This chapter looks at the link between environmental disputes, movements, and defenders and the use of the law to target environmental defenders. It explains and clarifies how environmental conflict and ‘defenders’ are conceived and employed throughout the book. The chapter introduces the conceptual framework – hegemonic environmental lawfare (HEL) – used throughout the book to examine attacks against environmental defenders through legal means. Furthermore, the chapter elaborates on the strategic dimensions of HEL: geographies, weaponry, externalities, and resistance. It argues that HEL in Southeast Asia should be placed in a wider structural context by scrutinising the functions of law and legal institutions in capitalist development in the region. It is argued that HEL is a response and reaction to the question of legitimacy in relation to the political and economic status quo.

This chapter elaborates on environmental law and anti-SLAPP provisions in those countries. It explains how environmental law in these countries has evolved from an instrumental-based and piecemeal approach to an integrative and comprehensive one. Beyond that, environmental concerns have also been understood as a human rights issue, which has led to the incorporation of environmental rights in the constitution and relevant legislation and policies. In addition, environmental law provides legal frameworks how public participation in environmental matters concerns should be governed, facilitated, or constrained, which in turn has influenced how environmental movements conduct their struggles and how states and non-state actors implicated in their struggles respond to them. These legal frameworks are important elements that have shaped the ways in which public engagement on environmental issues is controlled, advanced, or restricted and how environmental movements navigate and mobilise those frameworks to make their claims.

This chapter explains the third strategic dimension of lawfare: externalities. As a form of strategic legal action, hegemonic environmental lawfare aims to create projective externalities, referring to the consequences that seek to be borne by environmental movements beyond the actual legal cases. The chapter is divided into two subheadings: (a) Leadership Decapitation, which discusses the outcomes of hegemonic environmental lawfare targeting those who are regarded as the central figures or leaders of environmental struggles, and (b) Creating Externalities, which elaborates on the impacts of lawfare beyond lawsuits concerning environmental movements in the countries.

This chapter traces the historical junctures that have shaped the political-economic trajectories in those countries. It explains the structural contexts through which environmental movements have emerged as responses to political and economic transformation. The chapter demonstrates how the political-economic structure of the country where they operate has shaped the diverse characteristics of environmental movements in terms of their organisational structures, strategies, and modalities.