Indigenous people defending their land face a disproportionate share of violence and threats.
Corporations must be held accountable for attacks that advance their business interests, researchers say. In the first-ever global study of its kind, researchers concluded that more attention needs to be paid to physical attacks and threats against land defenders, since those incidents often are the precursor to death. Last year, a human rights and environmental watchdog group determined that 177 land defenders were killed in 2022. Land defenders are people who seek to protect their communities and environmental resources from destructive development projects ranging from pipelines to mines to farms to wind projects.
