This event aims to highlight effective strategies and frameworks for supporting environmental defenders across the EU. By examining current challenges alongside examples of good practice, we will identify how existing rights, obligations, and mechanisms can be more robustly implemented and upheld to ensure those who protect our planet can do so safely and effectively and which support structures are still needed.

Together with the BE LIFE project partners and the Greens/EFA, we will explore how Europe can strengthen protections for environmental defenders and develop actionable recommendations to turn commitments into concrete support.

Full agenda:

Agenda: 

Welcome and opening 

• Marie Toussaint, MEP

• BELife presentation

Testimonies 

Before focusing on solutions, we will hear short testimonies of barriers and threats such as delegitimizing civil society, public smear campaigns, SLAPPS, and direct attacks on individuals.  

• Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention

• Cass Hebron, Environmental Defender, Founder of The Green Fix and Media & Narratives Officer at Oxfam International

• Michele Giuli, Environmental Defender, Co-Founder of Ultima Generazione and Resilient Uprising

The resources and reports of the Special Rapporteur can be accessed here.  

Panel discussion: How to use your rights? Rights-based approaches to environmental action. 

When rights are under attack, it is even more important to exercise them. The panel will explore how to exercise the right to participate while this right is under attack and what safeguards are needed to secure the foundations of environmental democracy. It will also highlight the importance of environmental defenders’ participation at all levels of environmental decision-making, particularly in light of the Aarhus Convention’s guarantee of public participation in international forums – a principle that also applies to the UNFCCC COP. 

• Danilo Auricchio, Legal and Policy Officer, DG Environment, European Commission 

• Dr Csaba Kiss, Coordinator, Justice and Environment

• Patrizia Heidegger, Deputy SecGen, European Environmental Bureau 

• Maria Andrea Nardi, Lund University, Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, co-author of the recent study (link: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/754480/EXPO_STU(2025)754480_EN.pdf)

Comments and Q&A

Moderator: Frederik Hafen, Senior Policy Officer for Environmental Democracy, European Environmental Bureau