In the United States, a ruling threatens to have dire consequences for one of the world’s best-known environmental organizations. A North Dakota court has ruled that Greenpeace will have to pay $345 million to the energy company Energy Transfer, the company that built the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.
The decision comes at the end of a lengthy legal battle related to protests against the project and could put the organization in serious trouble in the United States, where Greenpeace operates through a foundation funded through private donations.
The litigation stems from mobilizations between 2016 and 2017 that led thousands of activists, indigenous communities, and environmental organizations to oppose the pipeline’s construction. According to the company, Greenpeace helped spread accusations and campaigns that damaged the company’s reputation and interfered with its economic activities. Greenpeace retorts by claiming that it participated in indigenous peoples’ demonstrations but in a marginal role and, as has always been the case in its history, in a nonviolent manner.
The Dakota Access Pipeline Node
At the center of the affair is the Dakota Access Pipeline, an approximately 1,800-kilometer-long pipeline designed to transport hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois. From the beginning, the project was met with strong opposition, especially from the Sioux tribes of the Standing Rock reservation. Indigenous communities denounced the risk that the infrastructure could contaminate water tables and threaten territories considered sacred.
Protests against the pipeline have become one of the largest environmental movements in the United States in recent years, involving tens of thousands of people and hundreds of native tribes. Greenpeace has supported the mobilizations and demands of local communities, but has always rejected accusations that it directly orchestrated or led the protests.
In the course of the trial, a jury initially determined a $667 million settlement in favor of Energy Transfer. Later, however, the judge in the case reconsidered the verdict, finding that some items of damages were excessive or duplicative. Therefore, the figure was almost halved and finally set at $345 million. This is still a huge amount for a nonprofit organization and potentially devastating to Greenpeace’s operations in the United States. Greenpeace will appeal to the Supreme Court, but if the conviction becomes enforceable it will fail.
The announced appeal and the fear of precedent
Greenpeace has already announced that it will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that the trial represents an attempt to economically target the environmental movement and discourage protests against fossil fuel projects. According to several observers, the case could become an important precedent in the relationship between large energy companies and civil society organizations. The fear expressed by many NGOs is that lawsuits of this kind could turn into a tool to put pressure on activists and associations that challenge industrial works considered harmful to the environment.
Whatever the outcome of the appeals, the case nonetheless marks a delicate step: the conflict between the fossil industry and environmental movements is no longer played out only on construction sites or in public squares, but increasingly in courtrooms.
