Indian police have raided the homes and offices of high-profile Indian climate activists, on the orders of the government’s Enforcement Directorate, accusing them of jeopardising India’s energy security by campaigning against fossil fuels.
The Delhi home and offices of Harjeet Singh and his partner Jyoti Awasthi, who are co-founders of Satat Sampada Private Limited (SSPL) and Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, were searched on Monday in an operation that led to Singh’s arrest, according to a press release by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
A statement issued on Wednesday by Satat Sampada, which promotes organic farming, sustainable development, climate action and environmental friendly solutions, said Singh had been granted bail on Tuesday by the District Court of Ghaziabad “on the merits of the case”.
The Hindustan Times reported, based on conversations with anonymous officials, that the ED had also searched the home of Sanjay Vashisht, director of Climate Action Network South Asia.
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While the ED has not publicly announced its raid on Vashisht’s residence, it said that Satat Sampada was investigated on suspicion of illegally using around $667,000 in funding from outside India “to promote the agenda of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FF-NPT) within India”.
Singh’s social media profiles state that he is a strategic advisor to the FFNPT Initiative. It is a non-governmental campaign that advocates for a “concrete, binding plan to end the expansion of new coal, oil and gas projects and manage a global transition away from fossil fuels”. Eighteen countries – mainly small islands – have so far backed the idea, along with 145 cities and subnational governments including India’s Kolkata.
India’s ED said on the FFNPT that while “presented as a climate initiative, its adoption could expose India to legal challenges in international forums like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and severely compromise the nation’s energy security and economic development”.
The FFNPT Initiative declined to comment on the reports of Singh’s arrest.
In the statement issued by Satat Sampada on their behalf, Singh and Aswathi, who serves as its CEO, highlighted media reports about the raid and arrest, saying: “We categorically state that the allegations being reported are baseless, biased, and misleading.”
Warning of further crackdown
The Hindustan Times cited an anonymous ED official saying: “We received intelligence around the COP30 [climate summit] that some climate activists were campaigning against fossil fuels at the behest of some foreign organizations…This is when we decided to look at [Singh’s] foreign funding”. Another officer added that “similar activists or organisations whose climate campaigns may be inimical to India’s energy security are under the scanner”.
The ED said it suspected that Satat Sampada had received money from campaign groups like Climate Action Network and Stand.Earth, which in turn had received funds from “prior reference category” NGOs like Rockefeller Philanthrophy Advisors. Indian individuals and organisations are supposed to obtain permission from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs to receive funds from foreign donor agencies included in this “prior reference category”.
The ED’s statement did not mention finding any evidence in the search that Satat Sampada breached this requirements. But it said that bottles of liquor were discovered at Singh’s home which were “beyond the permissible limits”.
Singh was arrested on suspicion of breaching excise laws for the state of Uttar Pradesh. The ED’s statement and the Hindustan Times do not state that Awasthi and Vashisht were arrested.
Singh and Aswathi said in their statement that, during the ED search, “we fully cooperated and provided all relevant information and documentary evidence. We remain willing to extend complete cooperation and furnish any further information required by the competent authorities.”
“We urge media organisations to report responsibly and avoid speculation. We reiterate our faith in due process and the rule of law,” they added.
Climate Action Network International and its South Asia branch have been contacted for comment.
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Climate justice advocate
Singh is a veteran international climate campaigner who has been particularly vocal on the responsibility of rich countries with historically high emissions to provide finance to help developing nations like India cut their emissions, adapt to climate change and deal with the loss and damage caused by global warming.
At COP30, Singh praised the Indian government for turning the “pressure back on wealthy nations, making it clear that the path to 1.5C requires the Global North to reach net zero far earlier than current target dates and finally deliver the trillions in finance owed”.
In 2020, India passed the Indian Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill which restricted foreign funding for Indian civil society groups. A December 2025 research paper in environmental politics pointed to this as an example of a growing trend among governments to repress climate activists by restricting funding.
In 2021, the Indian government arrested young climate activist Disha Ravi on suspicion of sedition for supporting protests by farmers against government policies. Nearly five years later, she remains on bail with conditions preventing her from travelling abroad.
India has yet to publish its latest national climate action plan, which it was due to submit to the United Nations climate body in 2025 along with other countries, around 70 of which have yet to do so.
The post Indian law enforcement targets climate activists accused of opposing fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
Indian law enforcement targets climate activists accused of opposing fossil fuels
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines