Who defends nature’s defenders?
by Jeff Conant, senior international forests program manager
Throughout much of the world, where people depend directly on lands, rivers, forests and soils, defending the environment is not a luxury; it is a necessity of survival and a cultural imperative. And because the economic pressure to extract resources by any means penetrates all levels of government and society, those who dare to defend the environment and their communities’ interests are often marginalized, criminalized and directly targeted for kidnapping or far worse.
According to Global Witness’s 2015 report “How Many More?” 116 land defenders were murdered in 2014; 40 percent were indigenous and 12 of them were in Honduras. As the Global Witness report finds, “The true orchestrators of these crimes mostly escape investigation, but available information suggests that large landowners, business interests, political actors and agents of organized crime are often behind the violence.”
Berta Cáceres, a widely loved and world acclaimed environmental defender and co-founder of the Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras, was assassinated on March 3, 2016. Such a tragic and high-profile assassination has helped cast a spotlight on the dangers facing environmental and land defenders — especially indigenous peoples — in Honduras and many other countries. Despite efforts by Friends of the Earth U.S. and Friends of the Earth International to pressure the Honduran government and the U.S. State Department for justice, the situation in Honduras remains dire.
At the time of this writing, weeks have passed since Berta was killed by unknown gunmen in her home. Berta’s COPINH colleagues remain at risk. Gustavo Castro Soto of Friends of the Earth Mexico, witnessed Berta’s murder and was illegally detained in Honduras, despite having suffered two gunshot wounds in an attempt on his life. Rather than investigating the many instances of death threats and murder attempts on Berta prior to her killing, the Honduran government called the killing “a crime of passion and a botched robbery,” and has focused its investigation on COPINH itself.
Berta’s killing, the targeting of COPINH and the lengthy and arbitrary detention of Gustavo Castro fit a pattern of criminal persecution of environmental and human rights defenders across the hemisphere, including the illegal criminalization of their advocacy by the state, by corrupt police forces, judicial systems and private interests.
While Berta knew the risks for herself and for COPINH, they refused to be bullied; instead they vocally and actively challenged the corporations that sought to destroy the territory of their indigenous Lenca communities. The same is true of many people in many countries: Nelson García, an active member of COPINH, was killed by unidentified gunmen March 15, after he protested an eviction order from the mayor of Rio Chiquito, the town where he lived; a young Indonesian farmer named Indra Pelani, who advocated for the rights of tenant farmers against the corporate takeover of their lands by palm oil and paper companies, was killed in February 2015 while traveling to a rice harvest festival in Sumatra. Rigoberto Lima Choc, a Q’eq’chi Mayan activist, was killed last September hours after a court upheld charges he filed denouncing a massive spill of toxic waste pollution by a palm oil company in Sayaxché in Guatelema’s Peten region. Edwin Chota and three other indigenous Asheninka activists were killed in Peru in 2014 for vocally opposing illegal logging in the Amazon.
These are just a few individual names that, thanks to the efforts of global environmental groups, get into the headlines. In each case, the governments did little to investigate or pursue justice; and none of the multinational interests involved were held accountable. This speaks to a systemic problem, at all levels. In Uganda, for example, Friends of the Earth has campaigned for justice for local farmers displaced by a palm oil project run by African company BIDCO — supported by Wilmar International, for years.
In September 2015, Ugandan President Museveni said he, “…wanted bullets to kill those bad-hearted people,” referring to anyone opposing the palm oil project; effectively serving a potentially fatal notice to local activists struggling for justice.
In Nigeria, where Wilmar International is working with the government to develop palm oil plantations, no proof exists of local opponents being physically assaulted; but their land was seized, their crops destroyed and a clear message was sent that dissent will not be tolerated. In Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, where Friends of the Earth worked with local groups to document palm oil related abuses in September 2015 for our report “Up in Smoke,” a local activist we met with has been criminalized and was jailed shortly after our investigation was carried out.
All of this underlines the fact that, even as a few dramatic cases of outright murder give focus to a generalized brutality against environmental defenders, this is part and parcel of the broader structural violence that systematically undermines universal human rights every day, generally in the name of economic development.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) recently brought up Berta’s case on the floor of the Senate following her assassination and asked,
Why is this? Why are the most vulnerable people who traditionally live harmoniously with the natural environment so often the victims of such abuse and violence?
“There are multiple reasons,” said Leahy, answering his rhetorical question, “including racism and other forms of prejudice. But I put greed at the top of the list. It is greed that drives governments and private companies, as well as criminal organizations, to recklessly pillage natural resources above and below the surface of land inhabited by indigenous people, whether it is timber, oil, coal, gold, diamonds or other valuable minerals. Acquiring and exploiting these resources requires either the acquiescence, or the forcible removal, of the people who live there.”
Whether it is palm oil, which requires huge areas of land to achieve an economy of scale sufficient to serve the global market and generate global profits, or hydroelectric dams, for which at least 40 people have been openly murdered since 2005 in Central America, Mexico and Colombia, large infrastructure requires large expanses of land.
Beyond broad campaigning to reign in the plunder of natural resources, there are a number of concrete things that can be done to defend and protect nature’s defenders. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has already made one binding ruling — Kawas v. Honduras — that held Honduras responsible for the murder of an environmental defender. More such cases must be brought, and their findings used to hold national governments accountable for their role in these abuses.
The U.S. State Department can and should cut off military and police aid to governments that repress environment and land defenders; the State Department can also put in place mandatory protections for environmental activists in high-risk countries. The United Nations has recently appointed a
special office dedicated to protection of human rights defenders; these protections need to be extended specifically to land and environment defenders as well, and through this the UN needs to work to decriminalize environmental advocacy.
Perhaps most importantly we can find ways to directly support the defenders on the front lines by sending funds and material support, writing and sharing articles, and even joining delegations to participate, firsthand, in their struggles.
Learn more and take action at: foe.org/forests
