For EELV, political ecology has become a convenient “scapegoat”

A demonstration led by the collective Bines non merci, the movement of the Uprisings of the Earth and the Peasant Confederation to protest against the construction of a new water reserve for agricultural irrigation, in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), on March 25, 2023. THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP

“Ecoterrorists”, supporters of a “punitive” ecology, guilty of “agribashing”: here are the environmentalists at the center of a new trial. They are no longer the Amish illuminated denounced, in 2020, by Emmanuel Macron, but now those close to movements targeted by anti-terrorist forces. At the announcement of the dissolution of the Uprisings of the Earth, Wednesday, June 21, and in the wake numerous searchesincluding one targeting a member of Europe Ecologie-les Verts (EELV), party officials consider themselves to have become scapegoats.

“We are not dissolved yet. We take the opportunity to hold press conferences until the last moment”, launched, Tuesday, from the headquarters of the party, the number one of the Greens, Marine Tondelier. For the latter, of course, “there is a climate of criminalization of environmental movements”. “We can agree or not with these actions of civil disobedience, but we must know how to keep reason in the proportions of repression”she added.

Pushed back into a political impe, EELV tries to organize its defense somehow. Without tempering its historic, anti-nuclear, pioneering message on the health dangers of intensive agriculture, and at the forefront of social struggles. An increasingly dangerous exercise.

Reconciliation with the countryside

Since his election as head of the Greens in December 2022, Mme Tondelier, municipal councilor of Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais), accustomed to confrontation with the far right, holds her line. On the one hand, to maintain the link with the radical ecologists who, like the Uprisings of the Earth, have become powerful ferments of mobilization in the youth. On the other, to broaden the base of the party, by speaking to an audience that goes beyond it. Two projects that fall under the antithesis on paper.

Through her career, Marine Tondelier is better equipped than others to make the synthesis. “I come from a family of farmers, when I became green, my grandfather said to me: “What did I do to you?” », remembers the national secretary. Telling a grower that the pesticides he uses are carcinogenic, primarily for himself and his loved ones, is politically risky, but that is the route EELV has chosen. Moreover, the national secretary is regularly attacked more or less violently. By farmers during his field visits, in the Lot-et-Garonne by the rural coordination, then again in the Aude on June 13 alongside the deputy for Paris Sandrine Rousseau.

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