Human rights defenders organizing to prevent climate catastrophe are facing a surge in reprisals, as governments around the world denigrate, delegitimize and criminalize activists in spite of worsening global heating, a top United Nations official has told the Guardian.
Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders since 2020, has documented hundreds of cases where states have sought to smear and silence climate defenders engaged in peaceful protest, non-violent civil disobedience and litigation.
“Attacks against climate defenders have surged over the course of the mandate, and we now see outright repression against people who are organizing for climate action. It’s some of the states that have claimed to be the strongest supporters of human rights defenders including the UK, Germany, France and the US, that are most often repressing climate activists and where the right to protest is being denigrated and delegitimized.
“These big countries spew out the rhetoric about 1.5C, but they don’t mean it. They are playing the game to suit themselves. It’s business as usual,” Lawlor said in an interview with the Guardian.
Lawlor will present the penultimate report of her six-year mandate, “Tipping points: Human rights defenders, climate change and a just transition”, to the UN general assembly on 16 October.
It documents state repression including police violence and surveillance, civil litigation deployed to deliberately wear down and silence climate defenders known as Slapp (strategic lawsuits against public participation), as well as bogus criminal charges ranging from sedition, criminal defamation, terrorism and conspiracy to trespass, to public disorder and to disobedience.
In December 2023, the Just Stop Oil member Stephen Gingell became the first person to be jailed under the UK’s new public order legislation after taking part for 30 minutes in a peaceful slow-march protest on a London road.
“The UK is leading by bad example, abusing the international standards to which it itself agreed by bringing in these draconian laws that are designed to stop protest against any of the issues that are uncomfortable for the UK government.”
In the US, about 1,000 criminal cases were brought in Minnesota against people involved in non-violent actions against the Line 3 oil pipeline, including charges of attempted assisted suicide and trespass on critical infrastructure. While most cases were eventually dismissed or overturned, legitimate concerns about Indigenous lands, environmental harm and climate impacts were ignored and the pipeline began operations in 2021.
The criminalization of Line 3 protesters mirrored the repression seen during the 2016 Indigenous-led movement against the Dakota Access pipeline in the US. “Both instances entailed close collaboration between the companies involved and the police, indicating the adoption of a blueprint for the repression of climate activism in the United States,” the report states.
The Guardian has previously reported on a criminalization playbook used against climate and environmental activists, that is being adopted and shared in the US and internationally.
One trend documented by Lawlor is the conflation of non-violent climate action with terrorism. In 2022, the French minister of interior at the time, and current minister of justice, accused the national environmental movement Les Soulèvements de la Terre of “ecoterrorism”. The government sought to close down the group, but the country’s highest administrative court eventually overturned the effort.
Lawlor is adamant that climate activists are human rights defenders. They use non-violent protest, disruptive civil disobedience and litigation to stop fossil fuel projects and pressure elected officials to take meaningful action precisely because they are trying to protect the right to food, clean water, health, life and a healthy environment.
“These people are exercising the right to defend human rights. Of course some climate groups are disruptive, but that’s because they tried so hard for so long to use normal run of the mill techniques to achieve change, and the government did nothing. Look at change throughout the century by people like Martin Luther King and Gandhi, civil disobedience is sometimes necessary,” said Lawlor, who is the founder and former executive director of Front Line Defenders and former director of the Irish branch of Amnesty International.
But it’s not just fossil fuels. Human rights are now being targeted in the rush for critical minerals and new sources of non-fossil energy. The same repressive playbook is being used by governments and private companies involved in land grabs, pollution and Indigenous rights violations in pursuit of a green transition.
In Vietnam, which has committed itself to a just transition and net-zero emissions by 2050, the environmental lawyer Dang Dinh Bach was sentenced to five years in prison in January 2022 on bogus charges of tax evasion. Bach, who is among several climate activists imprisoned in Vietnam after advocating for the transition away from coal, is a victim of arbitrary detention, according to UN experts.
In Kenya, police fired rubber bullets and teargas at villagers in Uyombo in 2024, who were peacefully protesting against construction of a nuclear power plant facility on their land without consent.
“Governments are repressing human rights defenders and the current trajectory is incompatible with the realization of human rights for all. It’s just a road to destruction … I think states are behaving in a criminal fashion,” Lawlor said.
On Thursday Lawlor will repeat calls on governments to stop treating climate defenders like enemies, and instead work with them on a just transition to prevent climate catastrophe.
“No system, no power, no government, no big company seeking profit should trump the rights of billions of people in the world. And that’s what’s happening. It’s the rich, the powerful that are creating such a disaster for humanity.”