“Fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers, and biospheres that are essential to counteract unsustainable global warming.”
A record 227 environmental defenders were murdered last year—with over half of these killings perpetrated in Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines—according to a report published Monday by Global Witness.
“As the climate crisis intensifies, violence against those protecting their land and our planet also increases.”
—Global Witness
The international human rights group, which has been tracking and reporting lethal attacks on environmental activists since 2012, said it recorded an average of more than four such killings per week in 2020, “making it once again the most dangerous year on record for people defending their homes, land and livelihoods, and ecosystems vital for biodiversity and the climate.”
“A grim picture has come into focus—with the evidence suggesting that as the climate crisis intensifies, violence against those protecting their land and our planet also increases,” Global Witness said in an introduction to the report (pdf). “It has become clear that the unaccountable exploitation and greed driving the climate crisis is also driving violence against land and environmental defenders.”
The 227 lethal attacks represent a 7% increase over the 212 deaths recorded by Global Witness in last year’s report. As in 2019, Colombia witnessed the highest number of slain land defenders, with 65 murders reported, followed by Mexico with 30 killings—a 67% increase from 2019—and the Philippines, where 29 activists were murdered.
Brazil, with 20 slain land defenders, and Honduras, which saw 17 such killings, rounded out the top five deadliest countries for environmental activists. On a per capita basis, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, and the Philippines were the five deadliest nations for land defenders last year.
According to the report, “over a third of the attacks were reportedly linked to resource exploitation—logging, mining, and large-scale agribusiness—and hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure,” although “this figure is likely to be higher as the reasons behind these attacks are often not properly investigated nor reported on.”
Once again, native land defenders were disproportionately targeted, “with over a third of all fatal attacks targeting Indigenous people, despite only making up 5% of the world’s population.”
“Indigenous peoples were the target of five of the seven mass killings recorded in 2020,” the publication added. “In the most shocking of these, nine Tumandok Indigenous people were killed and a further 17 arrested in raids by the military and police on the 30th of December on the island of Panay in the Philippines. Numerous reports state that these communities were targeted for their opposition to a mega-dam project on the Jalaur river.”
Additionally, “28 of the victims killed in 2020 were state officials or park rangers, attacked whilst working to protect the environment.” Such attacks were documented in eight countries: Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Uganda.
Global Witness partially blames rapacious corporations, which are “operating with almost complete impunity,” for lethal attacks on land defenders.
“Because the balance of power is stacked in the favor of corporations, and against communities and individuals, these companies are seldom held to account for the consequences of their commercial activities,” the report states. “It’s rare that anyone is arrested or brought to court for killing defenders. When they are it’s usually the trigger-men—the ones holding the guns, not those who might be otherwise implicated, directly or indirectly, in the crime.”
The report recommends that governments pass laws to “hold corporations accountable for their actions and profits.” It also urges the United Nations, through its member states, to “formally recognize the human right to a safe, healthy, and sustainable environment.”
Additionally, countries should “protect land and environmental defenders in the context of business by ensuring effective and robust regulatory protection of the environment, labor rights, land rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights, livelihoods, and cultures,” while “any legislation used to criminalize defenders should be declared null and void.”
The report also calls on businesses “to ensure they are not contributing to or profiting from human rights and land rights harms across their supply chains and operations.”
Global Witness senior campaigner Chris Madden said in a statement that governments must “get serious about protecting defenders,” and that companies must start “putting people and planet before profit.”
Madden called the new report “another stark reminder that fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers, and biospheres that are essential to counteract unsustainable global warming.”
Meanwhile, land defenders fight on—and instead of deterring activism, the attacks often motivate even greater action.
“People sometimes ask me what I’m going to do, whether I’m going to stay here and keep my mother’s fight alive,” said Malungelo Xhakaza, the daughter of South African activist Fikile Ntshangase, who was shot dead in her home in front of her family last October after helping lead the campaign against the Tendele Coal Mine.
“I’m too proud of her to let it die,” Xhakaza added. “I know the dangers—we all know the dangers. But I’ve decided to stay. I’m going to join the fight.”
