Lessons on fighting for the climate while living under authoritarianism

What impact do such authoritarian governments have on organizers and activists in the Philippines?

When we look at how we do our work as organizers, there is the stark reality of the dangers that we sometimes face. It could be a really blatant attack on people like what we’ve seen in the past decade. I am very familiar with the assassination of Gloria Capitan, an anti-coal activist in Bataan. And I had the honor of meeting Chad Booc, who was assassinated two years ago. His work was about providing an alternative way of learning for the Lumad [Indigenous people] in Mindanao, but there were a lot of climate justice aspects to his work. That’s only just scratching the surface with all the documented cases of killings of environmental defenders. We have to raise our voices around this issue every time we go to an environmental conference or a meeting. We cannot just talk about climate without talking about justice. We cannot talk about climate justice without talking about human rights.

But there are a range of threats. A very close friend, someone who has been with Greenpeace, is being charged with cyber libel because we have been building up anti-mining resistance on Cebu island. This kind of threat is very real and it could really be very discouraging for a lot of us in the environmental movement. Because of this, many of us have decided to change our names on social media. Many of us hide behind cryptic handles on Facebook. And many of us have disengaged from social media altogether. Because we live in a digital world where a lot of connections and communication are done digitally, this can be very damaging to our effectiveness of putting our voices out there.

In the Philippines, activists have a lot of distrust in these platforms. At Greenpeace, we evaluate every kind of messaging platform that we use not because we are doing anything wrong or because all of our conversations are secret, but who you associate with can make you unsafe. For example, if your friend is red-tagged [publicly deemed a terrorist, often by the government] there is a likelihood that you’re next. Red-tagging is based on the premise that if you have radical beliefs, you don’t have the right to exist, even if you’re not doing anything illegal.

For me personally, red-tagging is one of the most tragic things in the Philippine context. I come from a family of activists and my parents were arrested, jailed and tortured in 1971 when martial law was declared under Marcos Sr. It’s quite depressing to think that now we’ve elected the dictator’s son and the majority of the electorate has chosen to forget about history. Now, when you’re someone who is raising your left fist, it’s dangerous to be doing that.

You described yourself as the “guy who attends conferences,” but you’re still very much involved in actions. Could you share some of the details of your recent action against Shell?

In January 2023, we launched a global campaign called “Stop Drilling, Start Paying,” which is part of our “Make Polluters Pay” campaign. We organized a protest on an oil and gas platform that was being transported from China to the North Sea. We were calling out Shell on their deceit and for saying how they’re complying with the Paris Agreement, but in reality, they are actually doing the opposite. So we were on board the Greenpeace vessel in the North Atlantic, and we waited for this vessel.

While we were planning this action we had some vague idea of what it looked like, but when we were there in the ocean on these small boats, it was very overwhelming to see this massive structure — around 65 yards wide, sitting on top of a much bigger vessel. It was moving very fast in very rough seas. Some of us were able to climb all the way up and occupy the vessel for 12 or 13 days, which we think is the longest occupation of a moving oil and gas platform. I tried to climb, but the vessel was doing these crazy maneuvers that they usually use for anti-piracy. We made it clear through radio that we were doing a peaceful protest, but we were being treated like pirates.

That protest then resulted in a lawsuit. Shell claims we were harassing them, which is ridiculous, because how can six activists — some of us from developing countries who are experiencing climate impacts — be the ones accused of harassing the richest companies in the world? It’s obviously a SLAPP suit, one that is meant to discourage activists from doing protests at sea. But even that brief experience was exhilarating. It gave me a big sense of pride around how we are holding a big polluter like Shell accountable.