A growing number of initiatives by academic, civil society and multilateral organizations is seeking to promote and protect environmental rights, protect enabling civic spaces and their defenders. Aiming to inform human rights and conservation policy processes, this ‘Geneva Roadmap’ event brings together leading organizations to take stock of the situation of environmental defenders around the world, review existing support initiatives, debate possible response modalities, and advance more systematic collaboration in the long-term.

In response and as a follow-up to the HRC Resolution 40/11, the Geneva Roadmap for Promoting Environmental Rights, enabling civic spaces and Protecting Defenders will seek to  promote free and safe spaces for information and discussion on environmental matters, provide a collective platform in which initiatives and commitments of States, civil society, research and academia or private actors could be supportive of each other, and ultimately support the effective implementation of the right to act for the protection of the environment and environmental rights

Hosted in Geneva, this 2-day workshop co-organized with Sussex/Oxford, University of British Columbia, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Earthjustice, the Geneva Environmental Network, the Geneva Science Policy Interface and the Special Rapporteur on Human rights and the Environment. It is planned with a possible side-event organized in connection with the March, 2020 session of the Human Rights Council, and feeds into the World Conservation Congress held in June, 2020.