On Friday, August 27th at 2pm Pacific, attorneys for Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu (People of Red Mountain) will hold a virtual press conference updating supporters and media members on the lawsuits against the Bureau of Land Management and Lithium Nevada Corporation.
Earlier that morning, there will be a hearing in Federal District Court. Judge Miranda Du will hear arguments from Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Atsa Koodakuh wyh Nuwu (People of Red Mountain) on their motion for a preliminary injunction. If Judge Du grants the injunction, she is recognizing that these plaintiffs have a good chance of succeeding in their lawsuit which argues that the Bureau of Land Management violated federal law when they permitted the Thacker Pass lithium mine by not properly consulting with tribes. The full lawsuit will be heard later in 2021 or early 2022.
Friday’s hearing will be open to the public via video conference, but not in-person. We encourage anyone who is interested to attend. **But legal hearings can be hard to understand if you are not a lawyer, which is why we are planning to hold this virtual press conference that afternoon to explain what is happening in the case.**
Questions will be accepted and members of the press are invited to join.
Media coverage regarding the July 21st Thacker Pass mine-related injunction hearing seems to misunderstand the current status and implications of the ongoing legal battles over Thacker Pass, or “Peehee Mu’huh.”
Contrary to these media misrepresentations, Thacker Pass’ fate has not yet been decided – far from it. Lithium Nevada still has formidable legal obstacles to overcome – including the recent addition of Paiute-Shoshone plaintiffs bearing new, stronger arguments against the excavation of cultural sites at Thacker Pass.
It’s true that on July 23rd, Nevada Federal District Court Judge Miranda Du refused to grant an injunction that would have prohibited, on environmental grounds, the archaeological excavation of cultural sites at Thacker Pass. The judge rejected claims that the preliminary archaeological digging (of numerous hand-dug holes and seven 40-meter trenches) would cause irreparable environmental harm to the area.
However, some of the recent media coverage fails to clarify two crucial points. First, the July 23rd decision pertains only to the request for a preliminary injunction, rather than to the underlying legal case itself. Second, and even more importantly, on July 19th new plaintiffs moved to intervene in the legal case.
What is a Preliminary Injunction?
A preliminary injunction is a court order that preserves the status quo between relevant parties while the judge makes larger decisions about the underlying case. Since American law assumes that money can repair all harm, the legal system often allows companies to continue their projects even during an active lawsuit. If the judge rules that the company (or the BLM) violated the law, these defendants can compensate the harmed party with money. However, many judges recognize that money is not always an adequate reparation for harm to the environment or to cultural resources. Therefore, in such cases, judges often entertain a preliminary injunction motion.
Why did Judge Du reject the first preliminary injunction request?
In considering the environmental groups’ motion for a preliminary injunction, Judge Du acknowledged the possibility that the initial, archaeological excavations mentioned above could cause irreparable environmental harm. Although the judge ultimately decided that the smaller archaeological excavations would not cause that level of disturbance, she has not yet ruled on the environmental threat posed by the entire project.
What comes next for the environmental lawsuit?
The underlying legal case (filed back in February by Western Watersheds Project, Wildlands Defense, Great Basin Resource Watch, and Basin and Range Watch), challenges the Bureau of Land Management’s Record of Decision, which permitted the corporation’s proposed lithium mine on public land. If the judge rules in favor of the plaintiffs and against the BLM, the Record of Decision will be suspended or vacated entirely. The judge’s final decision on that case is slated for January 2022 and will assess and respond to the environmental harm of the entire proposed mining project, which includes chemical processing facilities and a 400-foot deep open pit that would destroy miles of surface area in Thacker Pass.
Lithium Nevada investors are foolish to overlook the fact that the primary legal decision on the Thacker Pass project still remains to be made. Even more significantly, Judge Du recently accepted the addition of local tribal groups to the case. The judge acknowledged that these new plaintiffs make stronger arguments – on cultural grounds – against both the archaeological digging and the entire project.
Why and how are Native Tribes and organizations getting involved?
