Protecting Women Environmental Defenders

By Sarah Shahabi

Prominent women have long been leaders in the environmental movement, from Rachel Carson with her Silent Spring to Greta Thunberg’s climate activism. Women, who are particularly vulnerable to the negative consequences of climate change and other threats to the environment, largely due to societal norms that hold women responsible for providing food, water, and care, are unsurprisingly, more likely to lead and organize their communities to protect the environment. These women are known as women environmental defenders, and around the world they have led movements with great success, including forcing the cancellation of environmentally damaging projects, increasing stakeholder participation in the planning of those projects, and even establishing new legislation and rights to protect the environment.

Despite the success of women environmental defenders, most do not achieve global notoriety and are in fact facing violent reprisals for their actions. Women, and in particular women from Indigenous, minority, poor, or rural communities, face serious threats for pursuing environmental justice and are often victims to gender-based violence. Women are more likely to face environmental harassment, including “displacement, repression, criminalization, and nondeadly-forms of violent targeting.” Women environmental leaders have even lost their lives. Between 2012 and 2022, nearly 2,000 environmental defenders have been murdered, and one study, which looked at over 500 documented cases of violence against women environmental defenders, found that 81 cases resulted in assassination. The extrajudicial killing of women environmental leaders appears to occur most often in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, but targeted killings have been known to occur in the United States and Europe as well. Indigenous peoples are particularly at risk, with 40% of the attacks targeting Indigenous peoples, despite only making up 5% of the global population. Further, Indigenous leaders account for two-thirds of the women environmental defenders killed.

Despite the very clear threats and overwhelming data that shows the grotesque violence against women environmental defenders, there are significant barriers to justice for victims and survivors to overcome. First and foremost, women environmental defenders lack power and influence compared to the perpetrators of violence against them, who are often closely connected to wealth and powerful corporations and state officials. Moreover, the investigations of such crimes can be deeply influenced by existing gender bias, which often results in officials taking reports less seriously. This is compounded by the fact that gender-based discrimination is considered normal or even permissible around much of the world. Additionally, many women environmental defenders have intersectional identities, placing them at additional risk due to their indigeneity, lack of socioeconomic status, or status as a member of the LGBTI+ community. As a result of these barriers to justice as well as the stigmatization of victims of gender-based violence, crimes against women leaders are underreported.

In recent years, the international community has started to act to protect environmental defenders. International human rights organizations, including the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have called for states to protect environmental human rights defenders. In the United States, two resolutions have been introduced in Congress; one specifically focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean, and the other seeking to protect environmental human rights defenders in the United States. However, both bills have failed to progress beyond introduction. In Latin America and the Caribbean, twenty-four countries have signed a legally binding agreement to protect environmental defenders. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has called on governments to protect peaceful protestors and hold corporations accountable for perpetrating violence against environmental defenders. UNEP also specifically supports investment in protecting Indigenous communities’ land and resource rights to avoid environmental disputes that lead to violent reprisals against environmental defenders. It is vital that awareness about the dangers to environmental defenders, especially women and Indigenous peoples, be raised, along with support for increased education and research. Moreover, there are existing national and international human rights legal frameworks that should be used to address the violence that women environmental defenders face. States should also create and enforce specific safeguards that include financial resources as well as mitigation and response strategies for protecting women environmental defenders.

The work done by environmental defenders is deeply important to fighting climate change, protecting our environment, and improving the future of our world. The risks faced by environmental defenders, and women in particular, are unacceptable. So, for this women’s history month, as we look to celebrate the brave and world-changing women in our pasts, it is just as important to support the women making vital improvements to the present. United States residents should call on their representatives to support Senate Resolution 138, House Concurrent Resolution 31, Senate Resolution 142, and the Human Rights Defenders Protection Act of 2024 in the House and Senate. Beyond that, people should continue to find ways to spread awareness with others so that we can better protect the women and people working so hard to defend us and the planet.

Sarah Shahabi is a MALD student at The Fletcher School and a law student at Boston University School of Law