Protest Threats

Protest activity and social unrest can target specific conferences and events or disrupt city operations to the point where conference planners must adjust their plans. The industry currently facing the biggest disruptive threat from protest actions is oil and gas — and, in parallel, the investors that support their projects. There have been dozens of carefully orchestrated disruptions at shareholder meetings and other semiregular gatherings in the industry in recent years. Extinction Rebellion activists have been leading the decentralized environmentalist movement in protesting conferences and meetings where companies that account for large amounts of carbon emissions (mostly oil and gas firms) come together. Such preplanned disruptions generally can be anticipated well in advance and mitigated through various security postures to protect conference attendees and event spaces. While protest movements have rarely caused physical harm to conference venues or attendees, they do pose a reputational risk by attracting negative coverage or overshadowing the substance of any meeting with media coverage of disruptive and publicity-seeking acts.

June 2021: Dozens of Extinction Rebellion activists temporarily blocked access to the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Perth, Australia, which was hosting the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association's annual conference. At least one protester locked herself to the entrance of the venue and swallowed the keys, forcing authorities to spend several hours cutting the lock and removing the barricade.

May 2021: Dozens of local climate activists rallied outside AIG's New York headquarters during the company's annual shareholder meeting to protest the company's practice of insuring and investing in oil and gas companies.
October 2019: Scores of local environmentalists clashed with police as they protested outside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center against the International Mining and Resources Convention.

Beyond temporary disruptions, at times protest activity can make a conference untenable — or an upcoming conference can provide an opportunity for protest organizers to raise their profile and gain negotiating leverage. Major multilateral summits such as the G-20, G-7 or gatherings of regional political leaders almost always attract some form of protest. The World Economic Forum held every year in Davos, Switzerland, specifically chose its secluded Alpine location to allow organizers to better manage the protest threat. But other conference venues do not have the advantage of mountains to block them from angry and disruptive crowds.

November/December 2019: Chilean President Sebastian Pinera canceled an international economic summit and a climate change conference amid nationwide political unrest over the country's Pinochet-era economic and social policies. The city of Santiago was set to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November and the 25th Conference of the Parties, or COP25, had been set for December.

2019: Organizers of dozens of events planned in Hong Kong postponed, canceled or relocated amid monthslong pro-democracy protests that regularly shut down the city center. A major tech industry conference, Rise, announced that it was moving its annual conference from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur. In addition to being concerned about the logistical challenges of holding a major event during the protests, organizers were also wary of getting involved in the politics of the protest, which pitted democratic ideals against the economic incentives of doing business with China.

November-December 2018: Ongoing labor protests targeted the G-20 conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in order to pressure then-President Mauricio Macri to raise wages. Protests disrupted airports servicing the city and shut down the city center for several days.