24 August 2026 - Environmental defenders are breathing new hope into securing the right to a healthy environment – from courtrooms to the communities where their campaigns and efforts come to life. But a growingly hostile civic space is putting them and their work in danger, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, partnership of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), documents in a submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment.
Environmental human rights defenders play a critical role in protecting the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
They protect ecosystems and a safe climate, water and watersheds, sustainable food, and fight to defend their communities from fossil fuel extraction and mining – among many examples – that endanger their lives and all human rights.
But as the environmental crisis worsens worldwide, so does the repression against these changemakers who advance real solutions and accountability for state violations and business abuses of the right to a healthy environment.
The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the right to a healthy environment is collecting inputs for a report for the 64th session of the UN Human Rights Council that will focus on the widespread impacts of such a crackdown on its realisation and what can be done to truly defend the defenders.
The submission by the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders –a partnership of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)– paints a dire picture of the shrinking civic space for environmental defenders and its impact on real progress for a healthy environment.
Stigmatisation, harassment, surveillance, strategic lawsuits against public participation, criminalisation, threats, attacks, and even assassinations and forced disappearances… Environmental defenders are resisting increasingly hostile conditions to defend nature as much as the rights of communities and peoples who depend on its preservation.
Coalitions of defenders and their organisations keep securing legal and campaign victories, but the lack of political will to implement these watershed achievements that would make the right to a healthy environment a reality.
And whether in the UN’s climate negotiations or at the local level, the risks faced by defenders come with unprecedented psychological and physical risks – especially for those belonging to groups in a situation of marginalisation.
States, regional institutions, companies, the UN, and development financial institutions all have a role to play in breaking the mold when developing environmental policies, doing business, or working on new projects. All these actors must guarantee freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, and association to protect those safeguarding the environment as a precondition to all human rights.
