We Didn’t Choose to Become Environmental Defenders — But Here We Are
By Save Our Sperrins
We’re not lawyers. We’re not career campaigners. Most of us never expected to find ourselves filing planning objections, organising public inquiries, or facing down multinational mining companies. But when the land you love is threatened—when the hills that raised you are marked for extraction—you either walk away, or you stand up. We chose to stand.
For over ten years now, we’ve been resisting a proposed gold mine in the heart of the Sperrin Mountains, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the north of Ireland. What started as a quiet planning application has become a long, exhausting, and deeply personal struggle—not just for our environment, but for our rights, our peace of mind, and the future of our communities.
From the outside, it might look like a local dispute. But we’ve come to understand that what we’re part of is something much bigger: a frontline in the global fight for climate justice and human rights.
Because gold mining isn’t clean. It’s not green. It’s one of the most polluting industries on Earth—driven by speculation and greed, not public need. The mining company behind the proposal claims to support a green transition by extracting “critical minerals”—but the communities and ecosystems they’re prepared to destroy tell a different story.
Our experience echoes what’s happening across the world: rural, Indigenous and marginalised communities are being asked to sacrifice their health, water, land, and heritage in the name of “progress.” We’re told it’s about jobs and development. But the jobs are temporary, and the damage is permanent.
What makes it worse is that the systems meant to protect us don’t. Planning processes are stacked against ordinary people. Legal safeguards are weak. Regulators are underfunded or asleep at the wheel. And when we speak out—peacefully, creatively, collectively—we’re often met with surveillance, suspicion, and silence.
We’ve watched neighbours burned out by stress. Seen sacred ground become contested terrain. We’ve had to become experts in legislation we never asked to learn. And yet, time and again, we’ve had to ask the same question: why are volunteers doing the job of the state?
Why is environmental jurisprudence left to farmers, grandmothers, and teachers working late into the night on unpaid submissions—just to uphold the most basic rights to clean water, fresh air, and a liveable climate?
That’s where the human rights crisis lies.
Mary Lawlor’s support has helped make that visible. When she visited us in July 2025 and stood beside us, she brought with her not just international recognition, but dignity. She reminded us that the right to defend your land is not a nuisance—it’s a right enshrined in international law. Her presence gave weight to what we’ve always known: defending the earth is defending human rights.
As we speak, the company still holds a live application to mine in the Sperrins. They’ve recently added “critical minerals” to their list, hoping to reposition gold mining as part of the green transition. But we know this isn’t a just transition if it requires communities like ours to be sacrificed—quietly, slowly, and with no real say.
We know the world is in crisis. We know big decisions need to be made. But a just transition means listening to those most affected—not silencing them. It means recognising that climate solutions must not replicate the same extractive, top-down model that caused the damage in the first place.
We didn’t ask to become defenders. But we are. And we’re still here.
Save Our Sperrins
In the lead up to the presentation of her latest report to the UN General Assembly in October 2025, the Special Rapporteur invited human rights defenders working on climate change and a just transition to share their insights, experience and hopes in guest blogs. They will be accessible at: https://srdefenders.org/human-rights-defenders-and-climate-change/
