Türk warns Europe must protect environmental defenders from rising threats

Environmental defenders are facing a crisis of violence, detention and criminalization that Volker Türk said Europe can no longer treat as a side issue. Speaking in Strasbourg at the first European Forum on Environmental Human Rights Defenders, the UN high commissioner for human rights tied attacks on activists to land, forests, water and climate disputes, and warned that the pressure is growing as the continent warms at twice the global average.

The forum, held June 3-4 at the Council of Europe’s Palais de l’Europe, opened with Bjørn Berge, Sirpa Rautio, Petra Bayr, Mattias Guyomar, Türk and UN special rapporteur Michel Forst. Its first day was closed to media and reserved for environmental human rights defenders, a signal of how sensitive and contested the issue has become. The initiative was co-led by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Council of Europe, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and the mandate of the special rapporteur on environmental defenders under the Aarhus Convention.

Türk said his office has recorded nearly 600 environmental and land defenders killed or disappeared in the last three years, and that defenders have been detained in at least 55 countries for their activism. He said the tactics used against them include killing, abducting, detaining and weaponizing laws that are supposed to protect rights. In Europe, he warned, peaceful protest is sometimes prosecuted under statutes designed for terrorism or organized crime.

The message from Strasbourg was that the battle over environmental protection is also a battle over democratic space. Türk said defenders mobilize public opinion, science, law and community action, and described the environmental justice movement as a powerful alliance that opponents cannot defeat fairly. His warning landed against a stark regional backdrop: the European Environment Agency says global mean temperature from 2015 to 2024 was 1.24 to 1.28 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, while European land temperatures rose even faster, by 2.19 to 2.26 degrees.

That warming is already showing up in public health and disaster response. Türk said 95 percent of urban residents in Europe breathe unsafe air and more than 80 percent of habitats are in poor or bad condition. The World Health Organization in Europe says heat-related mortality has risen by more than 30 percent over the past 20 years and points to the 2024 floods in Valencia, Spain, which killed more than 200 people.

The forum was not an isolated meeting. A Brussels gathering on October 8, 2024 brought together more than 80 stakeholders to shape stronger protection across wider Europe, and the Council of Europe says the forum is meant to deepen cooperation among defenders, civil society organizations, Indigenous Peoples, governments and international institutions. Türk’s message was direct: climate policy cannot succeed if the people who sound the alarm are intimidated into silence.