I have raised the issue of authoritarianism in the environmentalist arena before and it is often dismissed and it shouldn’t be.
In both the industrial emissions and nature restoration directives, a clause was sought (and ultimately rejected in both cases) to provide standing for environmentalists to sue individual farmers.
People will tell you that because they didn’t get it, that it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters because it signals intent. This is why people get upset if their partner suggests seeing other people. Even if they don’t do it, they want to, and it’s a problem.
Closer to home then, farmers, foresters and landowners have been plagued with serial objectors to a variety of things - felling licenses and planning permissions being a case in point. This activity causes delays, expenses and a whole lot of stress for farmers and landowners.
In more recent times, we have a new development. A farm was purchased in Co Tipperary and the new owner applied for planning permission for works to the property. Hedgerows Ireland didn’t agree that these works were appropriate and so objected.
A ‘peaceful protest’ was held last month and the stated purpose was to get the new owner to withdraw his application for planning. They had a list of other ‘demands’ (their word, not mine) in relation to other things they wanted to see retained or done on the farm.
They said that the protest was necessary because the new owner had not responded to several letters requesting a meeting to discuss his plans for the farm. Why would anyone who purchased a property need to meet with people not involved in that purchase to discuss their plans?
I know that the sale of a farm can sometimes be contentious or difficult but the details of the specific sale are not the point. As a sector, we need to think very carefully about the direction of travel of NGOs here.
Because if this tactic proves effective, it will grow as a practice. The number of things that farmers do (like farm!) that environmental NGOs don’t want us to do, is enormous. If we all did exactly what they wanted, we wouldn’t exist. That sometimes seems to be the point.
We could all find ourselves being inundated with letters from a variety of NGOs who are holding placards outside our farms. And how long will it be before those protests expand beyond trying to stop farmers doing things, and start pushing them to do other things? Rewilding, anyone?
The level of entitlement amongst some environmentalists to dictate what farmers should be doing, how they should be doing it and when they should be doing it is very clear to see on social media. This next step into trying to actively enforce it in the absence of the obviously desired legal avenues should rightly be seen as worrying.
I don’t accept that any set of circumstances justifies this behavior from environmental NGOs. They have every right to want whatever they want. They have every right to pursue legal avenues and seek to create new avenues through proper channels. As we have the right to work against that.
But they have no right to harass and protest individuals acting lawfully on their own property. If we accept a practice, it becomes accepted practice. And then we all become potential targets for these kinds of campaigns.