Filipino suing TotalEnergies testifies to protect French scientists from fossil fuel giant
Filipino climate survivor defends activists in French court amid fight against fossil fuel giant
The Filipino plaintiff in the transnational criminal climate lawsuit against oil company TotalEnergies testified in a French court on Friday in the defense of activist scientists being sued for their climate protests against the same company.(1)
Frank Nicol Melgar Marba, the teacher and public servant from storm-vulnerable Dinagat Islands—who is also the sole Filipino plaintiff in a transnational climate lawsuit filed against TotalEnergies(2)—spoke on Friday before the Le Havre Judicial Court, where twelve are undergoing trial following their action to protest a TotalEnergies LNG terminal put into service in the French port city.
“Why are climate activists and scientists here being accused of crimes? This is beyond reason,” said Marba, who introduced himself as a climate survivor who is still vulnerable to future impacts of climate change, and who is well aware that typhoons are getting more intense and more frequent every year.
“In the span of one month, six typhoons devastated my country. That is absolutely not normal or natural,” he said “I remember my grandparents saying that they only experience one major typhoon every thirty years or so.” In contrast, and because of the worsening climate crisis, he has personally experienced three, including Rai [Odette] which made landfall in the Philippines in 2021, nearly killing him and his grandmother.
As a result of this experience Marba joined seven plaintiffs from around the world in a lawsuit led by the Bloom Association(3) against TotalEnergies’ board of directors and main shareholders “for deliberately endangering the lives of others, involuntary manslaughter, neglecting to address a disaster, and damaging biodiversity.”
“It should be criminal for fossil fuel companies to drill for more oil and gas. They knew fifty years before that doing so will cause global warming and lead to climate impacts,” Marba said, citing reports and invoking scientific consensus that fossil fuel companies hold the lion’s share in historical global greenhouse gas emissions that are supercharging the climate crisis. “How is it possible that with all this knowledge, with all these stories from climate victims, oil and gas companies are still allowed to proceed with new fossil fuel projects?”
The scientists on trial are being charged for “obstruction of traffic.” They blocked the Ecluse François 1er—a famous lock (canal gate) built to control the movement of ships in and out of the port of Le Havre—in order to denounce the development of a new LNG terminal by TotalEnergies, which they say will further lock France into the overconsumption of fossil fuels.
“Frank, a climate survivor from one of the most vulnerable countries in the world, is here to stand up for climate activists around the world. He makes me proud to be a Filipino,” said Virginia Benosa-Llorin, Greenpeace Philippines Senior Climate Justice Campaigner. “It is unprecedented that a climate survivor from the Global South will testify in a French trial in support of activists from a developed nation.”
“Frank doesn’t just provide much needed perspective of the climate crisis from one of the most vulnerable nations in the world,” she said, “he also shows us how to be courageous for the climate, even when we’re up against the rich and influential carbon majors.”
Virginia Benosa-Llorin said that Marba deserves not only the support of Filipinos everywhere, but the support of his government, in the form of policies—and legal action—grounded in climate justice.“Early this week we saw the Philippine government stand up for climate justice in the Hague in its oral argument in the ICJ.(4) We urge the Philippine government to translate this to policies and action back home. We are calling on President Marcos Jr. to certify the Climate Accountability (CLIMA) Bill as urgent. A strong CLIMA bill,(5) anchored in climate justice, will create local mechanisms for us to do what Frank is doing in France right now: to take climate polluters to court and hold them accountable.”
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