Hourglass Earth

On ecology and extinction.

[extinctionreport-blog]

Top: José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo, husband and wife, were murdered by gunman in 2011 after years of opposing illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon.  Bottom: Chico Mendes, a trade unionists and Amazon Rainforest defender in Brazil, was assassinated in 1988. Brazil has long been a hotspot of environmentally-motivated murder, according to Global Witness. 

[extinctionreport-blog]

Remembering the Dead on Earth Day

We hear about endangered species. The greater sage grouse facing oblivion thanks to cattle ranchers, row croppers and gas drillers. Mollusks and their kin looking down the barrel of extinction due to acidifying oceans and industrial pollutants. Rhinos and other tusk bearers on the brink as poachers and crime syndicates continue to reap illicit harvests for sale on black markets. The list goes on and on, but I say today on Earth Day we look at a different endangered (sub)species — environmental activists in the "developing world."

If you oppose development in the "developing world," then you're liable to get clipped. That's the takeaway from a fresh-off-the-digital-press report by Global Witness entitled "Deadly Environment," which dropped online last week. Check it out here.

While environmental activists in the United States chain themselves to the White House fence, draft email blasts and spread the good gospel of nonviolent direct action, activists in the Andes, the Amazon and across Southeast Asia and Africa, men and women fighting against deforestation, water pollution and resource extraction, are literally getting gunned down. Global Witness paints the picture in terse terms:

"Worldwide, between 2002 and 2013, known killings of environmental and land defenders have dramatically increased. Three times as many people were killed in 2012 than 10 years before. Overall, we have documented 908 people in 35 countries who have died during this period because of their work on environment and land issues. Eleven defenders have also been forcibly “disappeared” and are presumed dead. Beyond the killings lie a wide range of non- fatal threats such as intimidation, violence and others that we have not recorded in this research, but which pose great risks to defenders and their families and act as a deterrent to further activism."

It's difficult to protect the planet from development if your friends and allies across the globe are being picked off one by one.  It's a huge problem. Yet U.S.-based environmental groups, too often in the thrall of knit-picking campaigns against a single oil pipeline or a university's fossil-fuel holdings, have barely made a peep about the killings. Why? Because they aren't paying attention.

The powerful interests that assassinate environmental activists follow a very simple formula, and it looks something like this:

1) Make sure your target resides in a rural area, where no one will hear them scream. After all, the powerful environmental activists of today, those who might help defend beleaguered local environmental movements in faraway places, are based in big cities and they have trouble acknowledging the poor souls who live in the backwaters and boonies of the ever-developing world.

2) Make sure your target is poor. No money means no lawyers, few contacts, little access to communication, less protection and little hope of being protected by local authorities.

3) Hire locals to do the deed. If you're a mining company, a powerful rancher, or a timber interest and the gadfly environmentalists are driving you crazy, hire a local to off them and you can frame the whole thing as some kind of dispute among the natives. Keep the controversy to a minimum. Keep the news coverage to a minimum. If the incident doesn't wind up in the press, there's a fair chance the whole thing will blow over.

Take the case of Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria de Espirito Santo da Silvo. They fit well into the strategy outlined above. The couple worked in a reserve in the Praialta-Piranheira sustainable reserve in the Brazilian state of Para in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. They spent years denouncing encroachment into the area by illegal logging interests. According to Global Witness, the couple was murdered on on May 24, 2011, when gunmen ambushed them on their way to work. Jose's ear was ripped off his head as proof of execution, evidence that the gunmen were under some sort of contract to kill the couple. A couple dies so the world market has more logs to consume.

This killing crisis should spark solidarity movements in the wealthy countries of the West. American environmental organizations and their young followers should offer support in the form of human accompaniment for environmentalists abroad who face lethal threats. This model has worked well in some countries, and it should be expanded to others. Organizations like 350.org, the Sierra Club, Amazon Watch, the Rainforest Action Network and the Wilderness Society should throw their respective hats in the ring.

Can you imagine what such an experience would do for the new generation of environmental activists growing up in North America and Europe? We have not faced life and death threats. We have not seen the truly ugly side of industrial development. It's all hidden away in rural backwaters or Third World resource colonies. If a new generation of environmentalists spent some time abroad to support activists in peril, in real peril, it would harden their resolve, give them a sense of humor and force them to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation in which the human community currently finds itself. It would infuse the lazy advocacy of the "developed world" with a new sense of urgency and connect land defenders in a global network of mutual solidarity and support. - JT