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Ressource février 9, 2021

Last Stand for Nature

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Aerial drone view of deforestation of a tropical rain forest to make way for palm oil and construction. Image by Shutterstock.
Aerial drone view of deforestation of a tropical rain forest to make way for palm oil and construction. Image by Shutterstock.

This essay was originally published in Standing up for a Sustainable World: Voices of Change, a collection edited by Claude Henry, Johan Rockström, and Nicholas Stern, in 2020.


In any conflict, the last thing a dominant power wants is for the outside world to know the cost of victory. They criminalise and dehumanise their opposition, downplay the importance of the struggle, obscure the number of victims and undermine media coverage.

This is particularly true of the battle for the
global environment, which goes underreported because it often takes place in
remote regions that are expensive or dangerous to reach. If disputes are
covered at all, they are usually portrayed as disparate, distant, low-intensity
challenges to “development” and the establishment.

But gather those cases together and a pattern
starts to emerge of a war against Nature on many fronts. Tally the deaths and
it becomes clear the toll is higher than many conflict zones. Then add names,
portraits, profiles and family stories and there is no avoiding a discomforting
connection with those on the frontlines of ecological crisis.

That was what I learned from the Guardian’s yearlong Defenders project, which I helped to oversee and report on during my first year as the paper’s global environment editor. The experience also convinced me of the need to make global stories personal, to collaborate more widely, to disrupt business-as-usual journalism, and to look for creative ways to break out of the “environment media ghetto”. Some of these approaches might apply to wider battles over the climate and other issues of global importance. All tie in closely to the work of the Rainforest Journalism Fund.

I admit my feelings were mixed when I first took over Defenders coverage for the Guardian. That was July 2017. A long-time foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America, I had just moved back to London for the first time in 22 years to take my current post. My overriding priority was the climate crisis and the collapse of biodiversity so when I was told that my duties included a series on the killings of people who were defending their land and environment, I was sympathetic but wary. Back then, it seemed a remote concern. I realised later how wrong that was.

But I was also pleased to focus on a topic that
would show courage, fear, desperation, anger, love and other human feelings are
part of the environment story. The primary challenge for a journalist is to
make a subject feel personal. Without that, the science becomes abstract,
global issues seem too huge to grasp, and it becomes difficult to relate to far
off places and other species. Without that, the “environment” slips too easily
into an elite pigeonhole for academics, policymakers and predominantly
middle-class white people, when it should be recognised as the main driver of
inequality, conflict and injustice. Without that, most people don’t realise
this underlies politics and economics. This is not just another subject; it is
a prism through which to see everything else.

It is also a way to explain much of the world’s
violence - against people as well as against nature. During the year of the
project, I talked to the families and friends of dozens of victims: Aysin and
Ali Büyüknohutçu, the Turkish beekeepers and environmental defenders who were
murdered for challenging marble quarries; Efigenia Vásquez, a radio and video
journalist of the indigenous Kokonuko people in Colombia, who was fatally shot
as she attempted to cover her community’s attempt to regain land lost to a farm
owned by a former general; Samuel Loware,
a Ugandan ranger who narrowly survived an attack by poachers; Maria do Socorro Costa Silva, a descendant of rebel slaves now suffering death threats as she
battles one of the world’s biggest alumina refineries in the Amazon; Nonhle Mbuthuma, the Amadiba activist who overcame the death of a fellow
campaigner to win a high court battle against a titanium mine on South Africa’s
Wild Coast; Fatima Babu,
the Indian anti-pollution activist who helped to close down a giant copper
smelter after the massacre of more than a dozen protesters in Tamil Nadu; Isela González,
the former nurse who devotes herself to indigenous land rights in Mexico; and Ramón Bedoya,
a 19-year-old Colombian campesino who wants to create a biodiversity zone on
the edge of a palm oil plantation - a project that led to the assassination of
his father. These and many others are risking their lives for their land and
our Earth, defending forests, rivers, coastlines and wildlife as far afield as
the Coral Triangle, Sierra Madre, Pondoland, Anatolia, Mindanao, Tamil Nadu,
the Brazilian Amazon and the Ugandan savanna.

