Defending the Earth is deadly work. A new report illuminates how much.
Since the 1990s, Martin Egot has protected the ancestral landscapes of his tribe near the Nigeria Cross River National Park. Egot, who is Aboriginal Ekuri, helped establish the Ekuri initiative, an organization dedicated to the protection of the parts of the tropical forest.
In 2009, the Ekuri initiative managed to push the government of Cross River, a state in Nigeria, to put a moratorium on the activity of forest exploitation in the areas controlled by the tropical forest community, and was able to enforce the prohibition of forest exploitation by moving eco-guards: Ekuri men who patrol the rain forest to determine developers and bubblers illegal.
But in 2023, the Nigerian government raised the moratorium to allow logging. Then, later that year, a local wood company arrived without appropriate permit. The Ekuri Eco-Guards confiscated the operating operating equipment of the company, but their actions brought army staff into the village, pulling their weapons. There was no reported injury, but violence has almost ended the Ekuri initiative because eco-guards are unable to compete with the private and governmental security forces hired to protect the forest companies that move in the region.
“In Cross River, the forest has almost completely disappeared everywhere else,” said Egot. “What we have still is in communities. So there is a lot of pressure. ”
The violence in which Ekuri is confronted with the environment and the land defenders is not uncommon. This week, Global Witness, an organization that is investigating environmental and human rights violations, has published a new report documenting 146 cases of homicides and abductions of environmental and land defenders in 2024 – on average three people killed or disappeared each week. The authors of the report claim that attacks have taken place after having expressed or acted to defend their land, with many mining industries, journalists and other extractive industries.
A third of the collected incidents have arrived at Aboriginal peoples, while Afro-Desses, people with ancestral ties with enslaved Africans, included two cases this year. Most Afro-design resident in South America, such as Brazil, and are the Biodiversity Terre Guardians. Since the organization began to follow violence against land and environment defenders in 2012, there was a total of 2,253 cases.
“All these years reporting the realities of defenders around the world, highlight, for me, the disproportionate nature of attacks that Aboriginal peoples in particular, and Afro descendants, must suffer from year to year,” said Laura Furones, author of the report.
According to the study, Colombia is considered to be the deadliest country for land and environment defenders with the greatest number of fatal attacks with 48 cases, a third of the total global amount. However, 80% of kidnapping and murder cases took place in Latin America. Global witnesses attribute high rates of fatal violence to countries with a low presence of the state which allow corruption and unbalanced legal systems that make conflicts of resources more fatal. In Asia, the Philippines have seen the greatest number of murders and disappearances with most violence linked to government organizations.
It is estimated that around 54% of critical mineral deposits of the world necessary for green energy and IA needs – cobalt,, lithium,, nickeland copper – are located on or near indigenous land, often leading violence. “In the middle of the use of creeping resources, climbing environmental pressure and a quick closing window to limit [global] warming at 1.5 ° C, [industries] Treat land and environmental defenders as if they are a major drawback instead of the Canaries in a coal mine about to explode, “said Rachel Cox, main activist at Global Witness.
In Nigeria, Egot says that he hopes to restore the Ekuri initiative and find ways to introduce more jobs in the region, especially as Eco-Gardes, in order to curb the connection in the fatherland of his community.
“We call on international communities to continue to speak to our state, to our government, because Nigeria signs to many environmental treaties,” he said. “So these treaties in which they connect, really respect these treaties?” Do they follow on these treaties?
