Category: News

The Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders stands in solidarity with activists and defenders across the world in calling for climate justice this Global Day of Action, November 15.

The Asia Pacific is scourged by destructive resource extraction and exploitation by mining companies, agribusiness, aggressive infrastructure development, and other forms of wasteful and unsustainable industry, perpetrated by corporations that put their interests and profits over rights, lives, and communities. We have also seen that where these pillagers operate, they are most often protected by the state – the very entity that we expect to regulate and restrict their destructive behavior.

As the fight to protect and recognize the rights of our environmental defenders continues, APNED heads to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, to demand our advocacies.

With the upcoming action-packed conference, here is our schedule of side events, exhibits, and actions.

On October 28, 2025, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted the ASEAN Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment. The four-page document cites existing ASEAN instruments on the environment and reiterates the region’s commitment to uphold environmental rights.

The largest humanitarian effort to break the Israeli coastal enclave in Palestine – the Global Sumud Flotilla – was harshly intercepted by Israeli military forces yesterday. Organizers on the intercepted vessels reported their vessels being rammed at sea, fired at by water cannons, and forcibly boarded by the IDF, along with signal jamming and encirclement by drones.

We have seen that in the third quarter of this year, there is no rest to the amount of attacks that environmental defenders all over the region face.  Criminalization, land grabbing, unlawful detention, killings, and other types of lethal and non-lethal attacks continue to run rampant. Now, even more than ever, we see the need […]

Across Asia, people’s movements militantly express their outrage and reclaim their futures from corrupt and repressive regimes through different forms of protest. This growing surge fights back against systems of oppression, exploitation, and destruction that have long plagued the region. These experiences teach us that when people unite, change happens.

The Asia Pacific Network of Environmental Defenders (APNED) stands with solidarity with the outraged peoples of Indonesia who are exercising their right to protest against the widespread corruption and anti-people policies of the Prabowo administration and sounds the call for environmental defenders to condemn and call for the end of the violent crackdown that the Prabowo administration has unleashed on Indonesian protesters.

On this day, we commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared, and we continue to find hope in our struggle for justice for environmental defenders who were forcibly disappeared and taken from their families, their communities, and the lands and ecosystems they fight for.

As we move forward to the second half of this year, support and solidarity from civil society groups have strengthened and helped our fight succeed in many ways. In this newsletter, we highlight stories of mass solidarity amid the worsening attacks and battles that our environmental defenders experience. We also spotlight the warmth of support, the solid resistance that keeps our movement alive and strong.