The night before the July 21st hearing, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and the People of Red Mountain (a committee of land protectors from the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone reservation) made a formal motion to intervene in the case. Conceding that the lawsuit filed by Western Watersheds, etc., did not adequately represent tribal concerns, Judge Du admitted these two groups as plaintiffs to the case. The Burns Paiute Tribe, making similar arguments, has since joined the case as well. In July 2021, the judge decided to consolidate the lawsuits by adding these three indigenous groups’ lawsuit, as well as the lawsuit filed by local rancher Edward Bartell, to the original case filed by the environmental groups.
On July 27th, the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and the People of Red Mountain moved for their own preliminary injunction, on the grounds that digging up cultural sites — including burial sites and a massacre site — would do irreparable spiritual and cultural harm to them as indigenous people whose ancestors lived in and around Peehee Mu’huh.
The indigenous groups also argue that the BLM failed to adequately consult with all relevant tribes before issuing the Record of Decision.
What will happen if Judge Du grants the Preliminary Injunction request?
If the judge supports the tribes by granting this preliminary injunction after the hearing scheduled for August 27th, the corporation and the contracted archaeological group cannot disturb Thacker Pass until the end of January at the earliest. Receiving this injunction would mean that if the BLM issues an Archaeological Resources Protection Action (ARPA) permit to Far Western Anthropological Group, allowing archaeologists to begin trenching and digging at Thacker Pass, the BLM would be doing so illegally. Granting the preliminary injunction on August 27th would likely protect Thacker Pass until at least spring of 2022, since Lithium Nevada has stated they would have to wait for winter snows to melt before digging.
What if Judge Du refuses to grant the injunction?
Even if the judge refuses to grant the injunction in August 2021, both the BLM and Lithium Nevada still face many legal hurdles. The BLM must contend with a separate lawsuit filed by local rancher Ed Bartell and not yet heard in court. This lawsuit raises environmental concerns, including threats of further depletion of the already over-allocated aquifer and harm to Lahontan cutthroat trout, a Federally-listed threatened species. Bartell and another local rancher have also challenged water rights transfers which the corporation needs for the mine.
When will the preliminary injunctions be over, and the full lawsuit be heard?
Judge Du has stated that she intends to decide on this case by early 2022.
If the judge rules in favor of the tribes, the BLM will have to restart the consultation process. This process would need to include any tribes that wish to be included, and up to ten tribes in the region have demonstrable cultural ties to the Thacker Pass. The consultation process could easily take 1-2 years, during which time local, national, and international opposition may continue to build.
If the Judge rules in favor of Bartell and/or the environmental groups, the NEPA process may need to be revisited, which could similarly take years.
Meanwhile, Lithium Nevada also still needs air and water permits from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, Eagle Take permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the ARPA permit from the BLM before construction can begin. The corporation also still needs the BLM to set the mining reclamation bond amount.
Conclusion
Contrary to statements made by Lithium Nevada and recent media coverage, this nefarious and ill-conceived lithium mining project still remains rather far from a reality. The fate of Peehee Mu’huh truly does still hang in the balance, and if any of the current plaintiffs win their cases, this mine could take many years to properly permit. It may never happen. It is essential that all people stand up against the destruction of the planet, poisoning of water, rampant colonialism, harm to local communities, and greenwashing represented by lithium mining projects like this.
Ethnic Kui Indigenous people have for generations mined the mountains and streams of Cambodia’s Romtom commune for their livelihoods. But those traditions shifted as Delcom, a Malaysian-owned gold-mining company, began digging up the land in the early 2010s and confronting artisanal miners with armed guards. Miners at that time said their peers had gone abroad to seek new jobs, while those who remained were broke.
Since 2009, Cambodia has had a legal process by which Indigenous communities can obtain legal title to their traditional land.
Of around 455 Indigenous communities in Cambodia, 33 have been granted land titles.
People who have engaged in the Indigenous land titling process say it is time-consuming and arduous, and that even successful claimants are often granted title to just a fraction of their customary land.
This year, Cambodia has launched a review of its communal land titling process. Even people involved in the review are unsure what prompted it or what impacts the review might have.
Several years later, the community faced new pressure from Delcom. The company began stretching itself further, eating into farmland, and again choking the Kui communities’ livelihoods. With renewed frustrations, residents spoke to environmental activists; during the interviews one woman named a person she was told was in charge of the area, without knowing that the man is a powerful general named in several notorious land disputes.
