The 2020 Global Witness Report ‘Defending Tomorrow,’ found that 2019 was the highest year on record for killings of environmental defenders, and identified mining, agribusiness and logging as the most destructive industries. In response to this rising tide of attacks, the Elisabeth Haub School of Law sought to raise awareness of this issue and called for the protection of environmental defenders as well as the accountability of parties for the violence and environmental destruction they cause.

The event featured environmental advocates who provided their perspectives and experiences as environmental defenders.  Professor Smita Narula, Co-Chair of the Global Center for Environmental Legal Studies, hosted the event. The panellists included:

• Attorney Robert Chan, Executive Director of the Palawan NGO Network Inc. (PNNI), who shared how he and others have stepped in to enforce environmental laws in the Province of Palawan of the Philippines, compensating for a lack of State action;

• Carlos Alfonso Negret, Former Ombudsman of the Republic of Colombia, who discussed his investigation of killings in Colombia and the paradox of increasing environmental protection and increasing violence against environmental defenders;

• Krystal Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne organizer from Lame Deer, Montana, who led global solidarity movements against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock and who recently helped launch the NDN Collective’s LANDBACK Campaign; and

• Julie Anne Miranda-Brobeck, Head of U.S. Communications & Global Partnerships for Global Witness, who shared key findings of the Global Witness report, ‘Defending Tomorrow’.

The panel discussion was followed by an award ceremony wherein panellists lit candles in memoriam for deceased environmental defenders as the names of the 212 environmental defenders who had been killed in 2019 scrolled in silence on the screen. 

A recording of the webinar is available here.

About the Author

      Photo: Shannon Peters