Protected or Threatened by the Law? Experiences of Environmental Defenders

The first panel presentations were dedicated to legal developments, experiences and challenges regarding Environmental Defenders. All three presentations highlighted the various ways in which Environmental Defenders can be and are persecuted, penalized or harassed; and demonstrated that attacks on Environmental Defenders are not a new phenomenon, but rising in intensity and quality.

Brototi Roy (Autonomous University of Barcelona / Central European University) started by  introducing the mapping project and large-scale database – the “Environmental Justice Atlas”. The EJA documents and catalogues social conflicts around environmental issues. Therefore, stories of communities struggling for environmental justice from around the world are collected. In her presentation, she highlighted the aim of the EJA, to make environmental actions more visible, highlight claims, testimonies, and to serve as a virtual space to connect, find information and increase the visibility of environmental conflicts. Additionally, the EJA can be a valuable tool for researchers interested in issues of environmental justice.

In her presentation, Summer Kern (Justice & Environment) gave an overview of cases from mainly Eastern European countries (Belarus, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Croatia) to exemplify the ways in which laws can both help, or more often, harm Environmental Defenders. She discussed the individual cases and how the Aarhus Convention has been instrumentalized to push back on the actions against Environmental Defenders. The mentioned cases all have in common that existing laws, such as laws on auditing of NGOs, were weaponized against NGOs and other Environmental Defenders. Summer Kern therefore emphasized the importance of civil society and of establishing mechanisms to raise awareness of the challenges faced by Environmental Defenders.

Persecution and harassment of Environmental Defenders do not solely take place in Latin America or Eastern Europe, there is also a noticeable turn in atmosphere in many other countries. In her presentation, Veronika Marhold (Ökobüro) dealt with activities directed against Environmental Defenders in Austria. For this purpose, she presented several prominent examples of attempts at intimidation such as the threatening of legal actions against the occupation of construction sites on behalf of the City of Vienna and most recently, politicians advocating for criminalization and tougher penalties for certain forms of climate activism, such as road blocks. Veronika Marhold not only visualized the various challenges faced by Environmental Defenders in Austria and the noticeable shift in atmosphere, but also put the legal consequences into context.