Mary Menton and Claudelice Santos

2022

European countries import beef, palm oil, minerals and other commodities from Brazil through companies that purchase from farms and mines with proven links to human rights violations and environmental crimes including massacres, assassination attempts, slave labour, illegal deforestation, and pollution. Through analysis of case studies in the South/Southeast of Pará, known as the epicentre of violence against environmental human rights defenders, we found evidence of numerous crimes by companies and farms within the supply chain of European markets. For example, chain-of-custody documents show that large beef export companies purchased cattle raised on the farm where 10 landless workers were massacred in Pau D’Arco in 2017 and where Fernando dos Santos Araújo, witness to the massacre, was murdered in January 2021. These violence footprints of EU markets should be tackled through mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence and insistence upon transparent and traceable supply chains. Given the links between EU markets and these rights violations, the EU must hold companies accountable for these atrocities and increase support to the EU human rights defenders mechanism to protect frontline defenders who speak out against these violations.

Read the full article here

Title: BINGO Complicity, Necropolitical Ecology & Environmental Defenders

Affiliations: Mary Menton, Research Fellow in Environmental Justice, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, University of Sussex; Paul Gilbert, Senior Lecturer in International Development, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex

Abstract: Several big international non-governmental organisations (BINGOs) have been instrumental in increasing the attention brought to the lived experiences of environmental and land defenders and the atmospheres of violence they face. Among the many BINGOs who frame themselves as ‘supporters’ or ‘protectors’ of environmental and land defenders, several have been complicit in violence perpetrated by park guards and resource extraction companies. In this paper, we unpack the multifaceted nature of the role BINGOs play in shaping the atmospheres of violence with which environmental defenders contend. While BINGOs have acted as whistle-blowers and advocates providing legal assistance to at-risk defenders, they have also been complicit in ‘green violence’ perpetrated in the name of conservation, and more subtle relationships of ‘partnership’ with industries and specific corporations engaged in neo- colonial forms of extraction and violence against defenders. BINGO complicity with the violence against defenders replays the historical entanglement of some organizations with displacement and violence enacted in the name of colonial era conservation. We argue that BINGOs can, and must, work towards more radical forms of decolonial solidarity with environmental and land defenders who contend with atmospheres of violence shaped, in many cases, by conservation efforts and resource extraction activities with which BINGOs may be complicit, either directly, or through various forms of ‘partnership.’ Keywords: BINGOs, environmental defenders, necropolitical ecology, partnership Read the full article here.

eds. Mary Menton and Philippe Le Billon

2021

This book is about environmental defenders and the violence they face while seeking to protect their land and the environment.

Between 2002 and 2019, at least two thousand people were killed in 57 countries for defending their lands and the environment. Recent policy initiatives and media coverage have provided much needed attention to the protection and support of defenders, but there has so far been little scholarly work. This edited volume explains who these defenders are, what threats they face, and what can be done to help support and protect them. Delving deep into the complex relations between and within communities, corporations, and government authorities, the book highlights the diversity of defenders, the collective character of their struggles, the many drivers and forms of violence they are facing, as well as the importance of emotions and gendered dimensions in protests and repression. Drawing on global case studies, it examines the violence taking place around different types of development projects, including fossil fuels, agro-industrial, renewable energy, and infrastructure. The volume also examines the violence surrounding conservation projects, including through militarized wildlife protection and surveillance technologies. The book concludes with a reflection on the perspectives of defenders about the best ways to support and protect them. It contrasts these with the lagging efforts of an international community often promoting economic growth over the lives of defenders.

Book available via Routledge.

This booklet is an overview of various international mechanisms for protecting human rights. Many of these processes can be used by people who don’t have any legal training. Individuals and communities seeking resolutions or justice for human rights issues can use this resource to understand the options available and how to apply them.

Not1More has developed a toolkit for protestors, campaigners and local people who may be affected by Injunctions. Individuals and communities can use this resource to better understand the risks they face when protesting whilst there is an injunction in place.

Not1More has developed a zine with anti-racism writer Jose Hall to help communities decide if they want to pursue a Public Inquiry.