In 2017, more than 200 Earth defenders were murdered while trying to protect their habitats, according to Global Witness, which partnered the Guardian on the project. Last year, the toll was 164. A longer term study by the University of Queensland found that killings of defenders have doubled over the past 15 years to reach levels usually associated with war zones. The paper, published in Nature Sustainability, found 1,558 people in 50 nations were killed between 2002 and 2017. Almost all of the killings occurred in the countries that scored lowest for corruption, fundamental rights, government powers, transparency and legal oversight. These are also areas of great natural abundance. Most of the deaths were related to agriculture or mining in tropical and subtropical countries, particularly in Central and South America.

Brazil, the biggest Amazon forest nation has
been the most murderous for defenders almost every year since the tallies
began, though it was surpassed in 2018 by the Philippines. Other hotspots are
Colombia (another Amazonian nation), the Democratic Republic of Congo (home to
Africa’s biggest tropical forest) and Mexico, where the government’s approval
for mining and farming concessions in indigenous territory has dramatically
increased the death toll in recent years. 

Most victims are compelled to fight by
circumstance rather than conviction. Their struggle is existential. They need
land for food, water to drink, air to breathe, animals to hunt, forests to tap
for medicine. Only occasionally - usually when there is a chance of NGO support
or media coverage - do they talk about their contribution to the climate or
biodiversity. For them, the problems are personal, at least to begin
with. 

Although the campaigns often start locally and
accidentally, several defenders saw themselves caught up in a bigger fight for
the natural world.

“We didn’t realise this at first, but it’s
global,” says Turkish forest defender Tuğba Günal. “If you want to protect the
environment, you are treated as a terrorist. It’s everywhere now.”

There is a similar refrain from Fatima Babu in
India who recently saw her 24-year campaign against a copper smelter explode
into violence with the police slaughter of 13 protesters - one of an increasing
number of environment-related massacres. “Something is happening in the world.
Activists are being branded as terrorists,” she says. “This phenomenon of
destroying people and the planet for profit is not just happening in India.
It’s across the globe. We need to come together for future generations. We need
to be strong and courageous and hold on to our values.”

The majority of the defenders are from
indigenous groups and poor black communities, who have been pushed over decades
or centuries to the fringes of society. Not coincidentally, that is where nature
is most abundant, where resources remain untapped, where the law often serves
as a tool for exploitation rather than social stability.

Once isolated communities now find themselves on
the frontline. Like many endangered species, indigenous communities have been
pushed from coastlines and fertile plains to remote mountain slopes and deep
forests. Now even these areas are threatened by plantations, loggers and mining
companies, who are granted concessions by governments that put business ahead
of people. With nowhere left to flee, the local communities are forced to
fight. They usually do this in the courts or the media. Defenders tend to be
poor, outnumbered and outgunned so armed struggle is rarely an option.

Yet, they are often criminalised, labelled terrorists
or portrayed by their enemies as anti-development. Many of the killings are
linked to government security forces, particularly in the Philippines, which is
the most dangerous country in Asia for activists.  In Latin America, gangs
or hired assassins are a bigger threat. 

Impunity is a major problem. Defenders are often
cheated of land rights by corrupt lawmakers and local politicians. When they
resist, they are criminalised. When they are killed, nobody gets punished. The
Nature Sustainability study found that only 10% of defender murders result in a
conviction, which is very low compared to the 43% average for all global
homicides. Many murders are not even investigated.

This is a challenge for capacity and governance
that the United Nations Environment Programme has tried to address, but there
is little it can do without the support of state governments - many of which
are moving away from global cooperation and pushing populist, nationalist
agendas that favour extractive industries. 

A new generation of political “strongmen” -
Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Narendra
Modi in India, Donald Trump in the United States, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and
several others - are committed to eroding the legal protections that
environmental campaigners and indigenous groups are able to use to hold back
mines, farms, factories and major infrastructure projects such as hydroelectric
dams and roads. In many cases they have accused activists of colluding with
foreign interests to slow economic development.

Such extreme nationalist leaders should not be
blithely dismissed as populists. They are the hired guns of the industries
working against the Paris accord and other international agreements that aim to
prevent further environmental catastrophes, which hit the poorest hardest. Their “anti-globalism” is first
and foremost anti-nature and anti-future. An extraction-first approach may
bring economic benefits in the short term, as campaign donors clear more
forests, open up plantations and dig more mines – but the profits are
concentrated and short-lived while the ecological stress is shared and long-lasting. 

