Land and Environmental Defenders

Hundreds of land and environmental defenders are threatened, arrested and killed every year for their part in resisting environmental devastation. We record every name and honour their activism.

Defenders and Indigenous Peoples are often our planet’s last line of defence, sounding the alarm about threats to vital ecosystems and incursions upon their communities from destructive companies. In return, they face land invasions, harassment and violence, with a worrying rise in criminalisation hitting environmental activists worldwide. We work to expose the root causes behind these attacks to ensure defenders are protected, and that those responsible are held to account.

Land and Environmental Defenders

Latest

Runaway Risk

Runaway Risk: How the EU can prevent corporate abuse

International NGOs Call for Release of Prominent Environmental Defender in Vietnam One Year After 5-Year Prison Sentence

Making good on promises: How Mexico can transform the lives of environmental defenders by implementing the Escazú Agreement

Berta Cáceres: New rules for banks could help stop defender killings

Vietnam lands Just Energy Transition Partnership

Amplifying the voices of land and environmental defenders at COP27

Violence, torture and threats continue, allege land and environmental defenders in Amazonian Brazil palm oil region

‘Turn words into action’: A turning point for Latin American defenders?

Europe’s biggest meat firms and retailers driving human rights abuses in Paraguay

Toxic Takeaways

Our verdict on COP27: A polluters’ parade

Dead end: Ambitious deforestation targets and human rights not included in agribusiness climate roadmap

“Loss and damage” is not enough: Why we need climate reparations

Crimes against humanity committed in the Brazilian Amazon: criminal case filed at the International Criminal Court

Vietnam’s unjust energy transition

Joint NGO briefing for UNFCCC COP27 on land and environmental defenders

COP27: Human rights advocates urge parties to increase recognition and protection of environmental and land defenders

Join Global Witness in putting #PeopleNotPolluters first at COP27

Statement of concern on online threats against Guatemalan NGO amidst wider crackdown on activists

‘Not just a climate change statistic’: Derek Cabe on the frontline of the climate crisis in the Philippines

Global Witness welcomes Colombia ratifying key agreement for protection of land and environment defenders after 322 killed in Colombia in the last decade

In Colombia, implementing the Escazú Agreement is a matter of life and death

A deadly decade for land and environmental activists - with a killing every two days

In numbers: Lethal attacks against defenders since 2012

Decade of defiance

Brazil’s biggest palm oil producers Agropalma and Brasil Biofuels accused of serious human rights violations against communities in the Pará region

Amazon palm

New documentary short looks at a community’s struggle for land in the Brazilian Amazon

Sowing Hope

Honduras: New faces, old challenges

Missing: Environmental and human rights policies notably absent from Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s first state of nation address