UNEP and UNOHCHR 2022

This report examines the positive and negative impacts of the decrees, laws and other government policies on environmental rights that were either enacted in response to COVID-19 or passed during the pandemic. This rapid assessment covers the implications of these new rules and laws for Southeast Asian countries’ environmental protection measures and for EHRDs. The eleven Southeast Asian countries included in this assessment are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Viet Nam.

Read the full report here.

This research focuses on the right to protest and the long-term harm suffered by environmental defenders in the UK as a result of police violence.

‘Sustainable’ Development and Atmospheres of Violence: Experiences of Environmental Defenders Principal Investigator: Dr Mary Menton, University of Sussex

Funded by The British Academy, this project aims to explore how environmental defenders experience violence in relation to projects designed to promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and why they continue to fight despite the risks.

In 2014 the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights defenders identified environmental defenders as those most at risk of violence and death. Global Witness reported that almost four environmental defenders were killed per week in 2017. This project focuses on defenders working around natural resource extraction and agricultural developments in Africa (DRC, Guinea-Bissau), Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia) and Latin America (Brazil, Ecuador). It aims to identify the governance structures and socio-economic, political and historical conditions and processes that are at the root of atmospheres of violence around ’sustainable’ development projects.

The project responds to an area of urgent policy and humanitarian concern by examining how and why environmental defenders experience violence in relation to sustainable development. By identifying the factors and processes producing violence, the project seeks to enable policymakers to better assess when and how projects designed to promote sustainable development might place environmental defenders at risk of eroded dignity, physical harm and even death.

Another Sky Another Sky arises from the international research projects ‘Sustainable’ Development and Atmospheres of Violence: Experiences of Environmental Defenders and Mapping Indigenous Rights Abuses in Northeast Brazil, and an emergency research plan to investigate the impacts of Covid-19 among the Indigenous peoples. In an interdisciplinary movement and in a network, we use three research methodologies from political ecology, and the environmental humanities: reports of the experiences of the defenders, cartographies of conflicts realised by Indigenous researchers and students, and works by Indigenous artists about the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, associated to the ecological conflicts experienced by the communities. The result is presented on the website Another Sky, in a mapping and virtual exhibit.

From these territories of art and war emerge different forms of resistance, narratives, constructions and reconstructions of worlds torn by conquest, colonialism and capitalism.

We combine the complexity of contemporary Indigenous struggles: art and war. The mapping was conducted by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers associated to the project, particularly students from three universities in Bahia: the Federal University at Bahia (UFBA), the Federal University at Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB) and the State University of Bahia (Uneb). This is not a complete mapping, but a continuing process under construction. The idea is that the survey, in a partnership with this network of universities with the Indigenous movements, will continue, by including new and revised descriptions of conflicts; and simultaneously improving the descriptions already realised. It is also hoped that the project will develop by making visible not only the Indigenous resistance, as in the current work, but particularly those that perpetuate the violence and invasions of territories and Indigenous lives.

In conjunction with the mapping of the ecological conflicts, artworks were created by 15 Indigenous artists, as well as a documentary directed by two Indigenous filmmakers, Graciela Guarani and Alexandre Pankararu. The art that illuminates this constellation was created by the artist and designer Denilson Baniwa.

For another horizon of conviviality of differences, new worlds, that are more just and egalitarian, and another Sky suspended on high.

Project coordinators: Mary Menton (SSRP/University of Sussex), Felipe Milanez (IHAC/UFBA), Jurema Machado (CAHL/UFRB) and Felipe Cruz Tuxá (Opará/Uneb)

Artists: Arissana Pataxó (Bahia), Eduarda Yacunã Tuxá (Bahia), Glicéria Tupinambá (Bahia), Olinda Yawar Tupinambá (Bahia), Edivan Fulni-ô (Pernambuco), Leide Pankararu (Pernambuco), Lindaura Xukuru-Kariri (Pernambuco/Alagoas), Ziel Karapotó (Alagoas), Benício Pitaguari (Ceará), Reginaldo Kanindé (Ceará), Arawi Suruí (Pará), Irekran Kayapó (Pará), Kryt Gavião Akrãtikatejê (Pará), Isael Maxakali (Minas Gerais).