Author: apned_admin

As we conclude the third quarter of 2026, the ongoing fight to safeguard our environment and protect those who defend it remains as urgent as ever. Across Asia and the Pacific, environmental defenders continue to face severe risks—from arbitrary detentions and judicial harassment to systemic violence and state-sponsored repression—while standing on the front lines of escalating climate disasters, including devastating flash floods in Nepal, widespread flooding across the Philippines and Thailand, and the looming threat of a Super El Niño alongside destructive mining, deforestation, and climate inaction. 

On this International Day of the Disappeared, we stand in unyielding solidarity with the land and environmental defenders who have been forcibly taken from their families and communities. These courageous individuals put their lives on the line every day to protect the natural ecosystems, ancestral lands, and vital resources that humanity depends on. 

The Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders (APNED) stands in solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples and local communities of Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines, who are defending their lands, livelihoods, water sources, and environment from the mining exploration activities of North Luzon Mineral Resources Corporation (NLMRC).

For many of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, defending the environment is inseparable from defending their collective rights, identities, cultures, livelihoods, and ways of life. Their spiritual and material relationships with their lands, territories, waters, and resources sustain their communities and carry responsibilities to future generations. These relationships are protected under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the rights to maintain their institutions and cultures, determine their own development priorities, and conserve and protect their environment.

The Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders (APNED) stands in solidarity with the Pala’wan Indigenous communities and fellow environmental defenders in Brooke’s Point, Palawan, who continue to defend their ancestral lands, forests, watersheds, and communities from large-scale nickel mining.

Women environmental human rights defenders are protecting our forests, rivers, oceans, lands, and communities—often at great personal risk. Rise & Resist: Women Leading Environmental and Human Rights Defense in Asia and the Pacific shares the inspiring stories of ten women defenders from eight countries across the region. Their experiences reveal both the challenges they face—from […]

As we reach halfway 2026, the Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders (APNED) we dive head one despite arising challenges for environmental human rights defenders in the Asia-Pacific. Read about the latest updates our network has followed, as well as promising developments in environmental rights from April to June 2026! Following five years of imprisonment […]

The Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders (APNED) joins Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, environmental defenders, human rights groups, and civil society in calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Pranab Doley, an Indigenous land and environmental rights defender arrested by Assam Police in Guwahati, India, on 12 July 2026.

As communities around the world commemorate World Environment Day, the Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders (APNED) raises the alarm on a growing threat to environments, climate justice, and environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) across Asia and the Pacific: the escalating militarism and warmongering of the United States of America in pursuit of geopolitical and economic dominance.

We strongly condemn the killings last April 19 in Barangay Salamanca, Toboso, Negros Occidental, Philippines, perpetrated by the 79th Infantry Battalion of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Reports from the ground point to yet another series of violations of international humanitarian law by state forces in communities already persisting through waves of various land and environmental issues.