Unbeknown to the residents living around it, the Delcom gold mine had been transferred from a Malaysian conglomerate to Chinese owners, a transaction whose details remain scant.
Under Cambodian law, a mechanism exists that should allow the Kui to make a case to own and use land they have been occupying for generations. However, as of late 2020, the Kui residents are still fighting for the rights to their land, and, like most of Cambodia’s Indigenous communities, have not successfully made a legal claim.
In reality, Cambodia’s strong laws for protecting Indigenous land are bogged down by a time-consuming process and blocked by land concessions.
This year, as land prices surge and the country is extracting private land from protected areas, the Cambodian government is reviewing its Indigenous communal land titling application process, and Indigenous land use in general. What motivated the reevaluation, and how Indigenous land rights might change as a result, is still opaque. But Indigenous NGOs and advocates say that truly protecting Indigenous cultures and their ties to Cambodia’s forests would require fundamental changes to the process of registering and protecting Indigenous land rights.
Rainforest stream with waterfall in Cambodia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
The process for Indigenous land titling
Cambodia agreed to the U.N.’s declaration on Indigenous rights in 2007, which explicitly grants Indigenous groups authority over land they’ve held “by reason of traditional ownership,” to use or develop as they please. Two years later, the government enshrined the right of Indigenous groups to hold their traditional land, and the procedure for doing so, into its laws.
Since then, 33 communities have received land rights, or just 7% of the total 455 Indigenous communities known in Cambodia, according to data compiled by Cambodian nonprofit network NGO Forum.
The process is arduous. Before an Indigenous village and the NGO assisting it can begin surveying land to claim ownership, an individual Indigenous community has to gain recognition from its provincial authorities and Cambodia’s Rural Development Ministry, and then register legally with the Interior Ministry. About a third of Cambodia’s Indigenous communities have done so, according to NGO Forum data.
The next step is mapping and designating areas for homes, rotational farmland, ancestral burial grounds, and spirit forests and mountains. Usually a local NGO steps in to assist with GPS coordinates and creating the map. They then present the map to the Land Ministry, which confirms the area, ensures it doesn’t overlap with other land users, and finally issues the title.
Indigenous land titles also come with a condition to protect a piece of the forest, usually tied to the community as ancestral burial sites and spaces of spiritual significance.
Currently, 86 communities have applications in the works, while an additional 33 have received land titles in the end, according to NGO Forum data.
Children biking through a field in rural Cambodia. Four decades after the Khmer Rouge destroyed land records, many people in rural areas have weak land titles or none at all. Image by Bryon Lippincott via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
Cambodia’s conflict-ridden land records
All property records in Cambodia were destroyed during the 1975-1979 reign of the Khmer Rouge, part of the totalitarian leaders’ efforts to revoke private property and establish Cambodia as a radical, isolated agrarian state.
Cambodia’s Land Law was finally restored in 2001, but land ownership remains ambiguous and many, particularly in the provinces, have “soft titles” from the local government, rather than sturdier “hard titles” granted by the national government. Others live without land titles at all, since proving ownership is complex, and generally relies on proving a family or community has occupied land for the long term.
Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous land ownership nationwide has also been complicated by an economic land concession campaign that began in the early 2000s, in which the government granted huge swaths of public land to private companies. Though the program was suspended after receiving sharp international criticism for deforestation and land grabbing in and around concessions, the government has continued to grant huge territories with little public explanation.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced last July that people who can prove they’ve lived in a protected area for more than 10 years can be granted land titles, which spurred a rapid surveying campaign in Mondulkiri province in the second half of the year and revealed a number of illegal land grants issued by local and national officials.
Simultaneously, land prices are rising throughout the country, with land in Mondulkiri’s city center costing as much as $1,500 per square meter (about $140 per square foot), according to some real estate agents, and provincial land also increasing in value as the country develops more tourism projects.
