The 2023 Climate Camp was held from 9-13th August in Pollboy, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim
Why Leitrim?
The 2023 camp took place in Pollboy, Leitrim. We focused on the two extractive industries which threaten to turn Leitrim into a sacrifice zone – conifer forestry plantations and gold-mining. Pollboy is one of the 47 Leitrim townlands currently under threat from prospecting mining licenses issued to Flintridge Resources (Galantas) in May 2022.
The camp in Leitrim acted as a central meeting point of resistance-building on the island of Ireland – connecting communities north and south of the Border. We supported and worked closely with local campaigns, in particular Save Leitrim, which campaigns against the expansion of industrial conifer plantations, Treasure Leitrim, which campaigns against gold mining, and Love Leitrim which continues to work on the threat of fracking, particularly in Northern Ireland.
The people who took part are from a range of campaign groups across the island of Ireland. What connected them is they are communities resisting extractivism – part of the capitalist model that prioritises shareholder profit and endless growth over climate, biodiversity and local communities.
Our aim
Under the slogan, “Communities not shareholders”, hundreds of people have gathered for the family-friendly event at Shanvas Cross, in Pollboy, near Manorhamilton, for workshops, debates, direct action training, practical skill-sharing, music, art and more.
Capitalist model of profit and growth is driving climate breakdown. The climate and biodiversity crises must be tackled through collective action at community level that challenges corporate power and brings about system change.
The camp was also a base for direct action targeting industrial conifer plantations. Local campaigners from Save Leitrim were joined by climate activists from across Ireland in a direct action as they pulled up Sitka spruce saplings from Coillte peatland and demanded, ‘Trees for climate, not for profit’.
Straw Boys in traditional costumes were among 150 people who took part in the direct action targeting industrial conifer plantations and highlighting the need for radical change in Ireland’s forestry policy.
The group, aged 5 to 75, used the uprooted saplings to block drains in the publicly-owned plantation near Manorhamilton, thereby beginning rewetting and restoration of the degraded peatland. They also planted native broadleaf trees on a nearby farm at the site of the Climate Camp.
Forestry Plantations
We demand a sustainable, community-focused model for forestry in Ireland.
We demand the recovery and re-establishment of native Irish forests managed by and for local communities, that benefit wildlife and people, absorb carbon, provide clean water and crucial flood relief, and that are sustainably harvested with a priority on ecosystem and human health.
We oppose the extraction, for profit, of natural resources from the earth, with little or no benefit to the community.
We will uproot hidden colonial assumptions of humans dominating nature, while gently watering the dormant seeds – tenderly planted long ago – of deep connection with the rest of nature.
The Threat of Mining
More than a quarter of all land on both sides of the Border is under prospective licences for extractive mining practices. We must resist the neocolonial governments, who maintain unsustainable economic growth, while poisoning the land and the life that depends on it.
Grassroots groups such as the Mexican Network of Those Affected by Mining have reported on the destruction these companies can conjure, including: “health harms, environmental contamination and destruction, criminalisation of social protest, threats, harassment, smear campaigns, surveillance, arbitrary detentions and the assassination of defenders…”
The Climate Camp aims to be a place where we can turn the trauma of fighting against extractivism into vibrant stories of resistance. A place where shared stories cultivate hope and the motivation to keep resisting. The capitalist system can only hold on to power when we fail to remind ourselves that we are not alone in this struggle.