Earth's Defenders Being Murdered at Increasingly Alarming Rate Environmentalists across the world
being killed at rate of one per week, and growing
- Common Dreams staff
"According to a new survey released today by Global Witness, the international group that looks at the intersection of the environment and human rights, over 711 environmental activists, journalists and community members trying protect their local rivers and forests have been killed in the last decade – more than one a week.
Amazon rainforest activists José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo, who were murdered last year. (Photograph: Reuters)
What's worse? The trend is getting worse, not better. According to the report, A Hidden Crisis? (pdf), in 2011 the toll was 106 people, almost doubling over the past three years.
On the eve of the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, the briefing warns of a hidden crisis in environmental protection, highlighting a pervasive culture of impunity around such violence, a lack of information, reporting or monitoring of the problem at national and international levels, and the involvement of governments and the domestic and foreign private sector in many killings."
"As global consumption increases, the battle for access to land, forests and other natural resources is intensifying with deadly results. Contributory factors include;"http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/06/19-2
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