This working paper explores the critical yet underrecognized role of environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) in global climate governance. Through a narrative review of 170 academic publications from 2015–2025, the authors analyze how identity groups—Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, and local communities—act as environmental defenders through their stewardship of land, advocacy, traditional knowledge, and participation in climate policy processes.

Although these groups are increasingly acknowledged within UNFCCC spaces, their concrete contributions to mitigation, adaptation, and governance integrity remain largely invisible in formal climate frameworks such as NDCs. The paper highlights how EHRDs reduce emissions through forest protection, strengthen adaptation through community‑based and ecosystem‑based strategies, and advance climate justice by promoting equity, participation, and human rights.

The study also reveals significant gaps: the term “defender” is rarely used in climate literature, violence against EHRDs is underreported, and their participation in climate negotiations is often symbolic rather than substantive. The authors argue for a shift from identity‑based recognition to practice‑based inclusion, calling for stronger protection mechanisms, funding, and institutional reforms that embed EHRDs’ expertise into climate planning and implementation.

Ultimately, the paper positions EHRDs as essential actors whose knowledge, advocacy, and lived experience are indispensable for achieving effective, equitable, and accountable climate action.

Highlights

  • Environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) are individuals and groups who protect the environment while defending fundamental rights. Their contributions to climate mitigation, adaptation, and governance integrity remain largely invisible in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) governance framework.
  • The authors of this working paper conducted a narrative review of 170 peer-reviewed documents published between 2015 and 2025 to examine if and how EHRDs’ actions and contributions to climate outcomes are recognized across the UNFCCC policy literature.
  • We traced the recognition of EHRD climate actions through the documented roles of four main identity groups—Indigenous Peoples (IPs), women, local communities (LCs), and youth—whose collective practices link human and environmental rights protection.
  • EHRDs may advance mitigation through forest protection, sustainable land use, and emissions-reduction projects; adaptation via community- and ecosystem-based strategies such as agroforestry, water management, and local monitoring; and climate policy by promoting gender equality, inter- and intragenerational equity, and participation in decision-making.
  • Their practices often span direct participation in UNFCCC constituencies and platforms, indirect influence through litigation and consultations, and collective action through education, networking, and traditional ecological knowledge.
  • Integrating EHRDs into formal climate governance frameworks could enhance effectiveness and accountability, strengthen rights-based participation, and bridge local realities with global climate ambition.

EHRDs are central to climate action yet remain unrecognized in formal climate governance. They are individuals and groups who peacefully advocate for environmental protection as a human right to clean water, air, land, and biodiversity (UN General Assembly 2016), and include women, youth, IPs, and LCs who may not self-identify as defenders (Reisch 2023). EHRDs operate at the intersection of human rights and environmental protection by defending traditional lands and livelihoods. 

EHRDs have been formally recognized by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC 2019) and climate governance frameworks like the Paris Agreement and Cancún Agreement that incorporate human rights language. Despite the recognition of identity groups within UNFCCC governance through constituencies since 2001—with achievements like the Gender Action Plan (COP20) and the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (COP24)—their substantive contributions to climate action remain poorly understood and undervalued in policy frameworks, which often frame them as vulnerable to climate impacts rather than acknowledging their agency in climate solutions. Their informal roles in mitigation and adaptation remain largely invisible in climate planning mechanisms such as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), reflecting broader exclusion from UNFCCC decision-making.

Bridging human rights and climate governance is essential to advancing accountability as well as equitable and inclusive action. EHRDs face systemic violence, criminalization, and the impunity granted to those who use violence against them—especially in regions rich in natural resources—due to conflicts over land, mining, agribusiness, and logging, often facing violence and persecution for their environmental protection efforts. However, human rights frameworks and climate policy discourse continue to operate in separate spheres, with distinct offices and funding streams, which obscures both the contributions of and risks faced by EHRDs. Bridging these spheres is essential in a global context where climate threats are intensifying, and democratic spaces are shrinking.

