Defending the People Who Advance Climate Action

Hong Hoang speaking at “Agents of Change: How Environmental Human Rights Defenders Advance Global Climate Action” during Climate Week NYC, September 2025.

By Hong Hoang

In September 2025, I spoke at Agents of Change: How Environmental Human Rights Defenders Advance Global Climate Action during Climate Week NYC. The panel highlighted the work of environmental defenders around the world and the networks and organizations working to protect them.

For me, the conversation was deeply personal. I was one of six environmental and climate NGO leaders arrested in Vietnam between 2021 and 2023. Five of us were convicted of “tax evasion,” and one of “appropriating documents.”

By the time of the panel, I was free and able to reconnect with colleagues and participate in climate conversations. My former colleague Dang Dinh Bach, however, remained in prison more than four years after his arrest. He has since been released, but his absence weighed heavily on me that week.

Speaking about the people still behind bars was one way to make my own freedom meaningful. It was also an opportunity to explain what is lost when environmental leaders are silenced: community relationships, local knowledge, and years of work toward solutions.

My central message was simple: silencing defenders violates human rights and delays the climate solutions we urgently need.

Protecting environmental defenders must be part of climate action itself. The people doing this work need the freedom to organize, speak up, and bring their communities into decisions that affect their future.