Last year, over two hundred environmentalists – nearly four every week – were murdered around the world. This is revealed in the new Global Witness report.
Why do they do it? This question sometimes arises spontaneously when reading the chilling figures on environmentalists murdered every year around the world. 2016 was the worst year ever recorded: over two hundred environmental defenders were killed (more than double the number of journalists killed, 79) – nearly four people every week – for having tried to defend their lands, their forests, their rivers; in short, the places they call home. Why do they do it, we ask ourselves: in many cases it is a necessity driven by circumstances, their very survival depending on those struggles (the expropriation of a forest that provides sustenance, the destruction of a river that supplies drinking water, the construction of a plant that poisons the air); in other cases it is almost a calling, one that drives women and men to risk their own lives and those of their loved ones in order to defend the environment.
The number of environmentalists killed is steadily increasing: in 2014, two activists were being murdered every week; in 2015 there were 185 victims, a 73 per cent increase on the previous year, while in 2016 the killings, as noted, numbered two hundred. This is what emerged from the annual report published by the British human rights NGO Global Witness.
The killings documented in the report – a figure that was calculated conservatively, given the scant information available – span 24 countries (compared to 16 in 2015). Latin America remains the region most affected by this phenomenon, accounting for approximately 60 per cent of the killings. The trend in India is also alarming, with the number of such crimes tripling compared to the previous report. Murder is the final instrument used to silence those who try to defend the environment, following threats, blackmail, arrests, beatings, kidnappings and sexual violence. These killings appear, however, to produce the opposite effect from the one desired by those who order them: "environmental defenders don't die," reads the Global Witness report, "they multiply."
The country in which the most environmental activists were killed last year is Brazil (a land of vast and coveted natural resources), with the grim record of 49 killings. It is Nicaragua, however, that holds the highest number of killings per capita, at 11. Colombia, too, despite the recent peace agreement, has been bloodied by the deaths of 37 environmentalists, while for the rangers patrolling national parks the most dangerous nation is the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 9 rangers killed by poachers. The riskiest sector is mining, which is linked to at least 33 killings.
Almost 40 per cent of the murdered activists were indigenous people – the last custodians of precious ecosystems whose rights matter little or nothing to the governments that should be protecting them. In many cases, large-scale environmental projects such as the construction of dams and hydroelectric plants are imposed on native communities without their consent, or that consent is obtained through violence by law enforcement forces.
According to Global Witness, armies and police forces are considered responsible for at least 43 killings of activists during 2016. Environmentalists are treated as criminals and must face up to multinationals and governments. "Activists are being killed, attacked and criminalised by the very people who are supposed to protect them," said Ben Leather of Global Witness.
One of the best-known cases of environmentalist killings is that of Berta Cáceres, murdered in March 2016 – the leader of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (Copinh), who had for years been fighting to defend the rights of her community and to protect her country's ancestral lands from deforestation and exploitation. Among the other environmental martyrs, we remember Isidro Baldenegro López, a farmer and leader of the Tarahumara indigenous community, killed for having opposed the deforestation of the ancient forests of the Sierra Madre, threatened by illegal logging and drug traffickers, and Gloria Capitan, a Filipino activist who led a movement opposing the construction of a coal-fired power plant, murdered in front of her eight-year-old nephew.
The list is unfortunately long, and each of these people deserves to be remembered. Each of them decided, at their own risk, not to look the other way – as the majority of citizens do, convinced that they cannot stand up to governments and large corporations. Each of these people sacrificed themselves to save the environment, to preserve their own humanity, and, in some small part, for us too.