Presentation short abstract

Environmental defenders face intensifying violence linked to climate change and extractivism. Drawing on Kallied, a Global South community of practice, the paper examines how State–corporate repression operates and maps grassroots, collectively governed protection strategies for life and territory.

Presentation long abstract

Environmental defenders across the Global South face escalating violence -physical and digital attacks, criminalization and symbolic delegitimization- intensified by extractivism and climate pressures. This paper draws on Kallied, a community of practice of nine participatory action‑research projects led by over twenty organizations in more than thirty countries, to understand how repression operates and how communities build protection for those defending their territories.​​

First, we analyze the role of the State in contexts shaped by extractive frontiers, securitized climate policy and uneven governance, showing how institutions often enable or normalize intimidation through permissive regulation, selective prosecution and weak enforcement of protective norms, in close entanglement with corporate actors.​

Second, we examine grassroots strategies of resistance forged in response to criminalization and structural violence, including community‑led monitoring and feminist and Indigenous protection networks, among others, which aim at generating infrastructures of safety, care and narrative power from below.​

Finally, the paper identifies emerging, replicable practices across Kallied’s geographies -from Latin America to the Middle East, and from Africa to Southeast Asia- such as participatory risk assessments, collective early‑warning systems, digital citizen platforms to monitor the progress of the Escazú agreement and translocal solidarity protocols that can be adapted and scaled through community-academic alliances.​​

By foregrounding these experiences and knowledge, the paper contributes to political ecology debates on the limits of current environmental governance and argues for community‑centred, collectively governed protection models for those who defend life.