows: 

• non-violent social movements can radicalise into violent movements through interaction with the state, or through interactions within the movement itself; 
• violence against property and the propensity of violence seems to escalate as we approach 2028, a very important date within the environmental movement since it can be seen as a tipping point for reaching climate goals; 
• interaction between different environmental movements is observed, with individuals sharing knowledge and tactics (e.g. how to organise action and how to behave in police interrogations); 
• there is also a level of solidarity between different organisations within the movement, with individuals moving from one movement to the other. 

This paper summarises the main takeaways of the discussion, including to what extent individuals in activist environmental groups in Europe use violence to reach their goals, how several parts of activist environmental movements are developing, which developments are most concerning from a P/CVE perspective and what can be expected in the future. This is followed by the recommendations that resulted from the meeting, and a description of relevant practices and projects.