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Climate Activists
For the past 35 years, the Shepherd Express has worked with Project Censored to help get these important, yet seldom reported, stories out to the American people. We have great respect for the researchers and reporters at Project Censored and are privileged to be able to work with them.
From Dec. 11-15 and Dec. 18-22, we will post the Top 10 censored stories in countdown order, starting with 10 and working up to #1.
9. Deadly Decade for Environmental Activists
At least 1,733 environmental activists were murdered between 2012 and 2021—nearly one every two days across 10 years—according to the Global Witness study, Decade of Defiance. They were “killed by hitmen, organized crime groups and their own governments,” Patrick Greenfield reported for The Guardian, “with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries.” Half the attacks took place in the first of those three countries, each reporting around 300 killings.
“This has been going on for decades,” scientist, activist and author Vandana Shiva wrote in a foreword to the Decade of Defiance. “The report shows Brazil has been the deadliest country for environmental defenders with 342 lethal attacks reported since 2012 with over 85% of killings within the Brazilian Amazon,” Stuti Mishra reported for The Independent. “Mexico and Honduras witnessed over 100 killings while Guatemala and India saw 80 and 79 respectively, remaining one of the most dangerous countries."
The report also reports 12 mass killings, including three in India and four in Mexico. “The killing of environmental activists has been concentrated in the Global South,” and “Indigenous land defenders are disproportionately impacted,” Project Censored warned. “The Guardian reported that 39% of those killed were from Indigenous communities, despite that group constituting only 5% of the global population.”
“This is about land inequality, in that defenders are fighting for their land, and in this increasing race to get more land to acquire and exploit resources, the victims are indigenous communities, local communities, whose voices are being suppressed,” according to a BBC summary.
“Threats to environmental activists are not limited to killing,” Project Censored noted. “Environmental activists also face beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) brought by companies, sexual violence, and surveillance.
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A separate April 2022 report from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, as reported by Grist, documented more than 3,800 attacks on human rights defenders—including not only killings and death threats but also beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention and lawsuits between January 2015 and March 2021.
But “campaigners are hopeful that progress is being made,” the BBC reported, citing the sentencing of a former energy executive to 22 years in prison in Honduras for the murder of world-renowned activist Berta Cáceres in 2016, as well as promising international agreements.
The Escazú agreement, the first environmental and human rights treaty for Latin America and the Caribbean “commits countries to prevent and investigate attacks on environmental defenders,” and went into force in 2021. Mexico has ratified it, but “others including Brazil and Colombia have not” so far, the BBC said. There are also plans by the European Union to pass laws making companies responsible for human rights abuses in their supply chains.
“These are game-changing decisions that could make a real positive impact for environmental defenders,” Shruti Suresh told the BBC. “We should be optimistic. But it is going to be a difficult and challenging road ahead.”
There has been scattered coverage of Global Witness’ report. A September 2022 New York Times article deemed Mexico the deadliest country for environmental activists, a short piece the next month in the Times’ “Climate Forward'” newsletter cited Latin America as dangerous for environmental activists, and Feb. 26, 2023, a Los Angeles Times op-ed about attacks on Mexican Indigenous communities fighting climate change referenced Global Witness’ findings, but otherwise, “the corporate media have largely ignored the Global Witness study about the deadly wave of assaults on environmentalists during the past decade,” Project Censored reported, adding that it had previously covered the 2014 edition of Global Witness’s report “which was also significantly under-reported by establishment news outlets in the United States.”