About this working paper

This study applies a narrative literature review to map if and how climate governance under the UNFCCC reflects the actions and contributions of EHRDs. A total of 170 peer-reviewed documents published between 2015 and 2025 were analyzed through a two-stage review conducted on the EBSCOhost platform, using the Paris Agreement as a temporal anchor. The review examines intersections between UNFCCC mechanisms, environmental defense, and identity-based participation, using women, IPs, youth, and LCs as entry points to trace defender practices across mitigation, adaptation, and governance outcomes. The research aims to promote greater recognition of EHRDs in climate spaces and to support dialogue on their engagement within the UNFCCC process.

The analysis draws on UNEP and UN Special Rapporteur frameworks to identify EHRDs using three criteria: intersectionality variables linked to frontline communities; references to climate-relevant actions or outcomes; and evidence of participation or advocacy aligned with environmental defense and human rights. Limitations include language bias, exclusion of gray and grassroots literature, and geographic imbalances that provide more evidence on literature regarding Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. This review is limited by its sole reliance on the EBSCOhost platform, which may have excluded relevant studies available through other databases or nonindexed sources. The exclusion of non-English sources, gray literature, and diverse terminology limited the dataset’s scope, potentially omitting grassroots perspectives, highlighting the need for future research that broadens linguistic, geographic, and methodological inclusivity in studying EHRDs.

Findings

Identity groups—particularly women and IPs in Latin America and Southeast Asia—are increasingly recognized as agents across UNFCCC climate literature. Fourteen percent of the analyzed UNFCCC governance literature focuses on Southeast Asian and 12 percent on Latin American regions (Figure ES-1). While the term “defender” appears rarely in UNFCCC literature, the actions of IPs (focused on in 58 percent of the literature), and women (53 percent), align closely with environmental defense. Agency is recognized across these groups—as well as others with less visibility, such as Afro-descendant Peoples and people with disabilities.

The shift from identity to environmental defense shows that many climate actors act as EHRDs. The proposed operational definition of EHRDs is based on what they do and not only who they are, including concrete practices for climate protection and community resilience (Glazebrook and Opoku 2018). Across the reviewed literature, 62 of 170 studies describe identity group actions that meet defender criteria. Their collective organizing, policy advocacy, and local stewardship bridge identity-based recognition with practice-based defense.

EHRDs contribute to mitigation, adaptation, and policy outcomes across scales. According to the reviewed literature, they contribute to reducing emissions and promoting human and environmental well-being through forest protection, sustainable land use, and opposition to harmful extractive and infrastructure projects; strengthening adaptation through locally led and ecosystem-based strategies such as agroforestry, watershed management, and community monitoring; and shaping climate policy and finance by advancing gender equality, inter- and intragenerational equity, and participatory decision-making litigation.

Their influence spans direct, indirect, and collective mechanisms that connect local realities with multilateral climate policy. Direct participation occurs through UNFCCC constituencies and platforms; indirect influence occurs through litigation, consultations, and monitoring; and collective action is catalyzed through education, networks, and traditional ecological knowledge. Together, these practices link local human rights struggles with global climate governance, strengthening accountability and the legitimacy of climate action. 

Recommendations

Environmental defense is best understood as a dynamic, relational practice rather than a fixed identity. It spans diverse roles, including, for instance, Indigenous defenders protecting ancestral territories from extractive industries; youth advocates advancing climate action through strikes, litigation, and education; and women and gender-diverse defenders leading efforts in food sovereignty, care, and resilience. 

Recognizing EHRDs as agents of climate governance requires shifting from identity-based acknowledgment to practice-based inclusion, ensuring that their actions are integrated into planning, monitoring, and implementation processes. Governments and multilateral institutions must institutionalize mechanisms for participation, protection, and funding, embedding EHRD contributions into national reporting and climate finance frameworks. Aligning human rights and climate goals within governance structures means recognition of the legitimacy, equity, and effectiveness of EHRDs’ climate action, positioning them as codesigners and implementers of durable climate solutions.