This book focuses on the policing and social control of eco-justice movements during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as on activist practices of resistance in the same period. First identified in China in December 2019, the extremely contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus quickly spread worldwide, causing over 6 million deaths at the time of writing (WHO, 2022). Since then, and for at least three consecutive years, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives in many different ways. For example, during the pandemic's first year and in periods with reported increased infection rates, children could not go to school, old people in elderly homes could not see their loved ones, families based in different countries could not reunite and many workers had to adjust to remote modes of working (at least the most fortunate ones who could do so). In addition, social gatherings were limited or even banned by many governments all over the world, with the implication that the right to protest was also often seriously curtailed in the interest of public health.

Since the first year of the pandemic, our knowledge of the virus certainly improved and led to the production of vaccines, which have been administered to billions of people worldwide. With higher levels of immunization reached among the population and decreasing infection rates, social life has slowly gone back to what it was before. In Europe right now, people who wish to organize a public protest can perfectly do so following the standard procedures that, in most cases, were in force before the pandemic began. This has not always been the case during the pandemic (and, for that matter, may not be in the future should other outbreaks occur or infection rates reach sky-high levels). Indeed, strict regulations affecting the right to protest were introduced in many European countries at several points in time to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, including during the winter of 2020– 21, which is the time frame considered in this study. Regulations impinging on the right to protest often included temporary protest bans, caps on the number of people able to lawfully protest and requirements to maintain social distance or wear a mask during protests.