In addition to killings and physical violence, defenders face the growing risk of criminalization – legal methods to harass, threaten, and stop their work – used to silence and prevent them from speaking out.
Defenders are being threatened, arrested, sentenced to prison under laws targeted at activists or for fraudulent claims, or hit with costly civil lawsuits such as defamation. For many of these actions by government or private actors, defenders can face pre-trial detention, lengthy sentences, stigmatization, and financial harms, alongside long stressful court cases, because of this misuse of the justice system.
But there is hope.
In September 2023, following years of campaigning by Indigenous groups and human rights organizations in Brazil, the Supreme Court quashed a time-limit policy that would make it easier for agribusiness companies and cattle farmers to steal Indigenous land. The abandoned policy sought to remove Indigenous people’s legal rights to their land unless they proved they were occupants at the time of Brazil’s current Constitution – more than 35 years ago.
Given the violent removal of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral homes, poor record keeping, and nomadic nature of many tribes, this legal loophole violated the rights of Indigenous groups, preventing them from living and subsisting on their own land.
The future of our planet depends on the continued stewardship of Indigenous people over their ancestral land, with Indigenous practices cited as protecting 80% of the world’s biodiversity. We simply cannot meet the 1.5°C limit and prevent devastating consequences on human life without the efforts of environmental defenders.
