SLAPPs are increasingly harming environmental defenders ability to speak out. When working to ensure environmental defenders are protected, decision-makers need to take note and ensure strong protections against SLAPPs make up part of this defense, writes Ruby Silk.
As democratic norms face continued rollback across parts of Europe, environmental defenders are coming under pressure from multiple directions, including shrinking civic space, the increasing criminalisation of protest, stigmatisation by the media and, increasingly, the use of SLAPPs – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
These are bully lawsuits designed not to win on legal merit, but to intimidate, exhaust, and silence those speaking out in the public interest. Often framed as defamation claims, reputational disputes, or civil complaints, SLAPPs can trap environmental defenders in lengthy and expensive legal battles where the process itself becomes the punishment.
While SLAPPs have long been recognised within journalism and media freedom circles, their growing impact on environmental defenders has so far received less attention. Yet across Europe, activists, local residents’ groups, journalists, and NGOs bringing attention to pollution, extractive industries, or environmentally harmful development are increasingly finding themselves targeted through the courts.
Protecting environmental defenders therefore means more than safeguarding the right to protest. It also means recognising and confronting the use of vexatious litigation designed to chill public participation before people ever speak out at all. The UN Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders under the Aarhus Convention, Michel Forst, highlights this in his Guidelines on the Right to Peaceful Environmental Protest and Civil Disobedience, where he makes concrete recommendations to States.
SLAPPing the planet’s last line of defence
In the environmental context, SLAPPs are increasingly being used as a tool for powerful actors harming the environment to protect their reputation at any cost.
According to the latest report by the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE), environmental issues are among the most common triggers for SLAPP cases, with environmental defenders identified as one of the groups most heavily targeted for their public watchdog role. The range of claimants is broad: fossil fuel companies, waste management firms, developers, construction companies, and mining corporations have all been linked to SLAPP-style litigation.
A quick look at the public cases receiving support from UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders shows how frequently SLAPPs now appear in disputes involving environmental defenders.
In Armenia, for instance, journalist and environmental activist Tehmine Yenokyan has faced defamation proceedings brought by mining companies after raising concerns about environmental damage linked to their operations. While, in Switzerland, the NGO Bruno Manser Fonds and its director Dr Lukas Straumann have been targeted with legal action by Sakto Corporation in relation to campaigns highlighting alleged environmental harm and corruption connected to rainforest deforestation in Borneo.
These are not isolated disputes but the tip of the iceberg. A look over Forst’s cases reflects a wider structural trend where environmental reporting and advocacy increasingly meet legal retaliation from powerful economic actors. Those protecting our right to a healthy environment are being targeted for their public service and dragged through dishonest civil and even sometimes criminal cases designed to wear them down mentally and physically.
From global corporations to local communities
For many within the environmental movement, the term SLAPP was put on their radar through the high-profile lawsuit that oil giant Energy Transfer brought against Greenpeace over their (symbolic) role in supporting the Indigenous-led resistance movement against the Dakota Access oil Pipeline in the US. In February 2025, a North Dakota judge ordered Greenpeace entities to pay $345m in damages to the company, sending shockwaves through civil society and environmental movements worldwide.
The dispute has since entered a new phase. In February 2025, Greenpeace International initiated proceedings to counter-sue Energy Transfer in the Netherlands in what is being closely watched as a landmark test of the EU’s first ever anti-SLAPP law.
While the Greenpeace case drew global attention, fossil fuel companies are far from being novices in using litigation to silence critics.
In the last year alone, CASE has identified several SLAPPs brought by energy companies seeking to protect their reputations. Italian oil and gas company Eni launched proceedings against Greenpeace entities and ReCommon over criticism of its environmental record, while Fox Petroli S.p.A. sought €2 million in damages from two local campaigners opposing an LNG development in Pesaro, Italy.
SLAPPs are not only the domain of multinational energy corporations either.
In Poland, waste management company 3S sp. z o.o. has targeted the grassroots residents’ association Stop! Zagłębie Śmieciowe (“Stop the Rubbish Dump!”) after the group raised concerns about plans for a hazardous waste facility near homes and schools in Mszczonów.
A court ordered the association to shut down its Facebook page – a key communication tool for the local community – despite the group having posted only minimally on the issue and without explicitly naming the company. The company is also seeking the removal of content and approximately €15,000 in damages, an amount far beyond the association’s annual budget.
Such cases abound. Where powerful actors perceive environmental criticism as a reputational threat, SLAPPs are increasingly becoming part of the response.
Institutional recognition – and its limits
The growing visibility of SLAPPs has prompted institutional attention, including at EU level. On 7 May 2024, the European Union adopted its first anti-SLAPP directive, aimed at creating procedural safeguards against abusive litigation.
However, within expert discussions on environmental defenders, concerns remain about whether these protections adequately reflect the realities faced by those on the frontline for our planet.
In his official communications, the UN Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders has repeatedly highlighted how many of the cases reaching his mandate already involve SLAPP dynamics. He has also called for the explicit inclusion of environmental defenders within anti-SLAPP protections, arguing that safeguards should not rely on narrow or ambiguous interpretations of who qualifies for protection.
As of 7 May 2026, the deadline for EU Member States to transpose the anti-SLAPP directive into national law has now passed. While some countries, such as Belgium, have developed relatively strong protections, implementation elsewhere remains weak or incomplete, raising concerns about uneven protection across Europe.
What is needed
Anti-SLAPP protections must be meaningful in practice: early dismissal of abusive cases, adequate access to free legal assistance, making the SLAPP claimant pay all costs, and include these protections for all types of SLAPP cases, be they civil or criminal, national or cross-border.
This also means explicitly including environmental defenders within national anti-SLAPP legislation rather than leaving their protection open to interpretation. It also means equipping courts to identify and dismiss abusive claims early, ensuring legal support is accessible to SLAPP targets, and using corporate accountability mechanisms to address the misuse of litigation as a tool of intimidation. The Council of Europe’s recommendations on countering the use of SLAPPs can provide a useful guide for countries to developing robust anti-SLAPP laws that go beyond the limited scope of the EU Directive.
More broadly, SLAPPs need to be recognised as a common experience for environmental defenders across Europe, and abusive claimants should be named and shamed for their misuse of the justice system and intimidation tactics.
With the inaugural Forum on Environmental Human Rights Defenders set to take place in Strasbourg next week, there is an important opportunity to raise awareness about how SLAPPs function and how defenders can respond. Greater recognition would help defenders understand their rights, support organisations to prepare appropriate responses, and ensure judges and lawyers are better able to identify SLAPPs for what they are. It would also send an important message to powerful actors: using litigation to suppress criticism should not be treated as a legitimate strategy, and it will come with due reputational damage.
Getting serious about supporting defenders
SLAPPs are not ordinary legal disputes. They are a means through which powerful actors can reshape environmental politics through legal intimidation – determining who can speak, who must defend themselves, and which debates can safely take place.
For environmental defenders already operating within increasingly constrained civic spaces, they represent a growing barrier to participation in public life.
If Europe is serious about protecting public participation, anti-SLAPP protections must become practical shields for those on the frontlines of environmental protection – before the cost of speaking out becomes too high for anyone to bear.
Want to take action?
You can still sign the petition to tell EU governments to hurry up and transpose the law, and why not mention environmental defenders in your note: https://action.wemove.eu/sign/2026-04-anti-slapps-petition-EN/