The great fear climate scientists have is that a
warming planet could create feedback loops that will make everything much
worse. But there has not been enough study of economic and political feedback
loops: How drought in China puts pressure on the Amazon to produce more food
and clear more forest. Or how powerful business interests will choose a
dictator over a democrat if it means easing environmental controls that
threaten their ability to meet quarterly growth targets.

As the essays in this section show, defenders
are in the middle of a widening gulf between politicians and scientists. While
the latter urge more ambitious climate and biodiversity protection, the former
know they will receive more campaign funds (and, often, bribes) if they oppose
emissions cuts, support extractive industries and weaken pollution regulations.
It is not just dictatorships. Britain is pushing ahead with coal mining and
Norway with oil exploration.

At some point, people will realise  - as
many defenders already do - that ecological stress is at the core of the
world’s current woes. The aha! moment may be when water grows prohibitively
expensive, or crops fail owing to successive heatwaves, or the refugee crisis
sparks war, or a virus shuts down the global economy, but at some point the
weakness of the strongmen will be apparent, and people will seek change. 

Defenders are often not well educated, but they
have much to teach us. They know this is a battle for survival. They are
fighting both for and against “us”. On one hand, most are resisting the
extractive businesses that provide wealthy far-away consumers with coffee, palm
oil, fish and the titanium, aluminium and copper in our laptops, mobile phones,
cars and bicycles. On the other, they are protecting the forests, oceans,
climate and other natural life support systems on which we all depend on a far
more existential level.

Some defenders have support from international
NGOs, lawyers groups, academics and the United Nations. In UN conferences and
academic papers, there is a growing recognition that the cheapest and
most-effective way to reduce carbon emissions and protect biodiversity is by
granting land rights to forest communities. As Amazon resident, Maria do Socorro Costa Silva writes in this section, “The people who live here sustain the
forest...Without us, there is no river, there are no animals, there’s nothing.
If you want to normalize the planet’s temperature, you have to take care of us.
Because without us there is no future generation.” 

No defender sets out to be an activist, let
alone a pin-up for the environment. Some - such as the eco-vigilante Bobby
Chan  - are motivated by idealism or religious faith. Others see the
struggle in gender terms. A high proportion, perhaps the majority, are women.
But most are compelled to fight by circumstance rather than conviction. Several
inherited their struggles or became caught up in disputes when outsiders
threatened their homes. As they realise the global pressures behind their local
conflicts, they want their stories to be told more widely so others can learn,
follow and help. They have lessons for all of us.

Defenders are not always easy to interview as I
and the project’s photographer, Thom Pierce discovered. Chan rarely dares to
leave his organisation’s headquarters in Palawan because of the dangers of
assassination. Bedoya is at such high risk that he has been assigned two armed
bodyguards and a bulletproof car by the Colombian authorities. González was
unable to visit the communities she represents because of the threats to her
life. Babu was reluctant to be photographed near the smelter because police
might recognise and harass her. For journalists, such anxiety is a temporary
inconvenience. For the subjects, it is a fact of everyday life. As Mbuthuma
said: “I thank God each morning that I am still alive.”

The stories could be both horrifying and
inspiring. Even before I knew who she was or what she had suffered, there was
clearly something special about Marivic Danyan. The young T’boli woman was
standing silently in a noisy crowd when we reached the village of Datal
Bonglangon, deep within the conflict-riven island of Mindanao, in the
Philippines. The 28-year-old was so diminutive that I thought at first she was
a teenager, but there was an intensity in her gaze and a strength in her
handshake that suggested she had something extraordinary to relate. It was not
until two days later, when she felt fully able to trust us, that she revealed
how her husband, father and two brothers had been killed in a single attack by
the Philippine army. Talking quietly at night over a chorus of insects and frogs,
she described how she narrowly escaped death, and then had to piece together
her loved ones’ bodies so she could bury them. She is now looked up to as a
leader - a first for a woman in her community -  and is determined to
continue her father’s campaign to regain ancestral land from a coffee
plantation linked to one of the country’s richest families. Her story was a
reminder that environmental crime is the ultimate theft from the poor. The
destruction of the global commons - clean rivers, unpolluted air, fertile soil
- worsens inequality and injustice, and usually goes hand-in-hand with
corruption.

