Photo: The Caravana for Climate and Life meets with COPINH while en route from Mexico to COP30 in Brazil.

The United Nations COP30 climate change conference will start two weeks from today on Monday November 10 in the city of Belém in northern Brazil. Will the protection needs of land and environmental defenders be on the agenda this year?

Land and environmental defenders continue to be killed

Berta Caceres, the co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), was murdered on March 2, 2016, just months after COP21 concluded on December 11, 2015, in Paris.

More than 1,729 land and environmental defenders have been killed in the 9 years since Caceres was murdered.

That’s an average of 192 defenders killed per year.

Defenders excluded at COPs

In March 2019, the UN Human Rights Council affirmed: “Environmental human rights defenders must be ensured a safe and enabling environment to undertake their work free from hindrance and insecurity, in recognition of their important role in supporting States to fulfil their obligations under the Paris Agreement.”

And yet this short sentence was not included in the final text of COP25 later that year or in any of the subsequent COP declarations.

Shauna Gillooly and Simón Escoffier from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile have also noted: “Grassroots actors, Indigenous communities, labour unions, and environmental justice movements are not just consumers of climate information; they are frontline political actors, whose legitimacy in shaping climate policy should be recognised. Yet the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] and COP [these conferences of parties] do not provide them with the institutional leverage, financial resources, or direct access to decision-making processes that would allow them to act as true counterweights to government and corporate inertia.”

“Blatant attempts” to eliminate references to defenders

It appears that the dynamic is not just that defenders are neither meaningfully included nor mentioned in COP outcomes, but also that efforts to include defenders in the final text are removed by the “usual suspects”.

Commenting on COP29, Camilla Pollera of the Center for International Environmental Law stated: “The blatant attempts to eliminate reference to the protection of environmental human rights defenders and human rights is especially alarming.”

And Floridea Di Como of CambiaMO in Spain added: “To take out from the text reference to Land and Environmental Human Rights defenders is to make a deep injustice from the recognition, procedural and distributive points of view.”

The “usual suspects”

This echoes the comments made by Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders (Aarhus Convention), on a PBI-Canada organized webinar.

Forst told those at our webinar: “There are people who are willing to push for good results and at the same time we know that we also have people who are not our allies who are pushing also for counter-results and trying to delete paragraphs and good wording that some of us, some of them, would like to introduce.”

He added: “We have the same usual suspects who block the discussions.”

Forst did not name those “usual suspects”, but they are likely to include the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia.

“We can’t legitimize COP meetings”

Beyond this focused concern about COP conferences failing environmental defenders, there is also a broader critique of these annual gatherings.

Ahead of COP29, Greta Thunberg stated: “We can’t legitimize COP meetings in their current form. …Every time those in power get a chance to act, they choose not to and instead listen to industries that destroy the planet and violate human rights, rather than doing what’s right. …The only thing that will come out of it is loopholes, more negotiations, and symbolic decisions that look good on paper but are really just greenwashing.”

Calls for action

Within this challenging context that brings little expectation of progress, PBI-Canada supports the call that all State Parties at COP30 should “recognize the link between the climate crisis and growing violence and repression against land and environmental defenders and take meaningful steps to protect defenders and civic space (online and in person) to promote ambition and climate action.”

We further support the call “urging all Parties to commit to the enhanced protection of environmental human rights defenders, including reporting, investigating and seeking accountability and redress for reprisals against environmental human rights defenders, and public information about the actions taken to do so as well as public recognition of the importance of their work.”

Measuring violations

Global Witness has recommended: “To be effective, legislation and public policies to protect defenders need to be based on a deep understanding of the realities they face. The systematic documentation of attacks, and their motivations, would enable states to improve existing laws and mechanisms to protect defenders.”

We agree that Indicator 16.10.1 of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should be incorporated into the COP process a meaningful way. That Indicator seeks to measure the “number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade unionists and human rights advocates in the previous 12 months.”

The International Land Coalition says: “Countries are expected to report on the number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of human rights defenders (HRD).”

However, they further highlight, in the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) of 162 countries, only 3 countries reported that at least one HRD had been killed or attacked, 7 countries reported zero cases, and 152 countries did not report at all.

While Canada was one of the countries that did submit a report in 2024, it did not reference Indicator 16.10.1, specifically on the ongoing concerns about the abuse of process and arbitrary detention of Wet’suwet’en land defenders.

Canada and COP30

On September 8, 2025, the Canadian Press reported: “Prime Minister Mark Carney and his environment minister aren’t saying whether Canada is still committed to meeting its climate goals under the Paris agreement by 2030, as the government faces criticism over his emissions reduction plans.”

On October 25, 2025, CBC News reported: “The Prime Minister’s Office has yet to confirm if Carney will attend COP30.”

Meanwhile, Gitanyow land defenders are preparing to blockade the construction of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) fracked gas pipeline on their territories as a final investment decision on that megaproject is expected within weeks.

Coming up

PBI-Canada is following the Mesoamerican Caravan for the Climate and Life that was formed with the assertion that: “Activism in defense of land, territory, water, and nature is dangerous, and many of our comrades face stigmatization, harassment, repression, criminalization, and even murder.”

The Caravan is expected to arrive in Belém by November 10.

And this coming Tuesday November 18, we plan to hold a webinar that comments on COP30 and the protection needs of land and environmental defenders. You can pre-register for this webinar by clicking here.

COP30 is scheduled to conclude on November 21.

