Grantee Highlight
The Right to Defend: Care and Support for Environmental Defenders
Image credit: Ceibo Alliance
In 2024, Global Greengrants made 459 grants in 84 countries totaling $6.33M dollars to support movements’ right to defend the environment. This includes grants made by the Environmental Defenders Collaborative, who in 2024 made 262 grants in 55 countries, totaling $3.27M.
Across the globe, the risks of defending community rights to the environment are increasing. Many governments and corporations are tightening the vice on civil society, and those in power continue to use violence to suppress activists who stand up to protect the planet, their lives, and their communities.
Global Greengrants works to protect the rights of individuals and communities to defend the environment. Fundamental to a healthy civil society are the ability for environmental defenders to organize, voice their opinions, access environmental and social information, protest, and meaningfully participate in decisions about their environment and livelihoods. We support environmental defenders in multiple ways. One is through our traditional grantmaking, providing funding to environmental defenders at risk identified through the Global Greengrants network of advisors. The second is by providing fiscal sponsorship to the Environmental Defenders Collaborative (EDC), a pooled fund that supports frontline communities and ally networks defending rights to their lands, livelihoods, and culture in the face of violence, repression, and destructive industries.
Image credit: Elizabeth Weber
What makes EDC different from traditional funders is the level of flexibility in how and to whom they make grants. When meaningful support to environmental defenders is especially complex or constrained—such as in countries where outside funding is restricted—EDC’s agility is critical. Since launching in 2017, EDC has approved more than $9 million in funding to international, regional, and community-level organizations around the world.
In 2024, Global Greengrants and EDC worked together to resource and help protect environmental human rights defenders in communities most impacted by climate injustice. A few highlights from this year:
- Derechos Humanos y Medio Ambiente Puno (DHUMA) in Peru provided legal advice and support to Aymara and Quechua peasant communities in defense of communal territory and Indigenous self-determination, as they combat the impact of extractive activities and environmental contamination.
- L’Initiative Africaine pour la promotion de la Citoyenneté et la protection de l’Environnement (IACE) in Togo raised awareness among coastal fisherfolk about anticipated socio-economic and environmental impacts of the Nigeria-Morocco Gas pipeline, which will connect Nigeria to every coastal country in West Africa.
- Radical Grandma Collective in Thailand, in partnership with Protection International and the Campaign for Public Policy on Mineral Resources, provided monthly cash payments to frontline women defenders in three provinces of Thailand, along with mentorship and a three-day retreat focused on organizing tactics, security, wellbeing, and psychological support.
- Upholding Life and Nature, Inc. in the Philippines provided legal support to members of the Sibuyan Mangyan Indigenous community to defend lawsuits filed against them for opposing local mining exploration.
- Youth for Green Communities in Uganda documented and shared stories of youth activists facing arrests and reprisals for protesting construction of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
Together, we’re building global support for strategic interventions at the community, regional, and international levels to safeguard the lives, rights, and work of environmental defenders. It’s increasingly true that the struggle for democracy is inseparable from urgent movements for climate justice, and that support for Indigenous and local communities' right to defend their land creates more democratic, safe, and flourishing communities.