Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Ruth Chambers Senior Fellow at Green Alliance. Today we're going to be talking about our environmental rights,

why they matter and how they are under growing threat. First, I talk to Chris

on the direction of travel on environmental rights and why this is concerning. Following this, I speak

with Carol and Katie to find out what went on at a much anticipated international meeting that took

place last week in Geneva.

So I'm delighted to be joined today by Chris Packham, naturalist TV presenter and campaigner, amongst many other things.

And today we're going to be talking about the right to peacefully protest, especially on the environment.

Now, the UK has a tradition and respect for peaceful protest and non-violent civil disobedience, and until a few years ago,

it was virtually unheard of for peaceful activists convicted of protest-related offences

to receive custodial sentences, for example. But this has all changed

recently. So to start with Chris, could you say a little bit about why the right to protest

peacefully matters to you? Well, I think it matters to me at a simple sort of democratic judicial level. I mean, as a citizen of the UK, I believe

that we were living in at least that the ruins of a crumbling democracy and that we should hang on

as long as possible for our right to be able to protest. As you say, we have a rich tradition in the UK of either protesting ourselves or upholding and celebrating the protests of others across the world.

And where we see oppression in other parts of the world, we've always railed against it.

And we've seen this as one of our fundamental freedoms, the right to exercise our voice in a peaceful, non-violent way,

to ask for positive change. And we've seen it paying dividends over the years. And there were

many examples cited. But it doesn't always have to be at the national level. It doesn't have to

be at the celebrity protest level of the suffragettes,

etc. People within their communities, within their workplaces, within their schools and homes,

have protested and seen advancement as a result of that. So it's tragic in a time of climate

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