The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Kremlin and other authoritarian regimes are engaged in a global effort to undermine democratic institutions and norms. While their tactics and scale differ, authoritarian actors weaken democratic governance in order to strengthen corrupt and kleptocratic networks that enrich their economic interests at the expense of citizens. They promote and sustain authoritarianism by providing security, financing and technological tools to help keep undemocratic regimes in power. Authoritarian powers are also undermining the liberal international order by weakening international bodies, especially those with human rights protection responsibilities.   

Environmental exploitation is another key component of the authoritarian playbook that has not been sufficiently considered within the overall response by global democracies. This exploitation plays out along all three tracks of authoritarian action. Authoritarian regimes weaken democratic governance through natural resource deals that enrich the elite and prop up their unpopular, insecure regimes. Environmental exploitation is a method of authoritarian control internally primarily of minority, ethnic populations, which authoritarian regimes export externally to promote and sustain authoritarianism. With authoritarianism on the rise, environmental defenders are increasingly at risk, and their internationally accepted human rights and protections are under attack. To date, democracies’ response to growing authoritarianism has been predominantly security and technological countermeasures. Environmental defense has been considered a separate issue related to the changing climate. It is crucial in the fight for democracy and national security that the environment be a key consideration in countering rising authoritarianism.

For countries like China and Russia, environmental resources are exploited as instruments of state and political control. China’s building of an irrigation tunnel in Xinjiang is expressly intended to attract more ethnic Han in order to change the region’s ethnic composition. China’s environmental degradation of the Tibetan Plateau has destroyed Tibetan culture and a way of life that exists in harmony with nature and practices conservation and preservation of the natural world. Natural resource exploitation fuels China’s economic growth and development internally; this exploitation of the environment as an instrument of political control and economic extraction is a model that China supports globally for its own economic gain.  

The former Soviet Union exploited the environments of its constituent ethnic republics to support its rapid industrialization and to fuel its economic growth. Today, Russia still exercises this pattern of imperial power in countries formerly under Soviet control as Moscow establishes opaque, extractive economies in neighboring territories it has seized through conflict (South Ossetia and North Abkhazia in Georgia and the Donbas and Crimea in Ukraine). At the same time that Moscow’s environmental exploitation has fed its imperial power, its particular level of destruction and impoverishment has significantly undermined democratic and economic progress in its former republics.  A large part of Ukraine’s democratic development has been devoted to cleaning up the environmental disasters of the Soviet Union. The clean-up will continue over the long term because inflicting extensive environmental damage is part of Russia's strategy to win the current war and to prevent Ukraine’s long-term economic recovery.

More recently, the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin are expanding this authoritarian model of environmental exploitation globally, capturing other countries' natural resources for their own economic development and growth. These arrangements have had devastating consequences including the siphoning off of precious resources, growing debt traps, and deepening systemic corruption, while ensuring elite capture of the state and the growth of authoritarianism. Often the exploitation of natural resources is an instrument for suppressing ethnic or indigenous rights, culture and economic well-being, replicating a common tactic used by authoritarian regimes.  

Even as authoritarian regimes suppress democratic rights,  environmental issues affecting citizen’s everyday lives can mobilize citizens. Thus, while authoritarian regimes consolidate their power and their reach globally, environmental defenders have become one of the most targeted rights groups in the world. Increasingly, authoritarian regimes are using climate agreements to downplay their human rights violations, knowing that democracies don’t want to jeopardize global progress on the climate agenda. There is also an increasing trend in the suppression of democratic rights – the right to assembly and the criminalization of environmental activism – as noted in a UN Report by the UN Special Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders.

What NDI is doing to elevate the environment as critical to authoritarian rollback

Making the connections

In November 2023, NDI held a joint event with Foreign Policy, Defending Democracy, National Security and the Environment, to elevate the fact that authoritarian exploitation of the world’s resources is increasingly an issue of national and global security. At the event, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ranking Member on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Community Party (CCP), explicitly identified that China’s domination of critical mineral supply chains gives the CCP coercive power over the United States and other countries. This is an underappreciated security issue that puts democracies around the world at risk. Panelists from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tibet, and Ukraine testified that illiberal actors’ resource exploitation has undermined democratic institutions and left local communities exposed to political exploitation, violence and environmental degradation. Panelists discussed the importance of civil society to safeguard the environment from authoritarian regimes by leveraging multilateral forums to advocate for international responses, holding regimes accountable to the rule of law, and training civil society to mobilize smartly, among other approaches.

Strengthening democratic resilience

The actions authoritarian regimes take against the environment pose direct and indirect threats to democracy. Focusing on democratic push back to resource exploitation strengthens democracy overall, enhancing prospects for environmental sustainability. NDI’s growing environmental governance practice strengthens democratic gaps in government accountability, citizen access to information and justice, citizen participation and deliberation to close the door on environmental exploitation as an instrument of elite capture and authoritarian gain. 

Leveraging international climate agreements to advance democracy

NDI is helping civil society in Latin America and Africa leverage their countries’ international commitments to Escazu and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in order to hold their governments accountable and advocate for domestic reforms and improvements to international mechanisms that help disrupt illiberal influences in the environmental sector.  International environmental norms and agreements often incorporate powerful democratic rights; this approach can help disrupt authoritarian environmental exploitation while also shoring up democratic resilience to yield broader democracy dividends.

Author: Lauren Van Metre, Director of Peace, Climate and Democratic Resilience team

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NDI is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that works in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms and values to secure a better quality of life for all. NDI envisions a world where democracy and freedom prevail, with dignity for all.