Strategies and tactics to curb the fossil fuel industry

Many activist groups believe there is a clear and urgent moral imperative to stop the companies most responsible for climate breakdown from making the crisis worse. More and more campaigners, communities and organisations are recognising that meaningful change means targeting the industry itself. Not the individual consumer, not the abstract public, but the companies digging and drilling, the banks backing them, and the systems that allow them to carry on.

Our new report - Strategies and Tactics to Curb the Fossil Fuel Industry - maps current efforts to constrain fossil fuel expansion, and identifies what’s working. The key takeaway: there are multiple effective routes into this fight and the best outcomes often come when those routes converge.

Figure: Taking action against fossil fuels - a strategy map, by 'Not that Peter Evans'

Sixteen tactics, one shared target

From frontline blockades to courtroom battles, the resistance to fossil fuels is made up of many different tactics. Our report identifies 16 of them, including consumer boycotts, public shaming, shareholder action, litigation, divestment, and cultural interventions.

Some are loud and disruptive; others are technical, slow-moving and behind the scenes. But all aim to exert pressure - financial, legal, social or reputational - on the fossil fuel industry and its enablers. The diversity of these tactics is a strength. It means people with very different skills, values and risk profiles can all take part. You don’t need to be willing to get arrested. You might be a lawyer, an artist, a data analyst, a union organiser, a journalist, or a trustee. There’s a place for you in this work.

Three pressure points

Though the tactics currently being adopted are diverse, they fall into one of three overarching approaches:

1. Squeezing the money – make fossil fuel expansion less profitable by targeting finance, insurance and investment.

2. Reducing social licence – undermine the industry's legitimacy and cultural acceptance.

3. Protecting and enforcing – use the law and political mechanisms to constrain the industry and defend those who challenge it.
   

These strategies don’t compete, they reinforce one another. The biggest wins often come when multiple tactics are used in combination, forcing action from several directions at once. In the report we also highlight two particularly promising approaches:

1. Insurance: the hypocrisy and the leverage

© Eduardo Pérez Vidal for Ekō – licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ One of the most effective and underused pressure points is the insurance industry. Fossil fuel infrastructure can’t be built or operated without insurance. Projects without coverage can’t get permits or finance. But insurers are also deeply exposed to climate risk. They are already cancelling policies in wildfire-prone areas, raising premiums in flood zones, and warning of the looming uninsurability of large parts of the world.

This makes their continued support for fossil fuel expansion especially egregious. On one hand, they cast themselves as society’s risk managers. On the other, they insure the very projects fuelling the risks they’re pulling back from. Insuring a new oil field while withdrawing home insurance from a wildfire-hit region is not just inconsistent, it’s dangerous. The illogic is added to by the fact that for most insurers, fossil fuel business accounts for less than 2% of their revenue - so they don’t even need it. And the reputational and financial risks are growing at pace.

Campaigners are highlighting the contradiction and hypocrisy of fossil fuel insurance. And they’ve had some wins: over 40 insurers have ruled out coverage for Australia’s Adani coal mine. Many European firms - including Zurich, AXA and Allianz - have withdrawn from new coal and are now beginning to exit oil and gas. The insurance industry is a strategic choke point. When it moves, projects collapse. It’s a high-leverage, high-impact focus for campaigners and funders alike.

2. Movements win together: lessons from the anti-fracking fight
   

The English anti-fracking campaign, active from around 2011 to 2019, is a powerful case study in strategic coordination. What began as small-scale local resistance grew into a national movement that helped secure a government moratorium on fracking.

The strength of the campaign lay in its breadth. Local residents joined forces with national NGOs, radical activists, scientists, lawyers, artists and clergy. The “anti-fracking nanas” stood on the frontlines with humour and conviction. Legal teams challenged drilling permits. Cultural figures added visibility. Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth brought media and research capacity. Together, they formed a coalition able to challenge the industry at every level.

Importantly, the campaign avoided infighting by building trust and shared purpose. National groups supported, rather than directed, local ones. Resources were shared. Victory was collective. When fracking was briefly reintroduced in 2022, the campaign was able to remobilise quickly thanks to the deep networks and infrastructure it had built.

The lesson is not just that collaboration makes campaigning more enjoyable, it’s that it works. Movements don’t need to be uniform, but they do need to be aligned.

Where next?

Fossil fuel companies continue to plan new drilling. They are lobbying against climate regulation, misleading the public, and resisting transition, backed by powerful allies, deep pockets and political support.

But their legitimacy is weakening. Financial institutions are walking away. Public opinion is against them. And civil society is getting sharper. The tactics in this report - from litigation to insurance pressure, from public shaming to rights of nature laws  - are already making an impact.

For campaigners, the task is to choose your contribution and get going. Whether you’re disrupting operations, filing legal challenges, crafting communications, or building local power, there is a place for your skills. The most effective campaigns are those that coordinate across roles, share intelligence, and make each other stronger.

For funders, the message is to invest where it counts. That means targeting pressure points like insurance, regulation and finance, but also backing the infrastructure that holds movements together. Fund the connective tissue. Fund the legal support, the convenings, the translation, the bail funds, the coordination. Fund the work that isn’t flashy but makes everything else possible.

Read the full report here

Cathy Rogers, 

Senior Researcher, Social Change Lab

Special thanks to Not That Peter Evans for producing all of the illustrations for this report.​​​

Cover photo at the top by Andrew Dykes, supplied by Extinction Rebellion — licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/