Latin America, Where Being An Environmental Activist Is A Death Sentence

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Mexico, Colombia and Brazil are the most dangerous countries in the region for defenders of environmental, land, and indigenous rights, according to several NGOs

In March 2016, the Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres was assassinated, yet justice is still on the trail of the perpetrators.

Cáceres is among the almost 197 environmental advocates who were killed in 2017, according to the NGO Global Witness, the majority of them in Latin America.

The corruption and vast natural resources that the region hosts make it the perfect setting for megaprojects to acquire licences relatively easily.

The head of the Global Witness campaign, Billy Kye, told DW Germany that ‘there are high levels of indigenous populations who have historically been marginalised, so companies enter their lands and plunder their resources.’

Although their protests are acknowledged more each time by the media and are sometimes heard by local authorities, paradoxically this makes them more at risk of assassination.

Front Line Defenders confirms that it is mostly activists who are murdered. The organization registered 312 defenders killed, 212 of them in Latin America. Most alarming is that 156 of these homicides were in Colombia and Brazil.

The report also indicates that 80% of assassinations of human rights advocates occur in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines.

Of the total number of activists killed, according to this investigation, 67% were defenders of land, environmental and indigenous rights.

In almost all cases these advocates fought against the activities of extractive industries or megaprojects that damaged vast ecosystems or the homes of ancient peoples.

Astrid Puentes Riaño, co-executive director of the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA), confirmed that ‘Latin America is the most unequal region on the planet, which means that there are populations in situations of extreme economic, political, and social vulnerability,’ according to DW Germany.

She added that ‘we live in a region with one of the highest rates of impunity and weakest rule of law, where the implementation of norms is also sidelined.’

The Amazonian rainforest has become a particular area of dispute in Brazil. The government, who is at the root of the country’s current economic and political crisis, has searched ‘desperately for quick solutions to access the Amazon, the development and extension of agricultural land, and the ruthless exploitation of natural resources,’ according to Jim Loughran of Front Line Defenders.

Colombia, despite its peace agreements, ‘thousands of Colombians with legal entitlements to their land have been displaced. As they work to reclaim their territory, they become targets for the profiteers who could illegally seize their land, as well as for the new generation of paramilitary succeeding the FARC who want to take control. The defenders of land rights find themselves in critical danger,’ says Loughran.

For Global Witness, the country’s current situation is the result of palm oil agroindustry. This activity, the NGO says, has surpassed mining as the business with most links to activist killings.

Meanwhile, Mexico continues to be embroiled in an escalation of human rights advocates assassinations that has taken it to fourth place of countries with the highest number of such murders, according to Global Witness.

‘The federal and state governments do not sufficiently support the work of defenders and sometimes even ally with the opposition to their work,’ Puentes Riaño argued, denouncing the impunity that she says persists in the country.

The visibility of defenders is also a double-edge sword, exposing them to identification and possible assassination. This occurred with Isidro Baldenegro López, an activist against illegal logging in the ancient forests of Sierra Madre, or Berta Cáceres in Honduras, both who were massacred shortly after each receiving a Goldman Environmental Prize.

According to Front Line Defenders, only 12% of these cases end with the arrest of suspects. The spokeswoman for AIDA says that there are measures that need to be taken urgently. These include ‘adequate investigations and identification of those responsible for attacks and assassinations of activists, as well as authors and intellectuals, and justice in all these cases.’

Global Witness has called for states to rally to the defence of environmental advocates, and to fight ‘root causes’ which are lack of prior consultation of indigenous peoples and other communities who would be affected by industrial projects.