“Escazú: Setting Protections for Environmental Defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean” — March 23, 2021

…In 2019, two-thirds of worldwide environmental defenders killings took place in Latin America. This trend is not novel. In this last decade, communities that defend ecosystems and rich biodiversity hotspots in Latin America have been consistently the worst-affected worldwide: at least two thousand victimizing events against men and women and two hundred against organizations defending the environment and the land were recorded. Ethnic minorities suffer the worst consequences of large-scale development projects, particularly agribusiness or activities associated with extractive industries like oil and gas. In this context, the Escazú Agreement is a decisive step towards protecting human rights defenders in environmental matters. It is the first treaty in the world that aims to protect environmental defenders from threats and repression, and includes provisions related to access to information, public participation, and access to justice. In response to it, however, the business community in Latin America is feeling threatened by the Escazú Agreement and has actively lobbied against it. This blog post explores the long and bumpy road that Escazú has had in Colombia… Violence against environmental defenders in the region is connected to a significant contextual backdrop of business conduct. Journalistic projects documenting episodes of violence against environmental leaders and their communities have found that agribusiness, logging, mining, and infrastructure are the main sectors around which activists have raised concerns in the last decade. 90% of attacks in Colombia were against defenders speaking out against four industries: mining, fossil fuels, agriculture, and hydroelectric plants and dams. Most attacks were against defenders who raised concerns about five companies in particular, including Cerrejón, a mining company jointly owned by BHP, Anglo American and Glencore (see our blog on how Cerrejón has managed to get away with impunity)…