Report highlights disproportionate killings of Indigenous environmental activists

William Brangham:

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP29, is currently underway in Azerbaijan. Leaders at this year's meeting are being pressed to address, among other things, the rising Threats to environmentalists and defenders of human rights. Ali Rogin looks at the challenges facing those activists around the world.

Ali Rogin:

Close to 200 people died defending the environment in 2023. That's according to a new report by Global Witness, a U.K. based environmental watchdog and advocacy group. Latin America accounted for 85 percent of the documented killings and for a second year in a row, Colombia the most dangerous place for activists.

But experts say the lack of data from other parts of the world is obscuring a more pervasive trend.

Jonila Castro, Manila Bay, Philippines:

Filipino environmental defenders are experiencing various forms of attacks such as from terrorist tagging, vilification, surveillance, intimidation up to abduction killings and having trumped up charges to do.

Nonhele Mbuthuma, Johannesburg, South Africa:

This kind of work. I don't feel safe at all in South Africa because there's quite a lot of the death threats that is pointing on me. Now, those death threats I know that are not just empty threats are real because I've already experienced see our comrades being assassinated in the struggle of defending the land.

Jennifer Lasimbang, Sabah, Malaysia:

I have a very good close friend who's been in and out of court because she was defending her area from being logged and, you know, slap is here and there slapping everybody.

Nonhele Mbuthuma:

We have been a silence to make sure that you cannot question development. We've been put our lives in line of being killed because of asking that question.

Jennifer Lasimbang:

The last Greenlands are always at the indigenous communities territories and we are defending that with our lives. There's been too many negotiations. There are pledges already, but there's just very little action, real action that's done.

For us, the communities, we have very little to say. We are not on the table, negotiation table.

Jonila Castro:

As women environmental defender, we have this additional threat that we feel. Example, when were abducted, they threatened to sexually assault us.

Nonhele Mbuthuma:

We need something that can be put place in order to protect the human rights defenders. But if there is no person that is collecting this data, it will be like the life as usual.

Ali Rogin:

Laura Furones is a senior advisor at Global Witness and the lead author of the report. Laura, thank you so much for joining us. First of all, let's talk about the killings in Latin America, particularly Colombia. What do we know about those murders there?

Laura Furones, Global Witness:

Well, what we know is that for 12 years now, ever since Global has started recording murders in around the world, Colombia has continued to emerge as one of the most dangerous countries, if not the most dangerous.

Our date in 2023 in fact tells us that Colombia is country number one with 40 percent of all global killings recorded in just that one single country. So, obviously a very alarming sort of background of violence in the country that defenders have to suffer day in and day out.

Ali Rogin:

And we mentioned that many of those defenders are indigenous persons and women. Why do they tend to be such a large majority of these killings?

Laura Furones:

Well, indigenous peoples in particular are disproportionately attacked and that again is true every year. Obviously indigenous peoples are quite literally at the front lines of the defense. They're trying to protect the territories, the natural resources that often in places that are really far away from any protection from the state.

There's invasions of the lands every year around between 40 and 45 percent of killings are of indigenous peoples, which is quite telling given that they only make up 5 to 6 percent of the global population. And you know, in terms of women are also subject to really vicious violence because they have to endure all the attacks that their male counterparts suffer. But also, you know, gender specific violence, obviously, including sexual violence, harassment, threats that the families and so on.

Ali Rogin:

One of the features of this report is that there are parts of the world that simply do not report these data in detail. What do we know about those parts of the world, specifically countries in Africa and Asia?

Laura Furones:

Well, the problem is precisely what we don't know about them. And you know, our data shows that 85 percent of the global killings happened in Latin America. That obviously speaks to a very clear reality of violence in the region. But that doesn't mean at all that being a defender in Africa or Asia is any safer.

In fact, we're really worried about growing trends of attacks, but also criminalization and other forms of reprisals. And it's really hard to access data for all sorts of reasons. It's hard to document the cases when people trying to do so may be risking their own lives.

Ali Rogin:

And what needs to change about the protection of these defenders? Are there any countries in which protections exist?

Laura Furones:

There are protection mechanisms in many countries, but sadly, the large majority of them are not working as effectively as they should be working. In fact, a substantial number of our killings that we record happened to defenders who were under some kind of protection mechanism that obviously didn't work.

So we do need those mechanisms really badly, but we also need them to be effective and so on, because otherwise what we're seeing is that they're selected, sadly not preventing the loss of lives.

Ali Rogin:

The environmentalists we talked to said that conferences like COP are unlikely to change any of their realities and that often their voices are missing from negotiations. Do you agree with that and what needs to change?

Laura Furones:

Well, we have been very actively advocating for an increased presence of indigenous people, suffrage attendants, local communities, because I would agree that for way too long they've been sidelined. We've treated all the knowledge is something that is a nice to have thing rather than something that really is at the forefront of, you know, everything we know about the climate change.

We also know that, and science has told us very clearly that indigenous peoples live in areas that have better conservation outcomes than any other areas. So obviously it's them who should be leading us into fighting this climate change.

Ali Rogin:

And what can countries like the United States do to add pressure here?

Laura Furones:

The U.S. has a very important role to play in protecting defenders, on the one hand, because they have the power to legislate, and they have the power to legislate what U.S. companies are doing abroad.

Often what we see is that attacks happen when companies sort of invade lands or come into lands without any consultation or consent from local communities.

So the U.S. government has a really powerful and important role to play in terms of regulating. They also have the ability of protecting defenders through all sorts of mechanisms that they can put in place, anything from taking, you know, sort of taking defenders into the US when they need some respite and when they're in immediate threat to, you know, working together with all the other sort of global north countries to make sure that corporate behavior is not what we've seen for way too long.

Ali Rogin:

Laura Furones with Global Witness, thank you so much.

Laura Furones:

My pleasure. Thank you for having us.