Harm to Knowledge: Criminalising Environmental Movements Speaking Up Against Megaprojects

Abstract

The opposition of environmental movements to large-scale and highly impacting infrastructures is frequently ignored—often even silenced and criminalised. This opposition is frequently grounded on collective, situated, and technical knowledge helping activists to articulate the reasons against megaprojects and to expose the environmental harms caused. Di Ronco and Chiaramonte address the harms identified by two high-profile environmental movements in Italy, which fight against the Turin-Lyon high-speed railway (TAV) and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). The chapter is based on extensive research involving ethnographic fieldwork in the Susa Valley and the Salento Province and a virtual ethnography of the #NOTAP protest on Twitter. The authors analyse the identified harms through the comprehensive concept of ‘harm to knowledge’ and argue for the need to expand the scope of environmental restorative justice (ERJ).