Environmental protection has historically been a sensitive issue throughout Latin America, as the fight for land and water rights has been, and continues to be, the cause of crackdowns on entire populations.
Recent NGO reports show the extent of the risks faced by environmentalists, activists, community and political leaders and local journalists who investigate and denounce environmental crimes, whether committed by small land-grabbers or large multinational corporations.
According to a report by Global Witness, at least 196 land and environmental defenders were killed around the world in 2023, bringing the number killed between 2012 and 2023 to 2,106.
Latin America was the scene of most of the violence, with 54 deaths in Mexico and Central America and 112 in South America. Colombia recorded the highest number of deaths for the second year running, with 79 defenders killed, followed by Brazil with 25, and Mexico and Honduras with 18 each.
Now, a new profession has joined the ranks of the most threatened: scientists. This week, Kimberley Brown reported from Quito, Ecuador, a country grappling with a growing security crisis, that scientists were facing escalating threats from organised crime groups, including kidnapping and extortion, particularly in remote areas such as the Chocó rainforest.
As homicide rates soar and armed groups tighten their grip on these regions, fieldwork and conservation projects are increasingly at risk, threatening vital ecosystems and isolating local communities.
In a region where the survival of biomes such as the Amazon, Pantanal, Chaco, Patagonian forests, Andean glaciers, mangroves and the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef in the Caribbean is at risk, scientists’ work studying the effects of the climate crisis must now also be preserved.
Andrei Netto, commissioning editor, Latin America and the Caribbean |
Handouts are never free. The cruel US aid freeze is an opportunity for the Caribbean 
