Land Defenders
Land and environmental defenders are ordinary people, commonly of Indigenous descent, who peacefully but tirelessly campaign against external dangers to the ecosystems on which they depend. These are often corporate threats, and sometimes even illegal operations. The diverse global defender movement is united by deep roots in their local communities and a collective struggle against further corrupt exploitation of natural resources, which imperils not just their livelihoods, but the Earth as a whole.
It is a broad term encompassing all kinds of environmental defence, from big-picture climate justice advocacy; to local resistance against developments that will pollute community lands; to groups speaking up for biodiversity and human rights, such as lawyers, politicians, journalists, and charity workers. Land defenders are the first line of protection against climate breakdown, but their heroics go largely unsung, their work underappreciated, and governments fail to protect them in return for their service to us all.
Indigenous groups, who have already suffered so much loss under the crush of colonialism, continue to be forced by necessity to fight for their survival against powerful and destructive forces like Industrial Agriculture. While Indigenous groups currently only occupy around 25 percent of the planet, they are responsible for 35 percent of areas with the lowest human environmental impacts, and maintain 80 percent of the Earth’s biodiversity therein. Indigenous lands also store vast amounts of carbon, the equivalent of 33 times our annual carbon emissions worldwide, which will likely be released if these ecosystems are pillaged for profit.
Land rights injustices such as corporate land grabs are therefore worsened by the fact that, due to their efforts, defenders’ lives are endangered by the same human forces threatening to destroy their ancestral lands. Many have died in the fight for ecological wellbeing, simply for interfering with companies’ financial interests (the mining, oil and gas, agribusiness, timber, and hydropower industries are regularly linked to threats and assaults against defenders).
According to the 2018 Global Analysis by Front Line Defenders, land defenders are 3 times more likely to face backlash attacks than other human rights defenders, with 77 percent of those killed that year having laboured specifically for land, Indigenous, or environmental rights.
In 2017 only 12 percent of such murder cases led to arrests, while attacks have only been rising. In 2019, four land defenders were killed every week (totalling 212 people that year; 331 in 2020) with little to no justice to follow - as is the pattern, it seems.
Yet while such people already play an oversized role in defending nature, especially considering their unfairly limited access and resources, they do so while being treated as criminals, even risking death. As Indigenous people defend their land, they are gradually stripped of basic rights, and violence against defenders only grows as they are increasingly silenced.
Indigeneity has, for some, even come to collectively represent a vital movement protecting the Earth. Indigenous people are the keepers of crucial knowledge that both links us to our past and holds the key to a sustainable future, and so deserve recognition for their wisdom, not to mention a prime seat at the table when discussing how to prepare for future climate breakdown and reverse the damage.
To aid in the land defenders’ cause, protect Indigenous people’s rights, and preserve our global ecosystems, we need to shift the power balance away from corporations and back into local communities, while listening to and amplifying the voices of those fighting for climate justice; voices which offer us essential insight at a time of emergency. Governments, businesses and investors, must themselves be pressured to address their own malpractice, safeguarding defenders rather than persecuting them. Regulations that ensure future projects are carried out according to land rights, conducted with free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of local communities, should be implemented.
The violence against these people doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s part of a wider culture of neglect, of misplaced values, of greater reverence for money than life. Until our skewed system is amended, defenders will remain at risk for their work, which agitates against this unjust hierarchy.
