A fair society, where everyone’s dignity is respected, peace prevails, and the natural environment is protected, depends on protecting the courageous individuals, communities, and organizations who stand up against injustice. Environmental Defenders contributes to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through its work on climate justice, environmental human rights defenders, and community empowerment and livelihoods. Across several African countries, individuals, communities, and civil society organizations working to conserve the environment, protect forests, and safeguard biodiversity increasingly face direct threats and hostility that obstruct their work. Poor and marginalized women and groups are hit hardest. Regulatory and administrative measures used to obstruct activists working for gender equality and women’s rights are threatening progress, and many face stigma and backlash from conservative groups that put their personal security and livelihoods at risk.
Why protecting defenders matters for the 2030 Agenda
The Global Sustainable Development Report, released in September 2019, concluded that the current development model is not sustainable. It warned that progress made over the previous two decades could be reversed by growing social inequality and potentially irreversible damage to the environment that sustains human life. The authors argued that a better future is still possible, but only with deep changes in development policies, incentives, and behavior, and they set out goals for collective action by many stakeholders. To make progress toward the 2030 Agenda at the local level, it is essential to support the work of human rights defenders, environmental activists, communities, and their organizations.
Inequalities in access to basic rights, discrimination, and extreme economic inequality are growing and continue to block better and more sustainable livelihoods. Women are disproportionately affected by poverty, violence, discrimination, and limited access to land and resources, and women and girls face multiple, overlapping forms of discrimination that make them the most marginalized group.
Land, hunger, and climate pressures in Africa
Land and natural resource rights are increasingly contested because of environmental stress and degradation, the effects of climate change, population growth, and large-scale land acquisitions. Rising global temperatures are bringing more severe heat waves, heavy rainfall, and frequent, harsh droughts. Securing tenure rights for Indigenous and local community lands is therefore essential for both climate change mitigation and adaptation.
About 90 percent of rural land in Africa is undocumented, leaving it vulnerable to land grabbing and expropriation. This is linked to the continent’s high poverty rates, with about half of the population living on less than $1.25 a day. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), more than 820 million people worldwide were hungry in 2019, and Africa had the highest prevalence of undernourishment, at about 20 percent, as hunger rose in most African subregions. More than 2 billion people worldwide lacked regular access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. In this context, good land governance, intact ecosystems, more efficient and sustainable use of land and water, and peaceful resolution of land and water disputes are crucial. There is also growing evidence that Indigenous peoples and local communities with secure land rights are highly effective guardians of the Earth’s natural resources and play a major role in both adapting to and mitigating climate change.
How Environmental Defenders supports defenders at risk
Environmental Defenders (ED) is playing a key role in this response. We support human rights defenders, activists, and their organizations as they confront threats to their environment, rights, and livelihoods. Since 2019, we have provided security support to at least 1,000 human rights defenders and environmental activists in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We work mainly with women activists, human rights organizations, environmental justice and land rights groups, and journalists.
In Uganda’s Albertine Rift region, we have worked with activists, human rights defenders, and organizations campaigning for human rights, social justice, and environmental protection, including those opposing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and the Tilenga project. We have also supported efforts against land grabbing and deforestation in the Bugoma and Zoka forests. We have provided protection and assistance to activists investigating corruption in land acquisition for EACOP and other major infrastructure projects in the Albertine region, and we have supported journalists reporting on illegal wildlife trade and people defending their communities and land.
In the DRC, we support Indigenous activists and organizations advocating for environmental and land rights and women’s rights, and opposing harmful “development” policies and business practices. We also assist people seeking justice for environmental harm, advocates for sound climate policies, and journalists investigating illegal wildlife trade in the DRC and across borders.
Our support to local activists covers digital and physical security, psychosocial support, and self-care. We also carry out organizational risk assessments and threat analyses and train community-based organizations, NGOs, and media houses to strengthen their risk management, data protection, and information security. Between 2019 and 2023, we provided direct support to 150 groups in Uganda and the DRC.
Land, Indigenous rights, and climate justice
Climate change is the most urgent challenge of our time, and land and territory, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the environment are closely intertwined. Environmental Defenders supports communities, grassroots organizations, and activists working to conserve the environment, recognizing them as custodians of ecosystems vital to the global climate. Indigenous peoples are estimated to safeguard around 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity. These movements operate where the impacts of climate change are felt first and hardest, at the intersection of marginalization, poverty, and livelihoods that depend on natural resources. Our work helps communities resist the encroachment on and exploitation of their land by national and multinational companies, particularly in the extractive and agricultural sectors, as well as by States and other actors.
Environmental Defenders recognizes the link between struggles for environmental and land rights and wider business and human rights concerns, and the importance of rights over land and natural resource management. Our work contributes to SDG 15, on protecting, restoring, and promoting the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, and to target 16.7 of SDG 16, which calls for responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels.
Since 2019, Environmental Defenders has focused on protecting human rights defenders, security management, and risk assessments for women human rights defenders, organizations, and environmental activists. This work has been supported by development partners including the Digital Defenders Partnership (Hivos), Civil Rights Defenders, Land is Life, Global Greengrants Fund, the Environmental Defenders Collaborative, Cultural Survival, Mama Cash, and other foundations and organizations that have asked not to be named publicly. Learn more about our Environmental human rights defenders and civic space program and our appeal for the security and protection of women environmental human rights defenders.
About Environmental Defenders
Environmental Defenders (ED) is an ecofeminist and collaborative environmental justice organization that works to protect biodiversity and Indigenous peoples’ rights. We work in the Albertine Rift region (the Murchison-Semliki, Greater Virunga, and Ituri landscapes), which spans the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
We are committed to building resilience for environmental and human security, helping marginalized Indigenous peoples and traditional communities in the Albertine Rift and Congo Basin to live sustainably and safeguard their cultural practices, water sources, lands, and surrounding environment.