But the stories are rarely black and white.
Although defenders are generally portrayed as plucky individuals against giant
corporations, the battle lines can be murky. Many villages are violently
divided over new mines, dams and plantations that bring jobs as well as
environmental and cultural degradation. Defenders suffer and their friends are
killed so managers can earn bonuses, politicians can secure bribes, companies
can turn a hefty  profit and people in richer nations can pay a low price
for coffee, palm oil, plastic, fish, aluminium and energy. But that is not the
only reason. They also sometimes suffer because neighbours want jobs, roads and
better schools. Many individuals cross sides.

In very few of these cases are major
corporations directly accused of killings, beatings and intimidation. But they
often bear indirect ethical responsibility for creating the social and
environmental conditions that led to violence. Culpability is legally and
morally diffused by a layers of middle-men, gangs and corrupt politicians.
Those who carry out assassination and beatings are often as poor as the
victims. They are usually paid by local businessmen or city mayors who stand to
benefit from agricultural or industrial projects that supply world markets with
food and minerals. 

Few of the defenders I met were against economic
development, but they all want more choice in how it takes place. Some urged
consumers to shop carefully, to consider supply chains and boycott firms and
products linked with violence or environmental crimes. Most, though, said they
needed broader political change - a greater global push for land rights,
stronger civil society guarantees, transparency, tighter regulations on
companies and more efforts to punish the officials and gang bosses who are
often behind the killings. 

Having reported on many of these cases, I
believe a wider challenge is to close the gulf between them and us, the local
and the global, between the points of production and consumption, between the
environmental periphery and the economic centre. On a psychological and
philosophical level this means narrowing the gap between the subjective self
and the objective other.

This requires a change not just in global
governance, trade rules and international law, but in our feelings about
nature, our valuation of the commons, and our responsibility to other species
and future generations. Chemistry, biology and physics are essential to prove
how we rely on declining life support systems, but datasets are not enough.
Truth has to resonate on an emotional level. A good place to start would be to
champion abundance over income, collective wellbeing over individual
consumption, and to change the language we use to describe our place in the
world.

I have never been entirely comfortable using the
term “environmental defenders.” This was partly because many campaigners are
fighting for territory - their land and our Earth. But the problem is mainly
with the word “environment” which always seems to widen rather than close the
distance between subject and object.  In English, this term is uneasy on
the ear and stiffly at odds with the vibrant orgy of life it represents. This
reflects the word’s hodgepodge Victorian origins. The first use of “environment” in its modern
sense was in 1828 by the Scottish thinker Thomas Carlyle
, who borrowed the French “environ” (surrounding) to express the
German term “umgebung” (which conveys more of a sense of encompassing) in a
controversial translation of Goethe. In that era, the word denoted – as now – a
flux of landscape, spirit and culture that shaped humanity more naturally than
the mechanistic drives of the Industrial Revolution. But it was also wrapped up
inside a western Enlightenment duality of self and “other”. The environment
became something to exploit, rather than something that humanity was part of.
As Albert Einstein later put it: “The environment is everything that isn’t me.”
This was a brilliantly simple way of describing how every individual feels
themselves to be the centre of their own universe, but it also suggested nature
is something separate that we can affect without being affected: that we can
run down without paying a price.

Carlyle and Einstein would probably be horrified
at how far this duality has gone. Tension between the natural environment and
the human economy has been building for over two centuries. Starting in
Britain, the carbon-capital industrial model has long been extracting minerals
and organic resources, and discharging the waste into the air, sea and land. As
more nations developed, they exported their environmental stress to the next
country rising up the economic ladder. Now that this paradigm is being
replicated by the world’s most populous countries, China and India, there are
very few places left to absorb the impact. Competition for what is left is growing. 

Today, the natural environment and the human
economy are treated as antonyms. The greater the gap between them, the more
peripheral and frightening rature seems. No wonder those who defend it suffer
such persecution.

Closing distance is one role of a journalist.
After all, the word “media” essentially means go-between. International
institutions, NGOs and companies can also play a part. Showing how defenders
fight not just for themselves, but for us is a step in the right direction.
Supporting them with laws, lobbying and financial backing for civil society
would go much further. Their struggle is linked to that of Greta Thunberg, the
school climate strikers, Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement and those
who do their fighting in parliaments, conference halls and executive
boardrooms. There are many battles, but one war. In a world pushed beyond
ecological limits, there are no margins left. The periphery is the centre. In
this last stand for nature, defenders are on the frontline, fighting for all of
us.