Irish Fracking Campaign

On the 28th June 2017, a ban on onshore fracking passed the final stages of the legislative process in the Irish parliament, bringing to fruition a six-year grassroots campaign.

While industry is touting gas as a transition fuel, to bridge us to a clean energy future, in reality the ramping up of exploration and the investment in new infrastructure for gas seeks to lock us in to many more years of fossil fuel dependency and ever-worsening climate impacts and must be challenged at every turn.

In this regard the news from Ireland, and more recently from Scotland, is positive. However, the industry keeps moving on and fracking is expanding in to the global South, where the risks to environmental defenders are much greater and the scale of social and environmental impacts often much more destructive. How can movements in the global North use their privileges in solidarity with resistance in Latin America and other marginalised regions?

The task is now more urgent than ever to support and strengthen resistance struggles to extractive projects and to build connections across our international movements. After spending time with Irish activists over the summer, here the Democracy Center shares some of the insight and experience gained from Ireland’s recent campaign win, highlighting some of the broader conversations within our movements.

Work carried out with the generous support of the KR Foundation