Sabrina Merolla

Photographer, Multimedia Storyteller, Sinologist (PhD)
    
Save the Trees - Grassroots Communities of Tree protectors in London
Location: London
Nationality: Italian
Biography:             Photographer, multimedia story-teller and sinologist longly living between China and Italy.  Her previous projects have mainly focused on contemporary China and its multifaceted identities and... MORE
Private Story
Save the Trees - Grassroots Communities of Tree protectors in London
Copyright sabrina merolla 2024
Updated Jun 2021
There are more than 420 local environmental campaigns right now in the UK. Astonishing numbers of residents face the same problems in the meantime, as construction companies keep felling hundreds of trees in London and entire woodlands in the countryside.

Since last September, I am following the widespread of grassroots communities of "tree protectors" in London. This is a story mainstream media are not narrating. Nonetheless, it is an essential part of our human history happening right now.

These people's fights are not the glamorous actions of a few naïves. Ordinary citizens are turning into activists to protect their trees. They put a human face on the Climate Crisis, as massive environmental crimes and civil rights abuses have been quietly perpetrated under the cover of the last lockdown and continue, with the tacit assent of the British Government. But the first European country that declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 preaches good and scratches terrible and is growingly subjected to international reprimands for its repeated breaches of the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement.

I am witnessing hundreds of fellings and worrying numbers of unprovoked assaults by bailiffs. They certainly articulate the massive dimensions of a tragedy, a David and Goliath fight. But bearing witness to the story of tree-sitting in London is a privilege as I can unexpectedly observe the blooming of a new eco-communitarianism in the city I choose as my home. Kids, grannies, teenagers, professionals, workers unite to vindicate their civil rights to health, through peaceful demonstrations that aim to raise public awareness and prevent crimes against nature.

Where there were division and alienation, some people unite. Every effort to protect a mature tree gives rise to a whole net of exchanges and informal relations rooted in the enormous amount of time that this pacifist activism - moving among courts, letters, protests, tree protection camps and petitions - requires.