Climate protests have ranged from worldwide school strikes involving more than a million young people to highly disruptive UK campaigns that generated thousands of arrests, major policing operations and court cases. The figures below cover global mobilization in 2019–2021 and UK activity from 2019 through March 2025, with dates and geography stated for each measure.
Contents
- Global participation and reach
- London arrests by group and year
- Just Stop Oil: arrests and policing
- Conditions placed on UK processions
- Large actions and operational impact
- Arrests, prosecutions and court outcomes
Global participation and reach
The largest figures in this set describe the international climate strikes of 2019. The World Water Development Report 2020 recorded around 1.4 million students and young adults taking part in the March 2019 Global Youth Climate Strike across more than 120 countries. A later UN account, Young people are changing the world, put participation at about 1.6 million young people in 125 countries during the 2019 Global Climate Strike.
The UN country office in Brazil described the March 2019 action as mobilizing thousands of young people across 123 countries. These accounts use different descriptions and country counts, so they should be read as reported estimates for the events and sources named, not as one independently reconciled total.
The September 2019 mobilization around the UN Climate Action Summit extended the reach further: the World Water Development Report 2020 said students and adults joined climate strikes in more than 150 countries. The scale was also visible in organized youth networks. The UN’s climate-action highlights reported that a Fridays for Future European summit brought together more than 450 young climate-strike activists from 38 countries in 2019.
The same source reported that the 2021 UN Youth4Climate event in Milan brought together almost 400 activists aged 15 to 29 from 186 countries. That is a participation count for an event, not a headcount for a street demonstration, but it shows the geographic breadth of climate organizing beyond the headline strike estimates.
London arrests by group and year
London records show how protest activity and policing varied by organization and period. The London Assembly’s data recorded 694 Extinction Rebellion arrests in 2020, 544 in 2021 and 253 in 2022. From 1 January through 16 June 2023, the same series recorded 0 Extinction Rebellion arrests.
Other listed groups contributed different totals. London recorded 63 HS2 Rebellion arrests in 2021 and 46 Animal Rebellion arrests in 2022. Animal Rebellion recorded 5 arrests from 1 January through 16 June 2023. Just Stop Oil recorded 866 London arrests in 2022 and 85 from 1 January through 16 June 2023.
The London totals across the listed climate groups were 694 arrests in 2020, 607 in 2021, 1,165 in 2022 and 90 from 1 January through 16 June 2023. These are London figures for the groups included in that source and should not be treated as totals for all climate protest arrests in the UK.
| Measurement period | London arrests across listed groups | Notable group figures in the same source |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 694 | Extinction Rebellion: 694 |
| 2021 | 607 | Extinction Rebellion: 544; HS2 Rebellion: 63 |
| 2022 | 1,165 | Extinction Rebellion: 253; Animal Rebellion: 46; Just Stop Oil: 866 |
| 1 Jan–16 Jun 2023 | 90 | Extinction Rebellion: 0; Animal Rebellion: 5; Just Stop Oil: 85 |
Just Stop Oil: arrests and policing
Just Stop Oil produced some of the most substantial policing figures in the supplied UK record. The UK government’s Public Order Bill factsheet said the Metropolitan Police made more than 750 arrests connected with Just Stop Oil protests between 1 October and 14 December 2022. Policing those protests cost more than £7.5 million over the same period and used 13,600 officer shifts.
The same factsheet reported that the total cost of policing Just Stop Oil protests had exceeded £14.5 million by August 2023. That later figure covers a broader period than the October–December 2022 cost and should not be combined with it as though the amounts were separate campaigns.
A written parliamentary answer said police reported about 2,000 people arrested across 15 forces in connection with Just Stop Oil protests during 2022. Of those, 31 people were arrested in advance of protests and had equipment seized. The multi-force figure and the London-only figures measure different geographies.
In London, the Metropolitan Police recorded 271 arrests during 91 consecutive days of Just Stop Oil slow marches in May–July 2023. By 23 August 2023, 174 people from that arrest group had been charged with breaching conditions, while a further 82 remained on bail. The figures describe case status on that date, not final convictions.
The Metropolitan Police also reported that 78 marches took place across London during the first four weeks of the 2023 slow-march campaign, from 24 April to 22 May. Police imposed conditions on 60 of those 78 marches because they judged serious disruption was occurring. The police account, 11,000 officer shifts lost to policing Just Stop Oil protests, provides the operational context for that period.
Conditions placed on UK processions
The government’s Police protest powers, June 2022 to March 2025 statistics recorded police conditions on 411 environment-themed processions in England and Wales between 28 June 2022 and 31 March 2025. Environment was the theme for 411 of the 464 processions with a known theme. The other recorded themes were international, with 43 processions; anti-fascism, with 6; anti-government, with 4; and cultural nationalism, with 2. One conditioned procession had no applicable theme in the published categories.
The same statistics record the reasons or triggers associated with conditioned processions. Serious disruption appeared on 431 processions, disorder on 24, damage on 12, intimidation on 2, and noise potentially disrupting an organisation on 2. These categories can overlap, so they are not a set of mutually exclusive totals.
Conditions most often concerned movement. Location or route conditions were applied to 456 conditioned processions. Duration conditions were applied to 19, and other conditions to 13. The counts refer to conditions and triggers recorded in the published statistics for the stated period; they do not by themselves establish that every procession resulted in an arrest or prosecution.
Large actions and operational impact
Climate protests have also been measured through crowd size, officer time and public-service disruption. The NPCC Just Stop Oil Group Assessment described Extinction Rebellion’s Big One as a four-day London event in April 2023 with up to 60,000 supporters. “Up to” indicates a maximum reported scale rather than a verified average attendance.
The government’s Public Order Bill factsheet reported that Extinction Rebellion’s April and October 2019 London protests together cost £37 million to police. The October 2019 protest alone required more than 418,000 police officer hours. The same factsheet said sustained protest activity at some HS2 sites was estimated to have cost up to £146 million in October 2022. This is an estimate for the specified sites and period, not a general cost for all climate protests.
A government announcement, Industry takes action to deter oil protests, said police forces had reported more than 600 arrests since climate-linked oil protests began, measured on 15 April 2022. Because that statement uses a start point and measurement date rather than a complete calendar year, it should be read as a cumulative reported figure at that time.
Arrests, prosecutions and court outcomes
The available figures also show the movement from protest action to legal proceedings. The NPCC assessment recorded a Just Stop Oil slow walk in Liverpool in September 2023 that produced 7 arrests. It did not make those arrests a measure of the campaign’s total UK activity.
On 24 July 2024, the Metropolitan Police intercepted two Just Stop Oil groups near Heathrow Airport. The groups consisted of 7 Just Stop Oil members who were immediately arrested, and 2 key organisers were also arrested. The action was assessed in court as potentially affecting nearly 260,000 passengers that day if successful. That passenger number is a stated potential impact, not a count of people actually affected.
The Heathrow plot case reached sentencing in March 2025. Nine Just Stop Oil protesters were sentenced after the case; 8 members were found guilty and a ninth had pleaded guilty during January–March 2025. The legal outcome therefore includes both convictions after trial and a guilty plea.
Taken together, these climate protest statistics describe several different dimensions: international participation, city-level arrests, multi-force arrest reporting, police conditions, officer time, financial cost and court outcomes. Each figure is tied to its own source, geography and measurement period, which matters when comparing a global strike estimate with a London arrest record or a UK-wide policing assessment.