Finalist: Social movements for 1.5
The photo series has accompanied environmental protests in Germany since 2015, with a focus on protests against lignite. In this context, the action form of forest occupation has gained great importance in Germany in recent years. Starting with occupations of open-cast lignite mines of the movement "Ende-Gelände", coal mining became a public issue. In this form of civil disobedience, activists shut down coal mines for several days. Starting from Hambacher Forst 2018, various forest occupations developed in Germany. First against the expansion of the Hambach coal mine. Then in 2020 in Dannenrod against the construction of a highway.
Currently in 2022 in Lützerath against the expansion of the Garzweiler open pit mine. This makes Lützerath the last place in Germany to be mined for lignite.
In all of these three occupations, Hambacher Forst, Dannenröder Wald, and Lützerath, activists have built large settlements of dozens of tree houses and built communities. Their goal is to prevent the clearing of the forest or the dismantling of the site. In this way, they make these places a symbol of resistance against the overexploitation of fossil resources and create the possibility to physically block this machinery in the places. Thus the occupations became centers of the radical environmental movement in Germany. So the activists are trying to keep the 1.5 degree limit of global warming.
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A group of activists after the open pit occupation, an activist climbs onto a conveyor belt over which the coal normally runs. With straw sacks and white painting suits. Ende-Gelände is a coalition of people and groups who are committed to climate justice and the transition away from fossil capitalism. The immediate coal phase-out and complete decarbonization are among their central concerns in order to stop the threatening climate catastrophe. Their forms of action developed from the climate camps that have been taking place since 2010. Following on from mass actions by the anti-nuclear movement, including in the Wendland region, opencast lignite mines in the Rhineland or Lausitz were occupied every year from 2015 to 2020. Equipped with straw bags to sit on for long periods of time and uniformly dressed in painter's suits, thousands of people advance into the opencast mine site in spectacular actions of "civil disobedience" and occupy rails and excavators there. Like ants, they make their way through the often barren lunar landscape in various, so-called fingertips, and temporarily paralyze mining there. As early as 2015, Ende-Gelände thus succeeded in putting the demand for an exit from lignite on the political agenda with media impact. In the meantime, Ende-Gelände is also increasingly addressing the expansion of the gas infrastructure in Germany and drawing attention to the global devastation caused by this exploitation of the planet.
