Researching green activism:how to better protect minority and Indigenous communities,civil society organizations,networks and climate change defenders

 

The East Africa region, with its heavy dependence on climate-impacted sectors such as forestry and agriculture for economic growth, has emerged as one of the more vulnerable regions to climate change across the continent. Within this region, climate change has particularly devastating implications for minorities and Indigenous peoples. Climate change and environment defenders and representatives of minority and Indigenous peoples have been seeking to participate in the development of mitigation and adaptation strategies and to prevent unjust actions of government and private companies. However, these actors are currently being targeted, and they frequently face a range of threats, including violence, harassment, intimidation, indiscriminate arrests, fabricated court cases and physical and digital surveillance.

This project aims to deepen understanding of the experience of environmental defenders and the organizations that represent them. Focusing on minority and Indigenous peoples, the project will also identify the drivers and perpetrators of the threats faced by climate change and environmental rights defenders, with a view to designing appropriate strategies to respond to such threats. The project will adopt a gender-responsive and intersectional approach which examines intersecting forms of threats faced by these communities and organizations.

The project also seeks to strengthen environmental activism by identifying strategies that can be adopted to create more favourable operational environments for climate activists. Ultimately, the project seeks to build the necessary linkages between climate activists, defenders and policy makers to facilitate more inclusive debates on climate mitigation and adaptation.