Murders of environment and land defenders hit record high
The Guardian
Figures from Global Witness for 2020 show violent resource grab continued unabated despite pandemic.
Murders of environment and land defenders hit a record high last year as the violent resource grab in the global south continued unabated despite the pandemic.
New figures released by Global Witness show that 227 people were killed in 2020 while trying to protect forests, rivers and other ecosystems that their livelihoods depended on. (...)
The annual tally of the dead has risen for the past two years and is now twice the level of 2013. This is still thought to be an underestimate because the calculation depends on transparency, press freedom and civil rights, which vary considerably from country to country. (...)
The watchdog group has outlined proposals for governments and companies to reduce the risks of violence in resource extraction. In future, they put hope on a new bill being drafted by the EU commission that would require companies to conduct mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence on their supply chains. The United Nations is also working on a binding treaty on business and human rights, but there is still a long way to go before such measures reduce the impunity that allows the killings to take place.
Deforestation in Colombia, the country that had the largest number of people killed while trying to protect forests, rivers and ecosystems in 2020. Photograph: Raúl Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images.
Tags: #ecology #ecosystems #environment #deforestation #brazil #colombia #africa #philipines #activists #pollution #nicaragua #natural_resources #resource_grab