In the previous section, we saw that EHRDs play a crucial role in preserving our planet and future. Despite this, they face numerous risks. There are multiple examples of environmental defenders being subjected to all kinds of violence, from threats to assassination and disappearance, and a wide array of reprisals.
EHRDs face lawsuits, arrests, and harsh criminal charges. States and corporations increasingly use criminal laws — including charges like land occupation, trespassing, conspiracy, or even terrorism — to target activists. This includes Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, also known as SLAPP suits. These are designed to drain individuals or organisations' time and resources through lengthy legal procedures, often with the backing of fossil fuel interests, in order and silence defenders and deter them from taking action.
When EHRDs exercise their right of peaceful assembly to demand climate action, they can be met with disproportionate force, surveillance, detention, and administrative penalties, even though such actions are recognised internationally as legitimate expressions of their human rights.
States and other powerful actors often label environmental defenders negatively — as 'anti-development', 'terrorists', or 'traitors' — fuelling discrimination, hate speech, and misinformation that undermines their credibility and increases risk.
EHRDs can face assassinations, harassment, disappearances, forced displacement, sexual violence and other attacks. These physical dangers are compounded by mental health impacts like stress, burnout, and anxiety — particularly for youth and children involved in climate and environmental activism.
Defenders who engage with UN mechanisms — for example, by reporting abuses or participating in forums — risk reprisals, including threats, intimidation, travel bans, and investigations for their international advocacy.
These risks will be heightened by factors such as identity, race, and socioeconomic status. We will explore this further in Section 1.6 Intersectionality - Why does your identity matter in environmental advocacy?
The underlying causes behind increased vulnerability
Environmental human rights defenders face heightened and overlapping risks due to different factors, including structural power imbalances and corruption. As their work often challenges powerful State and corporate interests behind major development, extractive, or tourism projects, they become exposed to abuses by both State and non-State actors.
Violence has been thoroughly documented outside of legal systems. Hence, even if there are no clear perpetrators, there are repeated drivers for violence:
State actors: State authorities — including police, security forces, and the military — can use tactics like direct aggression, forced evictions, arbitrary detentions, and excessive use of force that result in injuries or even death.
Parliamentarians also play a role in enabling the criminalisation of environmental human rights defenders, either through laws they promote and adopt, or through those they fail to change. For instance, accepting vague or overly broad legislation, increasing penalties for protests or other public-facing activism, or prioritising development and extractive interests without strong human rights safeguards or consultation: All of these are strong enablers for abuses — including the use of criminal law to deter EHRDs from carrying out their activities.
Additionally, a lack of independence and impartiality in the judicial system can open the door to abuses, including criminalisation, dismissal of complaints, and denunciations.
Furthermore, authorities can also shape the public perception of defenders, a power that has been abused through efforts to stigmatise them as 'terrorists', 'anti-development', and to fuel other dangerous misconceptions.
Non-State actors: These include members of organised crime, armed groups, gangs, and paramilitary groups. On occasion, they provide services to other actors or target EHRDs when their work collides with their activities.
Other non-State actors that have been involved in attacks against EHRDs include businesses from the extractive sector - mining, large agribusiness or even 'green energy' companies - that contravene corporate human rights regulations and carry out abusive practices against communities and the environment by prioritising profit. Some documented abusive practices include contracting private security companies to disrupt protests, skewing community deliberation processes by bribing individuals, dividing communities, and filing civil and criminal lawsuits to criminalise EHRDs, including SLAPP suits.
In 2016–2017, an Australian mining firm, Mineral Commodities Ltd and its South African subsidiary, Mineral Sands Resources sued a group of environmental activists and public interest lawyers in South Africa for defamation after the activists publicly criticised the company’s mining operations. The lawsuits sought over R14 million ($852,000) in damages — a large amount meant to tie up the defendants in expensive legal battles.
The targeted activists included community campaigners and environmental lawyers who had spoken at public events, lectures, and with the media about environmental harm and community rights. Instead of dismissing the claims on their face, the defendants argued that the lawsuits were SLAPPs because they were designed to intimidate and silence critics rather than address any genuine legal harm. In February 2021, the Western Cape High Court agreed that the case amounted to a SLAPP and ruled the defamation suits were an abuse of the court process, noting corporations should not use litigation to silence citizens and activists. Later, parts of the wider case were partly settled out of court and some aspects went up to South Africa’s Constitutional Court, which confirmed that a SLAPP defence exists under South African law and provided guidance on how it can be used.
The connections between corporations and States have been documented. These relations are marked by power imbalances, corruption, and the role that paramilitaries and organised crime play in the increasingly risky environment for environmental human rights defenders - see the Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment, on businesses).
Often, the anonymity of attacks — especially when they are online — make it more difficult for EHRDs to access justice. Impunity remains the norm as perpetrators are rarely investigated, judged, or sanctioned.
TIP! It is essential to document and track these attacks, including who is behind them, because they can open avenues for future advocacy and protection.
The module cannot address all the security aspects that EHRDs should take into account, nor can it address safety plans and strategies. Please download this list of resources to access more security and protections tools and training.
