Date: September 23, 2025
The global climate crisis continues to disproportionately impact Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples on the frontlines, particularly those defending land, water, and ecosystems. This report highlights the urgent need to integrate collective protection strategies into climate policy and programming to ensure the safety, agency, and resilience of environmental defenders and their communities.
Drawing on case studies, interviews, and policy analysis, this report underscores how current climate frameworks often overlook the risks faced by grassroots activists, Indigenous Peoples, and local organizations. These groups are not only vulnerable to climate impacts but also to violence, criminalization, and displacement due to their advocacy and stewardship of natural resources.
Key findings include:
- Environmental defenders face increasing threats linked to extractive industries, land grabs, and militarized conservation efforts.
- Collective protection approaches—rooted in community-led strategies, solidarity networks, and legal empowerment—are essential for safeguarding defenders and amplifying their voices.
- Climate finance and policy mechanisms must be restructured to prioritize protection, participation, and equity.
Through examples of Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples’, and local communities’ movements from the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, the Enggano island in Indonesia, India’s Bastar region, the Sinangoe in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and Colombia, the report presents best practices from communities defending their territories and cultures.
https://doi.org/10.53892/JOEG1171