Record 212 environmental activists murdered in 2019

PARIS: At least 212 environmental campaigners worldwide were murdered in 2019, making last year the deadliest on record for frontline activists battling the destruction of Nature, watchdog group Global Witness reported yesterday. Colombia and the Philippines combined accounted for just over half of the confirmed deaths - 64 and 43, respectively-followed by Brazil, Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

The real number is likely higher due to unreported or misrepresented cases, especially in Africa, the NGO said in its annual review. About 40 percent of victims were indigenous people, and over twothirds died in Latin America. One in ten were women. For decades, native communities in the forests of Central and South America, Asia and Africa have seen ancestral lands degraded and destroyed, sometimes with the blessing of corrupt local or national governments.

Of the 141 murders last year that could be linked a specific economic sectors, more than a third involved campaigners protesting mining operations, some legal most not. Thirty-four killings related to agribusiness were overwhelmingly in Asia, especially the Philippines. Two Indonesian activists were stabbed to death in October near a palm oil plantation in northern Sumatra. In the Philippines, police and counter-insurgency operations led to the massacre of 14 sugar plantation farmers on Negros island in March, only months after nine others had been killed in similar circumstances.

“Agribusiness and oil, gas and mining have consistently been the biggest drivers of attacks against land and environmental defenders,” said Global Witness campaigner Rachel Cox. “They are also the industries pushing us further into runaway climate change through deforestation and increased carbon emissions.”

Burning forests not only robs the planet of greenhouse gas absorbing vegetation, it also releases stored CO2 into the atmosphere. Logging operations were directly linked to 24 deaths, with another 14 related to illegal crop substitution, 11 to land reform, and six to water management or dam construction.