Pros and cons of the current process
Pheap Sophea, a natural resources governance program manager for the NGO Forum, said Cambodia’s Indigenous land titling program has been successful in working to “preserve traditional culture, good habits, protect land security and improve the livelihoods of Indigenous communities,” both for the communities who received the land and those in the process. However, he says several aspects of the process need to be simplified and clearly communicated to the Indigenous groups who are in the process of or eligible for receiving land titles.
Grassroots NGOs supporting Indigenous communities have more pointed critiques.
Yun Lorang, coordinator for Cambodia Indigenous People Alliance, says the process takes too long, at least three years.
“We don’t have an experience of success yet,” he told Mongabay.
Lorang says the land titles, when approved, do secure some of the land that Indigenous communities hold, but never cover the whole area they’ve been using for decades. The law allows only state-owned land to be allocated as Indigenous land, and limits the amount of area that Indigenous groups can use for spiritual purposes: 7 hectares (17.3 acres) each for spirit forest area and for ancestral burial ground.
“Sacred and burial land are bigger than 7 hectares,” Lorang said. “Based on customary rules and practices, community land’s size is more than 5,000 hectares [12,400 acres], but the government offers only 1,000 to 1,500 hectares [2,500-3,700 acres].”
Indigenous land claims often overlap with company developments, and when that happens, it’s usually the economic interest that wins out.
When the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam flooded its reservoir, it split two Indigenous villages down the middle. Thousands of families went to live in rows of cookie-cutter houses along National Road 78, while a small group picked up the remains of their homes and stood their ground.
The Bunong Indigenous people of Kbal Romeas, one of the two villages along the Sesan River that were hit immediately by the dam’s floods, lost their homes, school, health center, and critically, ancestral burial ground, to the floods.
Calling themselves “Old Kbal Romeas,” the remaining residents rebuilt their homes on a cleared section of land that was part of their rotational agriculture area, though one woman said she felt the new territory was a “bad land” that brought her trouble.
Old Kbal Romeas successfully gained recognition as an official Indigenous community from the Interior Ministry and were permitted to rebuild their homes by Stung Treng province authorities in 2018. They began plotting their land with the grassroots group Cambodian Indigenous People’s Organization in preparation for a title application, but found they were competing with a rubber concession that had reasserted its territorial claims.
“We’re concerned we can’t defeat them. They are powerful,” Old Kbal Romeas community leader Sran Lanj said in September 2020. “My community and I are powerless. They put pressure on us to accept [a deal], and it’s like they are compelling us to give our land to them.”
After mapping their territory for an Indigenous land title, Old Kbal Romeas residents say they have around 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of land — half of which is flooded — but they still want the control over the area.
The government instead offered them 941 hectares (2,325 acres), and the residents refused to accept.
“Nine hundred and forty-one [hectares] of land for this number of families is enough,” said Stung Treng provincial land department director Minh Sichay. “It should be acceptable. Why do they demand 3,500?”
The review
NGOs, the U.N. human rights commission and a conservation group all confirmed to Mongabay that Cambodia’s Interior Ministry is reviewing both registered Indigenous communities and their communal land rights — both applications and granted titles — though none of the stakeholders said they knew the motive for the review.
Sophea, from the NGO Forum, said his organization was working with the ministry to survey Indigenous communities about their understanding and experience of the land titling process, and how Indigenous communities ultimately use the land.
The survey will involve 22 Indigenous communities, seven of which had received community land titles and 15 in the process of registering their land, Sophea said.
He said the survey would not be complete until mid-2021, or maybe later, due to Cambodia’s new surge in COVID-19 cases. Interior Ministry spokesperson Khieu Sopheak said the ministry was only probing the program but did not know what would happen as a result, and Land Management ministry spokesperson Seng Lot did not respond to questions, telling a reporter on the phone he’s “very, very busy.”
Pradeep Wagle, the U.N. human rights representative in Cambodia, said in a written statement that the government is following through with recommendations made by the organization’s human rights experts in a 2019 review. Among dozens of recommendations, U.N. representatives urged Cambodia to simplify the process for allocating land to Indigenous communities. Wagle reiterated the suggestion in his response, though he did not provide details on how the laws or process should change.
