92% of Environmental Defenders Victim of Online Attacks, Abuse

Among the numerous platforms where online abuse is rampant, Facebook is the platform most cited by environmental defenders where they have been victims of online abuse, followed by X, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

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Environmental defenders, historically subject of physical abuse, attacks, and appraisals, are now falling victim to new types of threats, this time disseminated online.

In recent years, environmental defenders who rely on digital platforms to organize, share information, and campaign have increasingly experienced and become the targets of online attacks, according to a new survey by Global Witness.

The non-profit surveyed land and environmental defenders through an online questionnaire between November 2024 and March of this year. Of the 204 defenders surveyed, 92% said they have experienced some form of online abuse or harassment as a result of their work. This ranged from personal cybersecurity attacks and doxxing to harassment and abuse.

Doxxing is an act of exposing someone’s private information, including their names and addresses, without their permission. Cyberattacks include hacking and data breaches, which aim to damage or gain unauthorised access to computer systems, networks, causing information to be leaked.

60% and 63% of respondents said that this kind of abuse made them feel anxious and fearful, respectively, about their own and their community’s safety. Meanwhile, 45% reported losing productivity as a result.

Environmental defenders play a crucial role in protecting the environment and defending key forests, habitats and ecosystems. Indigenous people alone steward around 20% of the Earth’s land, which contains 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity.

Facebook Leads the Way

Among the numerous platforms where online abuse is rampant, Facebook is the platform most cited by environmental defenders where they have been victims of online abuse, followed by X (formerly Twitter), WhatsApp, and Instagram.

In recent years, many of the most popular social media platforms have backtracked on fast checking and hate speech regulations.

In 2022, X dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, which had been addressing hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform since 2016. A year later, the platform – which is now owned by billionaire Elon Musk – removed a feature that had previously been allowing users to report misleading information, and more recently, it announced that it had hired just 100 in-house content moderators, significantly fewer than the 1,500 moderators the company employed before Musk’s tenure.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, followed suit, announcing in January this year that it would end its third-party fact-checking program in the US and relax its hate speech policies. The company said the shift aims to promote free speech, but it was welcomed with widespread criticism for fears that the spread of misinformation and hate speech would go unchecked.

Global Witness warned that these moves allow for hate speech, climate denial, and death threats to proliferate unchecked, endangering the work of environmental defenders and ending up silencing them.

“They have said things like, ‘If I were there, I would run you over with my car,’ or ‘This is why I have a shotgun’,” said Fanø, a member of different climate activist groups in Denmark. “I reported these threats to Facebook, who said they would investigate, but nothing seems to have happened.”

Almost three-quarters of defenders said they reported abusive and harassing behavior to the platforms, but only 12% were satisfied with their response.

Regional Disparities

The survey also identified regional disparities among online platforms in their allocation of resources to protect defenders.

Although the survey found that online abuse against environmental defenders is relatively evenly distributed globally, 72% of European defenders said they had at least received a response to their complaint, while half of African respondents denied receiving any kind of response.

Defenders who reported being subjected to abuse online also reported being attacked in the real world, with 75% of respondents who experienced offline harm for their activities saying they believed online harm has “directly” or “somewhat” contributed to it. The vast majority of defenders having experienced offline harm –  84% – were from Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

196 defenders were murdered in 2023 while exercising their right to protect their lands and the environment, according to the Global Witness report published last year. 85% of all killings occurred in Latin America, where poor legal safeguards, widespread corruption, and fierce disputes over land and resources make it one of the most perilous regions for environmental defenders.

“I think there is a relationship between what’s happening online and offline. Attackers use the online space as a means of defamation and shaming, and then use the offline space to physically threaten us, putting us under surveillance,” said Sharanya, who has been working with NGOs in India for more than two decades.

“They are trying to silence us. These are tactics and strategies that they use to try to malign us, and put fear into us,” she added.

This is not the first time that defenders have faced hate speech on these platforms. A 2023 Global Witness survey revealed that 39% of 468 climate scientists had experienced online harassment related to their work, with this figure rising to 49% among more achieved scientists. The abuse mostly took place on X and Facebook.

Featured image: Karen Toro/Climate Visuals Countdown.