Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein

Juridification and Judicialization of Climate Politics through Climate Litigation

Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein, Lucie Benoit, MSc

Principle Investigator, SNF Ambizione Project (208679)

When the state sues climate activists in criminal courts, new opportunities for political and public communication open up for the climate movement. However, the juridification and judicialization of climate politics and activism through civil disobedience not only creates new opportunities, it also entails risks: does civil disobedience contribute to the criminalization of political protest, or can it legitimize new spaces for political protest? Can the existing legal system be transformed by climate activism, or are activism and political protest depoliticized through judicialization? How do new forms of political protest and communication (including in courtrooms) affect social debates, perceptions and discourses about climate change? How does the state, through the institutions of the police and the judiciary, react to climate activism that relies on means of civil disobedience? How are different strategies of juridification and judicialization (e.g. strategic climate litigation against the state or against companies, civil disobedience) promoted by different social actors (inside and outside the climate movement)? What can climate litigation achieve and what are the limits of climate litigation?

Based on the findings and theories from legal anthropology and political ecology, these and other questions are discussed using methods of qualitative empirical social research (participant observation, interviews, discourse analysis)

Keywords: Climate litigation, social movements, climate politics, climate justice, political ecology, legal anthropology

Project leader: Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein

Scientific collaborator and PhD student: Lucie Benoit

Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation

Report (2023.5.17): Bluwstein, Jevgeniy; Demay, Clémence; Benoit, Lucie (2023). Civil disobedience and climate trials in Switzerland - What are they fighting for in the Swiss courts? Bern: humanrights.ch (pdf EN/FR/DE)

Blog (2023.9.29): Bluwstein, Jevgeniy; Demay, Clémence; Benoit, Lucie (2023). Civil Disobedience on Trial in Switzerland, Verfassungsblog:  https://verfassungsblog.de/civil-disobedience-on-trial-in-switzerland/

Conservation Labor (CONLAB)

Co-Investigator

CONLAB seeks to advance interdisciplinary research on labor (e.g. labor geographies) and conservation science (e.g. political ecology) by examining how biodiversity conservation policies, initiatives and projects shape labor dynamics in affected communities across the Global South. Theoretically, we conceptualize conservation as a mode of production that requires and generates value from different forms of paid and unpaid work. We situate conservation labor and theorize it in the broader context of an international conservation labor regime. This labor regime is underpinned by a particular division of labor and labor dynamics in capitalist societies and postcolonial contexts that are characterized by entrenched social hierarchies cutting across gender, class, caste, race and ethnicity. From this vantage point, CONLAB examines the division of labor and labor dynamics i) within and outside of the conservation sector, ii) across social identities of gender, class, caste, and race, and iii) across hierarchies of paid, underpaid and unpaid work for conservation.

Project members: Dr. Anwesha Dutta (PI, Christian Michelsen Institute, Norway), Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein (Co-I, University of Bern, Switzerland), Dr. Amber Huff (Co-I, Institute of Development Studies, UK), Dr. Francis Masse (Co-I, Northumbria University, UK)

Research Funding: Norwegian Research Council

Perspective in Current Conservation 2023: Labour perspectives on frontline conservation work