Environmental Defenders is proud to share that three members of our team co-authored a peer-reviewed article published in Capitalism Nature Socialism, an internationally recognised journal on ecology, politics, and social justice, in October 2025.
The article, “Ecofeminist Revolutionary Struggles Amid Extractivist Conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda,” is co-authored by Prof. Inge Konik of Nelson Mandela University, alongside Environmental Defenders staff members Robert Agenonga (advisor), Gloria Ayiorwoth, and Alessandro Musetta.
The research investigates how Environmental Defenders, working against the extractivist legacy of colonialism and the ongoing destruction of ecosystems and communities in the DRC and Uganda, has come to embody what ecofeminist scholar Ariel Salleh describes as a holistic ecofeminist politics, one that brings together feminism, socialism, ecology, and postcolonial resistance into a unified struggle.
The paper traces the long history of extraction in the region, from the brutal colonial plunder of the Congo under Belgian King Leopold II to the present-day activities of oil corporations, mining companies, and armed rebel groups whose operations are intertwined with the exploitation of critical minerals indispensable to modern digital technologies. It documents how these extractivist pressures fall disproportionately on women, Indigenous peoples, and subsistence communities across the Albertine Rift, who bear the greatest costs while receiving the fewest benefits.
The article examines Environmental Defenders’ work across four dimensions of ecofeminist resistance. As a feminist organisation, we centre the voices and leadership of women environmental human rights defenders and document the gendered impacts of extractivism, including the displacement of fisherwomen from Lake Albert whose livelihoods have been destroyed by militarised lake management conducted with African Development Bank funding. As a socialist organisation, we defend worker and community rights in the face of land grabs by oil giants and sugarcane enterprises, and document corporate and government misconduct in the public domain. As an ecological organisation, we protect forests, create wildlife corridors, restore degraded habitats, and build the resilience of ecosystems under threat. And as a postcolonial organisation, we support Indigenous cultural survival, produce participatory mappings of ancestral territories, and amplify the voices of communities whose lands and lifeways are being erased.
The paper also draws lessons from our operational experience as a small, frontline organisation working in some of the most difficult and dangerous contexts on the continent, and reflects on how collaboration, community trust, and the protection of defenders are central to sustaining long-term resistance under conditions of political repression and armed conflict.
We are deeply proud that the experiences of our staff and the communities we serve have contributed to advancing academic understanding of environmental justice, gender, and the politics of resistance in the global South.
The article is available via the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism: https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2025.2567586