February 8, 2025

-analysis-

BERLIN — Experienced environmental activists from Ende Gelände, known for occupying coal mines, have already set their sights on their next target.

Their latest campaign was to defend the village of Lützerath in western Germany, near the Dutch border, against eviction and demolition. The declared rival is the energy company RWE. Its plans to promote lignite, the most polluting of the types of coal, have recently clashed with a climate camp that will last several days and a demonstration to preserve the village.

It is precisely these protests that are feared by the so-called traffic light coalition in Germany, especially by Green Party cabinet members Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck. They question the essence of their party: protecting the climate and the environment.


Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the accompanying energy embargo against Russia pose a fundamental question for the coalition: Should Germany continue fossil fuel production as a temporary solution and thus stimulate the protests from its own base, or is it better to increase imports from abroad and thus outsource resistance?

“The Monster”

The truth is that Germany still has coal, gas, oil and lithium deposits, the extraction of which is easier to control locally in terms of environmental standards and human rights than in Latin America or Africa.

The planned increase in coal imports from Colombia is highly controversial. “Germany imported 2.28 million tons of hard coal from Colombia last year,” according to Habeck’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 5.5% of hard coal imports in 2021 will come from the South American country.

The coal mine “El Cerrejón” actually stands for everything that the Greens have so strongly criticized and fought against.

Now, more coal from Colombia will be sent across the Atlantic to Germany to pay for the import ban from Russia. Everyone involved is silent about exactly how much: “Contract negotiations are a matter for coal importers and are also conducted there, not at the state level,” the ministry recently said.

The “El Cerrejón” coal mine, called the “monster” by the locals, is one of the largest in the world with a total of 69,000 hectares. The huge mine in the north of the South American country actually stands for everything that the Greens have so strongly criticized and fought against. A notorious history of serious human rights violations by right-wing paramilitary groups, land displacement and forced relocation of indigenous people, brutal violence against climate and environmental activists, and a water shortage brought about by coal mining with dramatic consequences for the local, often poor population.

Electric cars are not the solution

In the past, all this has repeatedly led to protests by NGOs at the annual general meetings of German energy companies – often in conjunction with the Greens.

All that now seems to have been forgotten. “Environmental and human rights organizations have been complaining about ‘green colonialism’ for a long time,” said Klaus Schenck, the forestry and energy spokesperson for the NGO Save the Rainforest. In an interview, he cited an example: “In any case, replacing the roughly 1.2 billion conventional vehicles worldwide with a greater number of electric vehicles is not a solution.” This is because their production is extremely energy – and raw material – intensive.

The “green growth” propagated by politics and business continues “our over-consumption and consumption of resources in the Global North at the expense of the people of the South”. Almost 100% of the raw materials needed for this, such as steel, aluminum, copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earths, as well as the oil needed for the production of plastics, are imported from in the Global South, said Schenck.

Bogus solutions to the climate crisis

Criticism by NGOs is specifically aimed at the illusion spread by the German government that, with the help of the invented European green energy transition, things will be fairer and more climate-friendly around the world. “Fake solutions to the climate crisis and the extinction of species at the expense of indigenous and local communities have a tradition in the West,” said Niklas Ennen of the organization “Survival International,” which campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples. native.

He criticizes the fact that the projects and concepts created in Berlin or Brussels are decided over the heads of the affected people: “Western conservation organizations and governments still do not care about the right of self-determination of people of the Global South in their concepts and claims of nature. that the local population cannot take care of their environment. This is colonial, racist and simply wrong.”

False solutions to the climate crisis and species extinction at the expense of indigenous and local communities have a tradition in the West.

This type of “nature conservation” causes suffering and death in indigenous communities and does not save the environment, he said. “If we want to slow down the loss of biodiversity and global warming, the most proven method is to protect as much indigenous land as possible and to recognize indigenous people as the center,” demanded said Ennen. Basically, conservation organizations are calling for a systemic change in economic policy.

A bad deal for Colombia

For Colombia’s new government, led by former guerrilla Gustavo Petro as president and environmental activist Francia Marquez as vice president, the need for German coal is an ideological problem. In the election campaign, the duo promised to start the phase-out of fossil fuel extraction, which was agreed by the German traffic light coalition.

But now comes the immoral offer from Berlin, forcing Bogota into a conflict of interests that only knows one answer. In fact, the poor country cannot do without additional short-term income. Finally, President Petro should give the green light for the climate-damaging deal. And so, the scene was sacrificed in Colombia and not in Germany.

Ende Gelände wants to prevent this and is currently working on a joint strategy with Colombian activists to support their protest in Colombia. At a climate protest camp in Hamburg, German activists demanded an immediate halt to coal imports into Colombia. Meanwhile, alliances were made, information was exchanged and cooperation across the Atlantic was discussed.

Despite the very controversial demand for coal from Germany, a few days ago during their visit to Colombia, the Development Ministry of Germany promised that the German development policy will increase its commitment to green and fair development in Latin America. However, the trip did not include visiting the coal mine of “El Cerrejón” and talking to the affected population.

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