“The Global South is not on the front page, but it is on the front line”, argues Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate. Her words highlight an imbalance: many nations in the Global South are among the most vulnerable to climate change, yet they remain largely absent from mainstream climate discourse. Their stories rarely make international headlines, their solutions seldom inform global policy, and their urgent needs frequently go unaddressed in climate negotiations dominated by the Global North.
However, there are some at the forefront who refuse to stay silent. Earth defenders are community leaders, Indigenous peoples, scientists, artists, and campaigners working to protect their homes, water, land, and forests from destruction. Why is listening to their voices so crucial?
- Earth defenders bear the brunt of climate breakdown
As the people working to protect their communities on the frontlines of climate change, earth defenders directly experience the effects of the crisis. Extreme weather events have caused mass casualties, overwhelmed hospitals, damaged homes and essential infrastructure, and destroyed crops. Often lacking resources to respond effectively due to colonial legacies and ongoing neocolonial dynamics, the Global South is disproportionately vulnerable to climate breakdown. Pakistan exemplifies this vulnerability: it is highly susceptible to climate change yet constrained by a weak economy, substantial debt, ongoing loan dependency, and limited climate-resilient infrastructure. In 2022, torrential rains and flash floods affected a population of 33 million nationwide, killing nearly 2,000 people and injuring more than 12,000. Over one million homes were damaged, and close to 900,000 were razed, while hundreds of bridges and roads and tens of thousands of schools were destroyed. More than one million livestock were killed alongside widespread crop destruction. In the disaster’s aftermath, the country struggled to implement basic survival measures, such as rehabilitating water supplies, building makeshift shelters on higher ground, and establishing health camps for communities lacking access to sanitation. Compare this disaster response to Spain’s 2024 floods: €16.6 billion in aid covering everything from car replacements to school textbooks and school materials.
Beyond immediate damages, climate disasters have far-reaching consequences, like inflating food prices and driving mass migration—impacts that overwhelmingly affect the Global South. In 2024, food prices soared worldwide due to extreme weather events. Ethiopia, a country with high hunger levels, experienced a 40% increase in March 2023, further pushing the most vulnerable into food insecurity and poor health. Climate migration data from Oxfam highlights this North-South disparity, showing that people in low- and lower-middle-income countries are around five times more likely to be displaced by sudden extreme weather disasters compared to those in high-income countries.
Despite bearing these disproportionate impacts, voices in hard-hit regions are rarely listened to, let alone recorded by Western-centric media. This blind spot demands correction: those facing climate breakdown must guide the decision-making on global action.
- Earth defenders face state and corporate repression
The number of climate disasters is increasing, yet the civic space for climate advocacy worldwide is shrinking. In resource-rich regions of the Global South, governments often view activists as threats to lucrative extraction deals with multinational corporations, intensifying repression ranging from legal harassment and intimidation to detention. In Uganda, activists protesting against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), one of the largest and most controversial fossil fuel projects currently underway, routinely face threats and arbitrary arrests. According to Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of the non-profit Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO): “Here, if you oppose what the government and the company [TotalEnergies] are doing, you become the enemy. And once you’re in their sights, you have to face the consequences.” This crackdown escalated dramatically in February 2025, when 11 anti-EACOP student protestors were charged with the colonial-era “common nuisance” offence and imprisoned in a high-security jail.
Hostility against climate advocates has even culminated in lethal violence. Since 2012, the year it started recording data, Global Witness estimates that more than 2,100 climate activists have been killed worldwide—this includes over 1,500 since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015. A 2024 report by the organisation listed 196 murdered activists in 2023 (the actual number is likely higher), with Latin America accounting for 85% of those cases. In these regions, activists are often the target of organised crime groups involved in mining, logging, or drug trafficking that operate with impunity due to weak or corrupted state institutions.
Given these systematic threats, platforming earth defenders has become vital and urgent. It brings widespread attention to their cause, making it harder for governments and crime groups to silence them with impunity, while building protective international solidarity networks.
- Earth defenders possess frontline climate expertise
Earth defenders are usually custodians of traditional ecological knowledge. When local ecosystems face threats, this knowledge becomes the foundation for community-led solutions. Consider, for example, the “conchera women” (shell women) of Tumaco, Colombia, who have harvested piangua for generations. The nutrient-rich mollusc lives around the roots of the mangrove trees, where the women hand-harvest it for use in traditional dishes. Anabel Magallanes, a conchera woman, describes the harvest: “We arrive in the morning, we do a ritual, asking the mangrove for permission to collect [piangua]. It takes us between three or four hours, depending on the rise of the tide, since the shells are found in the mangrove. We return to our homes and do a cleaning process to sell it locally or to make a traditional dish.” When piangua numbers gradually fell due to deforestation, the women came together. They created “Roots: Women Sowers of Change”, a mangrove-planting scheme led by UN Women in coordination with the Colombian government and local organisations. So far, 12,000 mangrove seedlings have been planted with promising downstream results: revitalised breeding grounds for marine life and boosted carbon sequestration.
The conchera women’s success exemplifies what earth defenders can do: sustainably manage and restore local ecosystems. As climate breakdown accelerates, this on-the-ground traditional expertise could transform global restoration efforts, especially when bolstered by scientific collaboration and adequate funding.
- Conclusion
Earth defenders endure the worst of climate breakdown, face violent repression for their advocacy, and hold important knowledge which could inform climate solutions. Yet, despite being on the frontlines, they remain excluded from global decision-making.
Addressing this representation gap, Flotilla4Change has interviewed such activists from the Pacific Islands, the Niger Delta, Chile, and Brazil in the lead-up to COP30. Their “Stories of Solidarity” event series challenges Western-centric narratives and offers grounded, grassroots solutions.
As Vanessa Nakate states: “A lot needs to change in the media. Because if we do not tell the stories of those affected the most, how will we get justice and solutions for them?” Listening to earth defenders and, from there, forging global, intersectional alliances is not just necessary—it is the only way forward.
Author: Eva Morisot 05/09/2025