In the Fight to Save the Planet, Its Defenders Are Being Killed

In an endangered world of dwindling resources, a line by Pogo, Walt Kelly’s popular newspaper-comic hero of the last century, is worth recalling: “When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.”

Global Witness, an independent organization that tracks
the murders of people around the world who try to resist
mining, farming, logging and other powerful industries that
savage ecosystems and drive people off their land.

It’s worth keeping this maxim top of mind as one reads the latest annual report from Global Witness, an independent organization that tracks the murders of people around the world who try to resist mining, farming, logging and other powerful industries that savage ecosystems and drive people off their land.

In 2018, 164 defenders of the land and environment were killed, with the Philippines of the brutal President Rodrigo Duterte taking over from Brazil as the deadliest place to resist rapacious developers and governments. That was less than the 201 killed in the previous year, but it was hardly an improvement.

Global Witness noted that the actual figure is probably far higher because reporting is iffy in the most vulnerable parts of the world. Governments and industries are also learning that there are other, nonlethal means of intimidating or eliminating activists who resist them. In addition to the violence of private security agents, state forces or contract killers, activists now also confront teams of aggressive lawyers.

Read the story from The New York Times by the Editorial Board - “In the Fight to Save the Planet, Its Defenders Are Being Killed.”