Are environmental and human rights activists criminals?

Terry Odendahl is Global Greengrants Fund’s executive director and CEO.

Since I arrived at Global Greengrants Fund, I have become increasingly alarmed by a global trend toward criminalizing activism of all sorts, especially environmental. We have seen our grants advisors and grantees beaten by corporate thugs and jailed by the military and police. Their organizations have been subject to intimidating government audits, like those mandated in Russia in 2013. Laws have been passed that discourage free assembly and speech, civil-society organizing, and protest.

Killings over land and forests are also increasing, according to a 2012 Global Witness survey. More than 700 environmental activists, community leaders, and journalists have been killed in the last decade. The research also showed Brazil, Columbia, the Philippines, and Peru have the highest number of such slayings. Two of our indigenous grantees were murdered in Columbia.

“Criminalization is not new,” says Ivan Torafing, our Next Generation Climate Board advisor and an indigenous youth leader for Asia Pacific Indigenous Youth Network. “We have already been criminalized for many years—hundreds of years even. It is true that fear and intimidation caused by this criminalization is a very real limitation. But the reality is that our communities are already in dire situations. So we have no choice but to fight.” Find out what Ivan says motivates indigenous youth activists.

Defamation suits used to harass activists are also widespread: In December 2008, Marc Ona Essangui, a Global Greengrants Fund grantee in Gabon, was jailed for publicly exposing the corrupt, secret terms of an agreement between the Gabonese government and a Chinese mining company. The following year, Ona Essangui received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, where I had the honor of meeting him.

Sometimes international attention can serve as protection for activists. However, this past March, Ona Essangui was convicted of defamation for criticizing the Chief of the Cabinet of the Gabon President. He received a six-month suspended prison sentence and a $10,000US fine.

In the face of such dangerous and overwhelming conditions, activist struggles can seem like a no-win. Still, environmental and civil rights defenders go on.

“If we don’t risk our lives to save life, what sense is there in living?” says Father Marco Arana, a Global Greengrants Fund grantee in Peru, who was arrested and savagely beaten in 2012 for protesting the Conga gold mine.

I, like many of you, have the privilege to live in a country where there are some basic legal protections for people working to protect, restore, and transform our Earth. But many of the people Global Greengrants Fund supports do not. To learn more, please visit Global Witness, the American Jewish World Service, and The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law.