Today we remember women and men, who risked everything to protect their land, forests, waters, wildlife, children, cultural ways. Their values transcended ownership, money, status and personal gain. They are absent now – will we remember them ?
Just one year ago, a vibrant Berta Cáceres, cofounder of COPINH in Honduras, took the stage to be honored in San Francisco at the awards of 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize. Today her daughter Bertita takes up her mother’s mantle following Berta’s murder– many call it assassination – on March 3, 2016, in rural Honduras. (Watch video of indigenous women seeking justice for Berta. )
A perilous world
Environmental activists – those who seek just causes for indigenous people and communities – are in a dangerous business – nowhere more so than in Latin America where “two thirds of environmentalists around the world who died violently [since 2002] lost their lives in that region.” (Washington Post article)
People shot, stabbed, beaten to death for trying to save sea turtles in Costa Rica, protesting a dam, opposing the spraying of pesticides on oil palms, fighting illegal logging in Brazil.
Frequently they are the face of opposition to government-supported projects that may be rife with corruption and kickbacks to top officials, and financial advantage to locals who are doing their bidding.
Released in the year of the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper and environmental activist, Deadly Environment highlights a severe shortage of information or monitoring of this problem.
“Brazil is the most dangerous place to defend rights to land and the environment, with 448 killings, followed by Honduras (109) and the Philippines (67),” according to Courtney Oliver of Global Witness.
“…[T]he total is likely to be higher than the report documents, but even the known scale of violence is on a par with the more high profile incidence of journalists killed in the same period,” says Oliver.
The problem in Africa
Conservation work can be as dangerous as being a journalist or soldier in a war zone – and often takes place in them, for instance, Central Republic of the Congo, where armed militias poach for ivory, traffick in animals, and supply bushmeat from endangered and at-risk species. Park rangers and people offering sanctuary to wildlife and orphan animals get caught in the crosshairs.
Virunga National Park is a prime example — a beautiful World Heritage site in the DR of Congo, with impressive landscape and wildlife –where some 150 park rangers have been killed in the past decade trying to protect the endangered lowland gorillas. In March two more rangers were killed, and a third has gone missing according to a National Geographic story.
Are you still an environmental hero five years after you’ve been murdered because no one remembers your name ?
The world moves on but we should not forget these Earth heroes.