Photo from Rima Hassan. Dismantle Corporate Power notes that on October 19: “The day prior to the negotiations … activists and movements denounced the role of corporations like Chevron, BP, Microsoft, Amazon and Glencore in sustaining Israel’s occupation and genocide against the Palestinian people.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council is holding its 11^th negotiation session from October 20 to 24, 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland to conclude three years of negotiations on a Draft Binding Treaty on business and human rights first presented in July 2023.

Peace Brigades International is a member of the Dismantle Corporate Power global campaign that backs the creation of an effective Binding Treaty.

HRDs in the Binding Treaty

The current version of the Draft Treaty makes two references to human rights defenders:

(PP13) Emphasizing that civil society actors, including human rights defenders, have an important and legitimate role in promoting the respect of human rights by business enterprises, and in preventing, mitigating and in seeking effective remedy for business related human rights abuses, and that States have the obligation to take all appropriate measures to ensure an enabling and safe environment for the exercise of such role;

6.2. State Parties shall adopt appropriate legislative, regulatory, and other measures to: (d)  promote the active and meaningful participation of individuals and groups, such as trade unions, civil society, non-governmental organizations, indigenous peoples, and community-based organizations, in the development and implementation of laws, policies and other measures to prevent the involvement of business enterprises in human rights abuse.

6.4. Measures to achieve the ends referred to in Article 6.2 shall include legally enforceable requirements for business enterprises to undertake human rights due diligence as well as such supporting or ancillary measures as may be needed to ensure that business enterprises while carrying out human rights due diligence: (e) protect the safety of human rights defenders, journalists, workers, members of indigenous peoples, among others, as well as those who may be subject to retaliation;

An updated Draft Treaty in 2027

In a statement endorsed by PBI-United Kingdom, ABC Colombia and Corporate Justice Coalition have noted: “The treaty process is now entering a crucial phase, with a clear Methodology and Programme of Work … and an ambitious Roadmap for 2026, including an increased number of engagements, with a view to bringing forward a revised updated draft text in 2027.”

A Binding Treaty within 2-5 years?

In a press release issued on October 21, Dismantle Corporate Power highlights: “The UN Binding Treaty focuses on obligations, not pledges. It is grounded in the principle that corporations must be held legally accountable for human rights violations and environmental destruction throughout their operations and value chains.”

That press release concludes: “In the last years the treaty process has gained new momentum with a strong participation of many countries from Africa, Latin America and Asia. For the first time, the UN organised intersessional consultations throughout 2024, expanding beyond the usual single annual negotiation week. This shift marks renewed institutional backing to the process and raises expectations that the treaty could be finalised within the next two to five years.”

Corporate lobbying against a Binding Treaty

However, Chris O’Connell from the Irish organization Trócaire and the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights also comments on the lobbying that is now undermining achieving an effective Binding Treaty: “We find ourselves back in a context where political and business leaders are talking blithely about ‘cutting red tape’ and ‘simplification’, like they are simple efficiencies, and will not come at a huge costs to workers, to indigenous peoples, to the planet. That is not credible policymaking. Deregulation profits the powerful at the cost of the vulnerable; it always has and always will.”

Canada and the Binding Treaty

Canada has been long seen as obstructionist in achieving a Binding Treaty.

In October 2023, Via Campesina noted: “The countries who have not engaged or directly reject and have tried to stop the process are the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, as well as other highly industrialized countries with a high number of TNCs [transnational corporations] headquartered in their territories.”

Updates this week

For updates from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), go to Day 1: Monday 20 October and Day 2: Tuesday 21 October.

We continue to follow this.

Further reading

On October 24, 2024, PBI-Canada held a webinar that featured Yannick Wild, the Advocacy Coordinator for PBI-Switzerland, speaking about the Binding Treaty.

Wild explained: “The idea of the Binding Treaty was launched in 2014 with a Human Rights Council resolution with the idea to establish an Open Ended Intergovernmental Working Group to establish a legally-binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations.”

Wild also noted: “The idea was really to go beyond the voluntary basis of the Guiding Principles on business and human rights and to create this binding piece of international law because as we know business are guided by profit maximization and it’s asking a lot for them to voluntary do something to reduce those profits and some companies are actively violating human rights so definitely voluntary measures are not enough.”

He commented: “There are actually only two mentions of human rights defenders in the actual draft right now.”

“There is one in the preamble that provides the recognition of human rights defenders in preventing and seeking remedies for human rights violations committed by companies and it also formulates the obligations of states to ensure the safety of human rights defenders. Just a preamble but it establishes already the recognition that States must give to human rights defenders and this obligation to their safety.”

And then the most important article that says: “Measures by States to prevent involvement of business enterprises in human rights abuse shall include legally enforceable requirements for businesses while carrying out human rights due diligence to protect the safety of human rights defenders, journalists, workers, members of Indigenous peoples, among others, as well as those who may be subject to retaliation.”

Wild shared the link to the latest draft here.

Wild added: “There is opposition by some States that are skeptical about the role of human rights defenders. On the other hand, there have been also pushes to include more language about human rights defenders especially by Palestine in the last sessions.”

He further noted: “One of the bigger movements for the Binding Treaty is one that we are also part of as Peace Brigades International. The link to that movement is here. This is a coalition of 250 organizations and social movements that are affected by the activities of transnational corporations, groups that resist land grabs, mining activities, environmental destruction that are caused by transnational corporations globally. They are calling for a stronger Binding Treaty and they have also drafted their own draft treaty, the Peoples’ Treaty, where they are mentioning human rights defenders. One is that human rights lawyers and human rights defenders are allowed to act in litigation processes against transnational corporations. And the second part would be for human rights defenders to be recognized to respond to accusations against them in order to avoid criminalization and persecution.”