There are places where defending a river, a forest, a mountain, a seed, or the collective right to remain can amount to a death sentence. The new report by Global Witness shows that violence against those who defend the environment and their land is not merely a series of isolated incidents; rather, it paints a truly global picture of dispossession, concentrated where extractive interests, illegal economies, land disputes, and forms of territorial control converge.
In 2025, at least 124 environmental and land defenders were killed worldwide. With this, Global Witness brings the total number of documented killings and long-term disappearances since 2012 to 2,375. The organization itself warns that these figures likely underestimate the true scale of the phenomenon due to the difficulties in documenting cases in contexts of violence, repression, and institutional failure.
The geographical concentration is striking: 85% of the murders documented in 2025 occurred in Latin America, a region that has held this position since Global Witness began its record-keeping. More than three-quarters of the victims were peasants, Indigenous people, or people of African descent; 44 of those killed belonged to Indigenous communities.
This is not a geographical coincidence; it is the manifestation of a struggle over strategic territories—a war against the peoples who, under a different mandate, care for Mother Earth.
Colombia: The Epicenter of Territorial Violence
For the fourth consecutive year, Colombia once again ranked first in the world in documented murders of environmental and land defenders: 39 homicides in 2025. Nearly half of the victims were Indigenous, and another 15 were small-scale farmers. In 35 of the 39 cases, there was a link to land conflicts. Global Witness also identified alleged ties to organized crime in 17 murders and to hired killers in another five.
Cauca is the national epicenter. Thirteen defenders were murdered there in 2025, including four members of the Indigenous Guard. Since 2012, Global Witness has documented 171 murders in this department—the highest figure among Colombia’s departments.
The explanation cannot be reduced to the presence of armed groups; Cauca occupies a strategic location for illegal economies, coca cultivation, routes to the Pacific, illegal mining, and enormous environmental and territorial wealth. Global Witness points out that these dynamics are also contributing to the degradation of forests and water sources.
Violence, therefore, serves a purpose: to dismantle community capacities that hinder the control and appropriation of territories.
Beyond Murder: The Tip of the Iceberg of Dispossession
Homicide is merely the most extreme manifestation of a much broader structure of intimidation. Threats, forced displacement, stigmatization, judicial persecution, smear campaigns, online harassment, and criminalization are all part of a repertoire designed to isolate those who resist.
Global Witness warns of this “hidden iceberg” of non-lethal attacks, where the goal is not always to kill. Sometimes it is enough to instill fear, divide a community, subject its leaders to legal proceedings, or destroy their public legitimacy to facilitate the imposition of an economic project or a regime of territorial control.
For this reason, talking only about “security for social leaders” is insufficient; the problem is not exclusively individual—violence seeks to tear apart the fabric of communities.
Extractivism, Illegal Economies, and Territorial Control
The data reveal a complex convergence: more than half of the murders documented globally in 2025 were related to territorial disputes. Global Witness also linked cases to mining and extractive activities, logging, and agribusiness.
This requires moving beyond a fragmented analysis that artificially separates “criminal violence,” “territorial conflict,” and “extractivism.”
In many territories, these dynamics overlap. The illegal economy can pave the way for dispossession; infrastructure can facilitate appropriation; illegal mining can pollute rivers; business activities can exert pressure for land; and armed groups can exercise the social control necessary to prevent resistance.
This does not mean claiming that every company, state, or economic actor is directly involved in a murder. It means recognizing that there are economic and territorial structures whose profits can coexist with situations of violence—it could be a perfect symbiosis between crime, business, and the state—and investigating these connections is essential to combating impunity.
In Peru, Global Witness documented four murders in 2025, amid growing pressure on Amazonian communities such as the Kakataibo, Shipibo, and Asháninka, where drug trafficking, illegal logging, and deforestation are encroaching on ancestral territories. In Brazil, 26 human rights defenders were murdered, mainly in the Amazonian regions of Pará and Rondônia, while Honduras recorded 12 murders, many linked to land disputes in the Bajo Aguán and the expansion of the palm oil industry. Mexico, with 10 murders and more than a hundred cases of criminalization, also highlights the interplay between territorial conflicts, mining, illegal logging, and organized crime. These cases show that violence is concentrated where land, forests, water, and other common resources are gaining increasing economic value.
Outside Latin America, the pattern repeats itself in different ways. In the Philippines, 12 murders were recorded, against a backdrop marked by militarization, “red-tagging,” and conflicts surrounding extractive and infrastructure projects that affect indigenous and rural communities. In Indonesia, although only one murder was documented in 2025, Global Witness recorded a sharp increase in the criminalization of defenders, particularly among Dayak communities facing the expansion of the logging industry into forests, peatlands, and sacred sites. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, violence surrounding illegal mining highlights the connection between armed control and the extraction of strategic minerals. There are also cases of disappearances and persecution in Chile and the criminalization of community forest guardians in Nigeria. The territories and actors may change, but the pattern repeats itself: wherever communities defend common goods against extractive interests, pressure mounts to dismantle their resistance.
The Underlying Dispute is about Civilization
According to the prevailing logic, land—not territory—can become a concession, a financial asset, a mining zone, a logistics corridor, an agroindustrial frontier, or a space available for investment. For Indigenous peoples, peasants, and Black communities, however, it is about territory—not simply land—but rather that network that weaves together a tapestry of social, cultural, spiritual, and ecological relationships upon which the reproduction of life and the existence of peoples and their cultures depend.
These are not simply two different opinions about the same space; they are distinct ways of understanding the existence and value of nature.
Hence, the defense of territory is also a defense of water, biodiversity, food sovereignty, and the material conditions necessary to confront the climate crisis.
Every murder of a human rights defender represents not only the loss of a life, but also the loss of knowledge, organizational experience, and a collective capacity to protect a territory.
From Individual Protection to Collective Protection
The state’s response cannot be limited to bodyguards, emergency hotlines, or individual measures; while these tools may be necessary, they are insufficient when the threat is directed against entire communities.
Global Witness’s own documented experience demonstrates the importance of strengthening collective forms of protection. In Colombia, the Indigenous Guards are a concrete expression of this community’s capacity for care, vigilance, mobility, mediation, and territorial defense.
Effective protection requires guaranteeing territorial rights, accelerating the formalization and collective titling of land, investigating not only the perpetrators but also those who order and finance the attacks, ensuring the effective participation of communities, and respecting free, prior, and informed consent where applicable.
It also calls for tackling illegal economies without once again making communities the target of militarized and punitive policies.
Protect the Land to Save Lives
The geography of these murders reveals a paradox: those who protect some of the planet’s most important ecosystems are among those facing the greatest risks.
While governments and corporations talk about the energy transition, sustainable development, and the fight against climate change, in many regions those who defend forests, rivers, and lands are being persecuted.
That is why environmental defense cannot be reduced to a sectoral agenda, but must be seen as a struggle for the very conditions of life.
In the face of dispossession, we need more organization; in the face of criminalization, more solidarity; in the face of extractivism, more territorial defense; in the face of violence, more collective protection.
Because defending the territory means defending water; defending water means defending life.
And those who are resisting in the territories today do not need speeches of recognition after they have been murdered; they need guarantees to remain alive, organized, and defending what belongs to present and future generations.
Territory is not for sale. Life is not up for negotiation. It is defended!!!
Original text by Alfonso Insuasty Rodríguez published at Desinformémonos on September 25th, 2026.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.