COP31: New advocacy brief calls for climate justice through increased participation, recognition and protection of environmental human rights defenders

In an advocacy brief published today, the Observatory (FIDH-OMCT) partners with over 100 organisations from all regions to outline the challenges faced by EHRDs globally, and formulate core recommendations for amplifying their voices and recognition within five key negotiation streams of the next UN Climate Conference (COP31): the Gender Action Plan (GAP), the Global Stocktake (GST), the Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), the Just Transition Belém-Antalya Mechanism (BAM), and the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA).

Gender Action Plan (GAP)

The GAP is the UN climate process's framework for putting gender equality at the heart of climate action. It aims to make sure women can influence climate decisions on an equal footing through concrete activities, deliverables and timelines which governments, UN bodies and civil society are expected to implement from the global to the local level. The second GAP (2026-2034), adopted at COP30, references "women environmental defenders" explicitly for the first time.

Recommendations for COP31:

• Prioritise GAP deliverables on women EHRDs as well as protection guidelines with clear timelines, responsible actors and resources co-designed with the defenders themselves,
• Translate gender-responsive climate finance commitments into accessible, direct, grant-based funding for women-led and community-led organisations.

Global Stocktake (GST)

The GST is essentially the world's climate "inventory check": a review, done every five years, where countries and stakeholders look collectively at progress toward the Paris Agreement's goals, including limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C. The findings are then supposed to feed into countries' next rounds of national climate action plans (known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs). The first GST concluded in 2023 at COP28, while the second (GST2) launches at COP31 in Antalya. It is often called an "ambition mechanism", designed to make sure countries keep ramping up action rather than backtracking.

Recommendations for COP31:

• Ensure the information collection phase explicitly gathers evidence on how climate action, including NDCs, adaptation plans and transition projects, has respected, protected and fulfilled the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and EHRDs.
• Actively reflect inputs from human rights defenders (HRDs), Indigenous Peoples, and civil society.
• Guarantee safe, accessible and meaningful participation of HRDs in the technical dialogues, including hybrid options and protection from reprisals.
• Ensure the GST2 outcome guides Parties on integrating the protection of HRDs, civic space, public participation and access to information into their next NDCs.

Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE)

ACE is the UN climate process's workstream for empowering people. Its overall goal is to empower all members of society to engage in climate action through six elements: education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation. In practice, that means things like climate education in schools, training teachers and communities, and ensuring citizens can access information and take part in climate decision-making, making it the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)'s most direct route to commitments on civic space.

Recommendations for COP31:

• Ensure activities under the public participation and access to information elements explicitly address the enabling environment for civil society and the protection of EHRDs, including by countering climate disinformation.
• Recognise HRDs and civil society organisations as implementers of ACE and provide dedicated, accessible funding for their participation in UNFCCC processes and for their education, training and awareness-raising work.
• Invite Parties to report through ACE national focal points and national communications on the barriers faced by HRDs, including attacks, criminalisation and reprisals, and on steps taken towards protecting them and recognising their role as climate actors.
• Mandate an interactive workshop within the ACE Dialogues focused specifically on HRDs.
• Strengthen coherence with the Belém GAP activities on women environmental defenders, the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, and the regional Escazú and Aarhus agreements.
• Ensure the new action plan is informed by HRDs' submissions.

Belém-Antalya Mechanism on Just Transition (BAM)

The BAM is a new mechanism agreed at COP30 and due to be established at COP31, designed to ensure that transition pathways across all sectors advance, social justice, human rights, workers' and communities' livelihoods, Indigenous Peoples' collective rights, gender transformation and the right to a healthy environment. In practice, it would help countries cooperate by generating knowledge, providing technical support, means of implementation, and building capacity so that the road to net-zero is fair, inclusive and rooted in human rights. Its exact rules, governance and functions still have to be agreed at COP31.

Recommendations for COP31:

• Anchor the BAM's purpose, functioning and guiding principles in human rights safeguards.
• Establish the BAM as a constituted body under the UNFCCC.
• Provide for governance, institutional and knowledge-creation processes that centre meaningful and formal roles for EHRDs and rightsholder constituencies.
• Ensure social dialogue with the full and meaningful inclusion of labour rights defenders and trade unions.
• Respect and promote the rights and ancestral knowledge of Indigenous Peoples and defenders, including through the respect of free, prior and informed consent, precautionary and no-contact principles, and no-go approaches preventing top-down harmful activities in Indigenous territories.
• Include functions for technical assistance, guidance and capacity-building on human rights norms, due diligence, public participation and community-led collective protection and transition pathways.
• Establish safeguards, accountability and an accessible grievance mechanism with a clear policy against reprisals.
• Ensure the review of the Just Transition Work Programme assesses HRDs', rightsholders' and communities' participation and addresses barriers to their safe engagement.

Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)

The GGA is the world's collective commitment to adjusting to climate change impacts, formally, "enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability". It exists to give adaptation the same political weight and finance push as emissions cuts. At COP28 in 2023, countries finally agreed on its operational framework, the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, which sets thematic targets for where countries need to build resilience (like food, water and health) and dimensional targets for how they should organise and report that work. At COP30, Parties adopted 59 "Belém Adaptation Indicators" to measure progress, and ongoing negotiations (the Belém-Addis Vision) are working out how to apply those indicators in practice. At the pre-COP31 meeting in June 2026 (SB64), negotiations stalled over the taskforce's composition and modalities and over how to reference the tripling of adaptation finance. Discussions are expected to restart at COP31. What is measured shapes what is done: if the indicators and guidance capture only physical and sectoral outputs, the governance conditions that determine whether adaptation is effective and rights-respecting - participation, access to information and justice, and the safety of those who speak up, including HRDs - will remain invisible.

Recommendations for COP31:

• Agree on the composition and working modalities of the technical taskforce so it provides for the meaningful participation of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, children, youth, women and knowledge holders, including through rights-based constituencies and bodies.
• Ensure that guidance developed under the Belém-Addis Vision addresses governance and enabling conditions, including public participation, access to information and justice, FPIC, land and tenure security, and the safety of communities and HRDs engaged in adaptation.
• Encourage disaggregation of indicator data by social groups so adaptation progress can be assessed for those most exposed.
• Resolve the means of implementation and the tripling of adaptation finance so that support reaches community level and indicators are not used to condition access to finance.
• Ensure that the 2029 review draws on evidence from affected communities and HRDs, not only national reporting systems.
• Ensure that the Belém-Addis Vision and the Baku Adaptation Roadmap reinforce rather than fragment the adaptation architecture, with meaningful participation of developing countries, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, HRDs and rights-based constituencies.
• Ensure related COP31 adaptation items examine whether adaptation planning has been participatory and whether FPIC and tenure rights were respected.

Access and the right to participation

Finally and importantly, the joint briefer calls for effective access and participation of EHRDs in all the COP work streams and related activities, including by:

• Ensuring that they can exercise their rights without fear of intimidation and reprisals and they can freely express themselves and peacefully assemble inside and outside the COP venue.
• Removing practical barriers to participation, including through financial support, timely and predictable visa processing and reliable hybrid participation options for EHRDs.
• Keeping negotiation rooms open to observers wherever permitted.

Read the full advocacy brief here

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (the Observatory) was created in 1997 by FIDH and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT). The objective of this programme is to intervene to prevent or remedy situations of repression against human rights defenders. FIDH and OMCT are both members of ProtectDefenders.eu, the European Union Human Rights Defenders Mechanism implemented by international civil society.