Environmental movements strengthen democracy and help mitigate the worst impacts of economic growth

In Spain, environmentalist mobilizations manage to stop or suspend three out of ten of the projects they oppose. Despite the strength of public administrations and large companies, we will all remember historic achievements against the construction of the Hotel El Algarrobico in Cabo de Gata, or more recently, such as the halting of the expansion of the El Prat Airport in Barcelona. We have obtained this data from the documentation of 113 environmental conflicts in Spain within the project of the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Through the accumulated experience documenting more than 4,100 conflict-ridden projects around the world together with hundreds of volunteers, we have found that the persistent intensification of material and energy consumption is the main trigger of environmental conflicts.

In this sense, environmental conflicts are a reflection of the country’s economy and help us understand the inconsistencies and socio-environmental limits of our economic model. In the Spanish case, environmental conflicts reflect that the most important socio-environmental tensions coincide with the dominant sectors of our economy: tourism, industrial livestock farming and the energy sector.

We start with tourism: in the last ten years, International visitors have increased by 40% until the 85 million annually while Hotel places have only increased by 8%. The increase in tourist demand is basically absorbed in tourist apartments, which have made rent more expensive, and have generated a significant social response. First in the Canary Islands with the demonstration that called for “Canary Islands has a limit”, then in the Balearic Islands, with the government of the Popular Party and Vox admitting that “Balearic Islands hhas arrived like thisu limit”. These weeks have been followed by protests from Malaga, Cadiz, Barcelona, Girona, Alicante, Majorca and CantabriaThe message is the same everywhere: limits must be placed on tourism to ensure access to housing for the renting classes.

Furthermore, the limits of tourism also emerge through environmentalist opposition to the expansion of ports and airports in Barcelona, Madrid, Palmtoeither Valencia among other cities. The tourism sector is also linked to an increase in material and energy consumption, and waste disposal. Recently, a study has determined that the Tourism is responsible for 80% of the waste found on the beaches of the Mediterranean islands in summer. This leads to an alliance between two major Spanish social movements: the right to housing and the environmental movement, which share their demands and political actions to reduce the social and environmental impact of tourism.

The problems of macro farms

Another major pillar of the economy is the primary sector. Between 2012 and 2022, the number of macro-farms has multiplied by 135% to 3,618 farms. Although it may go unnoticed in cities, it is a problem spread throughout the territory. The state platform Stop Industrial Livestock Farming brings together communities from hundreds of villages that suffer the impacts of water and air pollution, which harm the health of ecosystems and local communities. This movement brings together environmental organisations and demands, with campaigns for animal welfare, for farmers’ rights and against depopulation.

Finally, we talk about the energy sector. To prevent the worst climate impacts, we must dismantle fossil infrastructure at forced marches. Our investigation shows that the organized movements contribute to mitigating climate change on a
global scale, managing to stop hundreds of projects that are harmful to the climate. In Spain we have the recent precedents of environmental victories against climate change. Midcat pipelinethe Balboa refineryand the fracking. The struggles continue against the LNG regasification plants and gas pipelines that continue to import gas and export the environmental impacts of our energy consumption to other countries.

In the energy transition, renewables are our great allies, but only when they manage to displace the consumption of fossil fuels. In the last decade, the installation of renewables has retired coal power plants and has reduced emissions of our electricity mix significantly. However, so far in 2024, fossil fuel generation is concentrated in consumption peaks and only represents a 19% of the mix (1% carbon). With this data, local platforms for the safeguarding the landscape facing macro parks of renewables and national networks such as Ecologists in Action either Greenpeace They question what the electricity will be produced for and for whom, and who will reap the benefits.

Some political actors, including the far right, continue to try to create a false tension between climate movements and movements against macro-renewables in order to justify thermal and nuclear power plants. Nothing could be further from the truth: the environmental movement is united by demands for a reduction in energy consumption, especially by large consumers, and a fair transition that allows us to end fossil fuels and adopt a distributed renewable model that has a positive impact on communities.

This debate places us before the great challenge of decarbonisation: most oil and gas are not consumed for electricity production, but in transport, air conditioning and industry. Decarbonisation involves electrification, the great energy transformation that will change everything: production, distribution and consumption.

Future conflicts

This points us in the direction of the environmental conflicts to come, which are already beginning to emerge. Electrification, like renewables, requires critical minerals. Until now, these have been extracted from third countries, causing campaigns against the externalization of environmental impacts. However, with the justification of guaranteeing domestic supply, the opening of mines throughout the Spanish territory is already being announced, especially in the country’s economic peripheries (Galicia, Andalusia, Murcia, and Extremadura). But mining activities have major environmental impactsand residents of the towns where these mines are proposed are resisting.

A group is gathering national platform These local movements are trying to counter the narratives that impose the need to mine more without questioning who will benefit from the exploitation and whether we need such a quantity of materials to continue maintaining our energy consumption. In many of the towns that host mines or renewables, they feel that the energy transition sacrifices them for the benefit of others due to the lack of information and listening to the affected communities. This discontent adds to the historical grievance of Empty Spain due to the lack of public services and sustainable economic opportunities.

The study of environmental conflicts shows that ecological claims are the centrepiece of a network of social movements that extends throughout the territory. They are precisely because they respond to and reveal the tensions of our socioeconomic model based on an unsustainable growth in the consumption of resources that clashes with environmental and social limits. Thus, socio-environmental movements are a fundamental part of our society that strengthens democratic decision-making and contributes to mitigating the worst impacts of economic growth on people, ecosystems and the climate. According to the Defender a quien Defiende platform, in Spain environmentalism is the most important movement. criminalized.However wrong we are, we should recognize their important contribution to society.

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