Unrooted responses: Addressing violence against environmental and land defenders

Grant, Hollie; Billon, Philippe Le

doi:10.1177/2399654420941518

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…This means that the data available probably underestimates true numbers, as many defenders do not report the threats they experience, or conceal them out of fear or to protect their families' safety. According to Grant & Le Billon (2021), this occurs because the perpetrators are most often granted impunity and because social protection regarding human rights is nonexistent.…”

Section: Defenders Threatened With Death In Brazil the Legal Amazon A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental defenders suffering death threats and "under protection" in the state of Pará, Eastern Amazonia, Brazil

Rodrigues

Campos

Santana

2022

Journal of Political Ecology

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Latin America has a long history of extractive and exploitative territorial activities, dating back to the colonial era. However, in the last decade there has been a steep increase in these activities, and in socio-environmental conflicts, in Latin America. There are indications of the links between the exploitation of natural resources and the violation of human rights, which materializes in the Amazon through the increase of expulsions and evictions of families, assassination attempts, murders, illegal imprisonments, intimidation, and threats. The main targets of these crimes are leaders who head the struggle to defend the rights of collectivities to land and territory, the environment, human rights and their multiple cultural and life expressions. The state of Pará (Eastern Amazonia) has appeared in the last decade as one of the states in Brazil with the highest incidence of cases of land conflicts, assassinations, aggression, defamation, and death threats directed against community leaders and environmental defenders. Thus, this article aims to quantify, characterize and reflect on the environmental defenders and community leaders suffering death threats and under legal protection in the state of Pará, Eastern Amazonia (between 2014 and 2020). It also seeks to identify the main activities and sectors that threaten these groups and the reasons behind the intensification of threats in recent years.

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Section: Defenders Threatened With Death In Brazil the Legal Amazon A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental defenders suffering death threats and "under protection" in the state of Pará, Eastern Amazonia, Brazil

Rodrigues

Campos

Santana

2022

Journal of Political Ecology

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“…However, international NGOs play a double-edged role in this context. While they can raise awareness and protect defenders by giving them visibility and (re)establishing accountability, as well as support legal struggles, they are often themselves entrenched in bureaucratic structures and forms of cooperation with governmental administrations, international donors or extractive companies that prevent them from engaging decisively and comprehensively in order to protect defenders (Grant andLe Billon 2020, Menton andGilbert 2021). As our case study example shows, INGO involvement sometimes happens in parallel to higher-intensity measures such as road blockages.…”

Section: Ii5 Contextualizing Results Implications For Debates On Mini...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating the nature of water- and miningscapes

Schoderer

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This thesis disentangles the complex dynamics of water and mining conflicts, seeking to understand how environmental (in)justices related to the water use of mining companies emerge and can be addressed. To do so, it focusses on institutions that regulate water use and natural resource extraction, discourses that legitimize and normalize certain social-environmental actions while rendering others unconceivable, and practices of governing the intersection of water and mining. Specifically, it pursues the following questions: 1. What are the factors or combinations of factors that explain how water and mining conflicts develop and evolve, according to existing academic literature? 2. What are the transnational institutional regimes that govern mining-related water use? Which forms of water use do they recognize and into which discourses are they embedded and gain authority from? 3. How do institutional legacies, discourses and political economic or material contexts impact efforts to (re)shape water- and miningscapes via the implementation of water protection legislation or provisions for public participation? 4. How do notions of ‘appropriate’ social-environmental interactions emerge through the interplay of different rationalities and how do they articulate themselves in practices of governing water and mining? 5. What are the conceptual and practical implications of these findings for the pursuit of environmental justice? How can (contested) institutions, discourses and practices be researched and (re)shaped to promote just social-environmental interactions? Questions 1-4 are answered in the main body of the thesis (Chapters 2-5), while the concluding chapter (Chapter 7) addresses the final question. The thesis moves from global dynamics and rule-setting to place-based interactions and meanings, placing a geographical focus on Mongolia. It applies a multi-method approach, combining systematic synthesis with in-depth, interpretative analyses and drawing on concepts from political ecology, institutional analysis, and post-structuralism. Water and mining conflicts emerge out of various combinations of social, cultural, and political-economic factors and require an integrated view capable of accounting for complex causality. Diverging water ontologies and a lack of opportunities to articulate and negotiate them, e.g. through participation processes, exacerbate contestation. However, participation processes can also be exclusionary and reify existing hierarchies, as their implementation depends on material contexts, historical (social and institutional) legacies and beliefs about authoritative knowledge and expertise. In addition, state officials charged with implementing institutional provisions are themselves embedded in cognitive-symbolic and social networks, as well as political economic and administrative structures that shape the accounts of existing reality, visions for the future, and incentives that influence their decisions. Understanding how governance practices emerge and shape water- and miningscapes thus requires disentangling ‘the state’ into individual actors. Finding ways to improve the recognition of and respect for ontological difference within institutional frameworks and governance practices remains a major challenge for the pursuit of environmental justice, as it affects how costs and benefits are distributed and procedures are implemented. In consequence, research on how institutional frameworks and governance practices for mining, water, and natural resources in general can better account for the multiplicity of natures and subjectivities is urgently needed.

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Forests of Fear: Illegal Logging, Criminalization, and Violence in the Carpathian Mountains

Iordăchescu

Vasile

2023

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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Unrooted responses: Addressing violence against environmental and land defenders

Cited by 4 publications

References 50 publications

Environmental defenders suffering death threats and "under protection" in the state of Pará, Eastern Amazonia, Brazil

Environmental defenders suffering death threats and "under protection" in the state of Pará, Eastern Amazonia, Brazil

Negotiating the nature of water- and miningscapes

Forests of Fear: Illegal Logging, Criminalization, and Violence in the Carpathian Mountains

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