Paris: At least 200 environmental campaigners and protectors — 40 per cent from indigenous tribes — were murdered around the world in 2016, the deadliest year on record, the watchdog organisation Global Witness said on Thursday.
The grim tally, double the number slain two years earlier, is the largest since the NGO began tracking such violence in 2002, it reported.
The real number is probably higher as some killings go undocumented. Fatal attacks against activists have become more widespread, occurring in 24 countries in 2016, compared to 16 the year before.
Brazil, Colombia, and the Philippines accounted for more than half of the confirmed deaths, followed by India, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Bangladesh.
Sixty per cent of those murdered were from Latin America. “The battle to protect the planet is rapidly intensifying, and the cost can be counted in human lives,” said Global Witness campaigner Ben Leather.
“More people in more countries are being left with no option but to take a stand against the theft of their land or the trashing of their environment.”
Of the 100 killings that could be traced to specific industrial sectors, a third were linked to mining and oil operations, and a fifth each to logging and agribusiness.
Hydroelectric dams can also be a source of tension. On March 2, 2016, gunmen burst into the home of Honduran activist Berta Caceres and shot her dead.
The UN Environment Programme posthumously made Caceres one its “Champions of the Earth” in recognition of her advocacy of sustainable development.
Protecting national parks — where poachers hunt endangered species for meat and valuable body parts, such as elephant tusks — proved to be a deadly occupation in 2016, with nine rangers murdered in 2016 in the DRC alone. Eleven others lost their lives elsewhere in the world.
Police and soldiers have been identified as suspects in at least 43 killings, according to Global Witness, which listed all 200 victims.
Sixteen activists were killed in India in 2016, mostly over mining projects, a three-fold increase from the year before. — AFP
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