Silent Action in memory of Environmental defenders
Environmental and Human Rights Defenders are the courageous people who take a non-violent stand against over-exploitation and destruction on their lands or close to their communities. Since 2012, Global Witness has been collecting data on the numbers of land and environmental defenders being killed each year. This number has seen a steady increase in.
2020 saw the largest number of people killed yet: 227, and this is certainly an underestimate of the true numbers, since many murders go unreported. Logging was the sector linked to the largest number of killings, while mining and agribusiness came second.
Indigenous Peoples were killed in disproportionate numbers, in both single and mass killings. Some 70% of those killed were protecting forests. The same forests that we know we all depend upon to address the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
At the same time inequitable human activity continues to accelerate both these processes, with unsustainable extraction, exploitation and consumption for profit, or what Global Witness calls the ‘predatory economic model driven by greed’.
These attacks also highlight global inequalities: all but one of the killings recorded in 2020 took place in the global south, while most killings are related to corporate activities, from which the profits flow largely to the North.
The current unsustainable model of economic development by which the majority of us live – and die – drives this insatiable appetite for extraction and destruction that has already breached planetary boundaries.
These powerfully interconnected impacts on biodiversity and climate are brought about by unaccountable corporate power and the failure of governments to protect the human rights of their people, in particular their environmental defenders. The Global Biodiversity Framework must address this issue within the target text.
When will we act to change this pattern? The time is now!