Tempers boil over in France’s climate change battle

The war of words between climate-change activists and drought-hit farmers intent on protecting their livelihoods has taken a new turn in France. Supporters of Bassines Non Merci, a group opposed to the spread of massive irrigation ponds built by agricultural coops to provide their members with water during the summer months, have gone on the offensive. 

As many as 5,000 protesters, most of them city dwellers in their late-teens and twenties, descended last Saturday on the village of Sainte-Solines, between La Rochelle and Poitiers, in the department of Deux-Sevres, intent on dismantling a system of pipes and pumps used to draw water from deep underground that is then stored in a network of specially constructed reservoirs.

Green lobbyists maintain that the natural water table is being disrupted on a massive scale, leading to a drying out of the landscape and worsening drought in surrounding towns and villages. Farmers and winegrowers say they have no alternative. If they don’t harvest water in the winter, they won’t have the volume they need for the wheat and vines that have been grown in the region for centuries. 

Some 1,500 gendarmes were deployed to maintain order as the protesters were confronted by farmers and their allies, mainly from the local area. Some 60 officers were hurt in the ensuing affray, along with an unknown number of demonstrators.  

The activists say they will be back and that their actions will spread to other places across the country where similar installations are coming on stream. 

Water used to be abundant in most of France. There were, of course, years, particularly in the deep south, that were affected by drought, but on nothing like the scale experienced in the long summer just gone, during which temperatures regularly exceeded 35 degrees celsius (95 degrees fahrenheit) and in some instances went as high as 42 degrees. Most of France received little or no rainfall between May and September this year, and even now, in the first week of November, the nation as a whole remains unseasonably warm. 

According to Météo France, the national weather service, the summer of 2022 was the hottest and driest ever recorded, with an impact extending in many cases well into late October. Mains water could not be guaranteed in the worst-affected areas. In some cases, villages whose reservoirs had totally dried up had to be supplied by tankers. More generally, swimming pools were shut and car washes switched off. Children and the elderly were told to, as far as possible, remain indoors during the most intense hours of sunlight. 

One measure of the change is the spread of the feared tiger mosquito, a tiny, almost invisible insect, with its origins in North and West Africa, that makes no sound and is active in the daytime as well as at night. Twenty years ago, it was confined to the Mediterranean coast. Today, its habitat has reached as far north as Orléans, just a hundred miles south of Paris. 

A dangerous pest, the tiger mosquito not only bites, causing painful lumps and blisters, it also spreads disease. Up to October 25, 217 cases of dengue fever were reported in the region of Marseille, 65 of which were contracted locally, and doctors are warning that West Nile Disease might also soon enter the equation. Only an extended period of cold weather, preferably marked by heavy frosts, can redress the balance, and so far there is no sign of that. 

France is not unique in all of this. In Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the summer of 2022 was in many parts almost literally unbearable. Much of southern England was also badly affected. To make matters worse, more of the same is predicted for the years ahead. Not every summer, we are assured, will be as bad as the one just gone, but there will certainly be others like it over the course of the next ten years. The simple truth is that Europe is drying out. 

When Rishi Sunak said last week that he was too preoccupied with sorting out the Autumn Statement to make time for the COP 27 summit that (with a due sense of irony)  opens next week in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, he was, in effect, saying that action to combat climate change might just have to be put on hold while he and his colleagues get on with more pressing matters. 

The conviction among those who regard climate change as the most pressing issue, including, as it happens, King Charles and Boris Johnson, was what changed his mind at almost the last minute, causing critics to lament not only his political misjudgment, but his equivocation. President Biden will be there, as will the heads of government of most Western nations.  France will be represented not only by the President himself, but by several of his ministers. To further underline his commitment, Macron will convene a special Leaders Event at the conference, dedicated to Africa, alongside the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and the President of the African Union, Macky Sall. 

At least the British contingent will not now be spearheaded by the environment secretary, Therese Coffey, appointed just last week and not previously noted for her interest in the subject. It is likely, however, that she will remain on after Sunak has paid his dues and set off for home. Alok Sharma MP, who presided over last year’s COP 26 in Glasgow, will also be there. He was demoted last week and no longer attends Cabinet.