This publication from HIC-HLRN recounts how informal settlement communities are increasingly displaced in the name of environmental protection, climate adaptation, and disaster risk reduction, or in cases where such preventive measures are lacking. From flood mitigation projects in Latin America to conservation zones in Africa and coastal resilience programs in Asia, environmental concerns are weaponized to justify evictions that violate human rights and perpetuate urban inequality. While genuine environmental risks demand action, the dominant response—forced evictions without adequate resettlement or community participation—transforms environmental governance into a tool of displacement. The Global Goal on Adaptation indicators, adopted at CoP30, may pose a further risk of incentivizing relocations that disregard and, thereby, violate individual and collective rights, which arise from common human needs.

“Green evictions” were the subject of a side event organized by MISEREOR in the Habitat Village at WUF13 prompted a discussion among partners sharing their respective findings from experience with the subject. This report memorializes HLRN’s prepared response to questions about HLRN’s 20-year experience with the Violation Database (VDB), whereas a growing number of documented cases involve governments, development banks, conservation organizations, or local authorities justifying human settlement removals in the name of “climate adaptation,” “disaster risk reduction,” “resilience,” or “managed retreat.” Meanwhile, affected communities argue that the processes have been coercive, inadequately consulted, foreseeable and, thus, deliberate destruction and/or qualify as “forced eviction.”

HLRN observes that environmental protection is structurally coherent only if it preserves both ecosystems and the rights of inhabitants in sustainable balance. However, a “green” project requiring coercive displacement reproduces the same domination logic as extractive colonialism. They have different branding, but retain the same structure and outcomes. This publication highlights some of the major illustrative cases and their structural contradictions.