Environmental protest in Malta during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This chapter presents and discusses the physical environmental protests that took place in Malta following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which subsequently gained coverage in Malta’s mainstream media. The chapter examines the issues, organizations, coalitions, venues and types of protests in question. It analyses the groups and organizations that instigate the collective actions in question, the events that form the action repertoire, and the ideas that guide the protests.

The study considers networks and the broader context in which movements protest, which in this case concerns the specific characteristics of movement and political activism in Malta as a small European Union member state. The methodology applied for the enquiry is protest event analysis through data collected from Malta’s media.

The main findings of this study are that environmental protests continued to take place despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, that there were broad environmental movement organisation coalitions and networks in the field, and that activism mostly related to localized development issues.