Published November 5, 2025
By Camilla Pollera, Human Rights and Climate Change Program Associate at the Center for International Environmental Law.
This piece is part of a multi-part CIEL blog series unpacking the law, politics, and power shaping COP30 — and what it will take to deliver climate justice.
There is no climate justice in a climate of fear. As governments prepare to meet in Belém, Brazil for, COP30, attention turns to a country where defending nature still comes at a high cost. Deep-rooted and intertwined impunity and violence against environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) — including Indigenous defenders, Afro-descendent communities, women, and defenders from LGBTQIA+ —persist in Brazil.
COP30 decisions must recognize the efforts of those protecting the planet, in Brazil and beyond, and ensure that they can do so safely, freely, and without fear.
Around the world, EHRDs are on the frontlines of the climate crisis — protecting land, water, communities, and their rights, often at great personal risk. Faced with an escalating climate crisis and the inaction of governments, a growing number of people are stepping up to defend their rights, the rights of future generations and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, exercising their fundamental freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, guaranteed under international human rights law.
Reports show that around three environmental defenders were killed or disappeared each week in 2024, a number likely capturing only a fraction of the real scale of violence due to massive underreporting. Behind each number is a person who stood up for nature and paid the ultimate price.
From Latin America to Europe and beyond, those defending our environment are facing intimidation, surveillance, being labeled as “terrorists”, arbitrary detention, and even violence and death for insisting that governments live up to their human rights and climate obligations.
The violence and repression faced by defenders are intensified by intersecting forms of marginalization, especially affecting women defending the environment, who often suffer gender-based violence that rarely appears in the data, including sexual violence, harassment, and rejection within their families and communities. They are targeted not only as defenders of rights and natural resources but also as women, in all their diversity, challenging discriminatory societal norms, a combination that makes their work particularly dangerous and invisible.
As world leaders gather in the Amazon for climate talks, it is worth nothing that Latin America remains the most dangerous region in the world for environmental defenders, with Indigenous Peoples among those most at risk. Weak rule of law, corruption, and impunity have created the conditions for violence to persist. Across the Amazon — home to nearly one-third of the continent’s forests and vital to stabilizing the global climate — defenders face constant threats linked to illegal mining, land grabbing, and deforestation. The persistent violence and lack of effective guarantees for human rights protection are a stark reminder of what is at stake as COP30 comes to Belém.
The protection of environmental human rights defenders is not a matter of political discretion; it is a legal duty grounded in international law. These obligations stem from the long-established obligation to guarantee access to information, public participation, and access to justice. For more than twenty-five years, the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders has affirmed that everyone has the right to protest and strive for the protection of human rights, and to participate in peaceful activities against violations. The Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly have further reinforced this obligation, calling on States to protect EHRDs, with specific provisions and protections for women, and address the specific risks they face.
The Advisory Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the climate emergency and human rights made it clear: States must take proactive steps to ensure the effective protection of environmental defenders — including for those such as Indigenous and women EHRDs who are most at risk of retaliation. The Court recognized EHRDs are “allies of democracy”, whose work takes on even greater importance amid the urgency and complexity of the climate emergency. It reaffirmed the right to defend human rights as an autonomous right and declared that States have a special duty of protection toward those who exercise it, and recognized the double layer of risk faced by women environmental defenders, requiring an even higher duty of care. The Court also formulated very concrete recommendations on what this means at the national level.
The Escazú Agreement and the Aarhus Convention both enshrine explicit provisions on the protection of EHRDs, setting legal and institutional frameworks to operationalize these duties. Recent work under these instruments has provided concrete guidance for States and businesses to uphold their obligations, safeguard civic space, and ensure defenders are protected and not penalized. The recent Action Plan under Escazú and the ad hoc rapid response mechanism under Aarhus are just a few examples marking concrete advances in protecting those facing threats.
At COP30, Parties can no longer ignore their human rights obligations. They have a duty to ensure that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—the central forum for global cooperation on climate action—and its outcomes align with legal standards. Rightsholders have been obstructed from participating and silenced the climate talks, a process that is deciding on their future. Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, lack of transparency in the host country agreements, persistent visa barriers and financial burdens, continue to limit access. In recent COPs, civic space has continued to shrink, with obstruction often led by the very States hosting the negotiations.
Brazil has a chance to do things differently, by making civic space at COP30 and the protection of environmental defenders a true priority. This includes guaranteeing safe conditions for the meaningful participation before, during, and after COP30 and beyond. And it also means taking steps domestically, starting with the urgent ratification of the Escazú Agreement. Brazil has a key role to play in building upon its legacy of international environmental leadership and steering negotiations at the COP towards rights-based outcomes.
COP30 indeed offers a crucial moment to enhance the protection of defenders through critical decisions expected in Belém: the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) and the Gender Action Plan (GAP).
As highlighted by the recent report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, a just transition should be grounded in the protection of those who defend rights and call out false climate solutions, from Indigenous Peoples and land defenders opposing harmful mining projects to workers’ advocates demanding fair and equitable transitions. All decisions, measures, and mechanisms designed to enable a just transition from the fossil fuel economy must protect a safe and enabling civic space, and ensure the meaningful participation of EHRDs. The JTWP must uphold human rights, social equity, cultural integrity, and ensure full protection of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including their right to give or withhold their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for projects affecting them and their lands.
Equally, the new GAP presents a critical opportunity to include, for the first time in the history of the UNFCCC, explicit commitments to eliminate, prevent, and respond to discrimination and violence against women EHRDs, ensuring comprehensive protection and support for women advocating for environmental and land rights.
Around the world, women defenders are threatened with losing their children, subjected to verbal, psychological, and physical abuse, raped, wrongfully criminalized — attacks that weaponize their gender to silence their activism. This GAP should enhance safety, protection mechanisms, and support systems so that women EHRDs can exercise full, meaningful, and equal participation in climate policies without fear of reprisals. It should strengthen the participation and leadership of women defenders in the decision-making process at all levels. And it should respond to the actual protection needs and realities of women EHRDs and Indigenous women on the ground by developing guidance on gender-responsive protection and accountability mechanisms. These mechanisms must include proactive and preventive measures against gender-based violence, and ensure access to justice and effective remedies for rights violations.
There is no climate justice without human rights and without protecting those on the frontlines. EHRDs step in to protect what governments have neglected, and their courage exposes States’ failure to meet their climate and human rights obligations. Despite the risk, around the world, defenders continue to organize, resist, and demand climate justice, leading the way forward. In their resistance lies the chance of a just and sustainable future.