“The existing process is complex, lengthy, expensive and surrounded by several technical formalities,” he said. “The suggested reforms ensure cost effectiveness and propose reasonable and less cumbersome steps for Indigenous communities to obtain a collective land title.”
Before this review, Sophea said his organization had worked with the interior, rural development, and land ministries to make improvements on the titling system, such as shortening the registration process and simplifying the requirements for preliminary maps made by the communities.
Notably absent, Sophea says, was the Environment Ministry, which has the designation over all terrestrial protected spaces. The ministry has the power to reject an Indigenous land title application if it overlaps with a protected area, and has already exercised that right for nine communities, according to NGO Forum data.
Sophea says that throughout 2019 and 2020, the NGO Forum organized a series of meetings on issues relating to land governance and overlaps between Indigenous customary rights and protected areas, but, despite being invited to three meetings, Environment Ministry officials did not attend.
Lorang, the Indigenous leader, agreed, noting that attempts to complete land title applications are thwarted most often by local governments and the Environment Ministry, especially in cases where land claims overlap with protected areas.
From his work with Indigenous communities in Mondulkiri, Lorang said reforms can’t just stop at the law and implementation. His organization is working directly to organize 13 of Mondulkiri’s 42 communities to make a unified plea for recognition from both local and national governments.
He says he hopes these communities can work together to lobby for support from the interior and rural development ministries. “This work is very political and technical,” he said. “We need ministries to influence sub national government on it because the sub nationals don’t support [Indigenous people] and NGOs.”
In her “Letter to Greta Thunberg” series, Katie Singer explains the real ecological impacts of so many modern technologies on which the hope for a bright green (tech) future is based on.
Even when reality is harsh, I prefer it. I’d rather engineers say that my water could be off for three hours than tell me that replacing the valve will take one hour. I prefer knowing whether or not tomatoes come from genetically modified seed. If dyeing denim wreaks ecological hazards, I’d rather not keep ignorant.
The illusion that we’re doing good when we’re actually causing harm is not constructive. With reality, discovering true solutions becomes possible.
As extreme weather events (caused, at least in part, by fossil fuels’ greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions) challenge electrical infrastructures, we need due diligent evaluations that help us adapt to increasingly unpredictable situations—and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ecological damage. I have a hard time imagining a future without electricity, refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, phones and vehicles. I also know that producing and disposing of manufactured goods ravages the Earth.
Internationally, governments are investing in solar photovoltaics (PVs) because they promise less ecological impacts than other fuel sources. First, I vote for reviewing aspects of solar systems that tend to be overlooked.
Coal-fired power plants commonly provide electricity to smelt silicon for solar panels. Photo credit: Petr Štefek
Hazards of Solar Photovoltaic Power 1. Manufacturing silicon wafers for solar panels depends on fossil fuels, nuclear and/or hydro power. Neither solar nor wind energy can power a smelter, because interrupted delivery of electricity can cause explosions at the factory. Solar PV panels’ silicon wafers are “one of the most highly refined artifacts ever created.”[1] Manufacturing silicon wafers starts with mining quartz; pure carbon (i.e. petroleum coke [an oil byproduct] or charcoal from burning trees without oxygen); and harvesting hard, dense wood, then transporting these substances, often internationally, to a smelter that is kept at 3000F (1648C) for years at a time. Typically, smelters are powered by electricity generated by a combination of coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydro power. The first step in refining the quartz produces metallurgical grade silicon. Manufacturing solar-grade silicon (with only one impurity per million) requires several other energy-intensive, greenhouse gas (GHG) and toxic waste-emitting steps. [2] [3] [4]
2. Manufacturing silicon wafers generates toxic emissions In 2016, New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation issued Globe Metallurgical Inc. a permit to release, per year: up to 250 tons of carbon monoxide, 10 tons of formaldehyde, 10 tons of hydrogen chloride, 10 tons of lead, 75,000 tons of oxides of nitrogen, 75,000 tons of particulates, 10 tons of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, 40 tons of sulfur dioxide and up to 7 tons of sulfuric acid mist. To clarify, this is the permittable amount of toxins allowed annually for one metallurgical-grade silicon smelter in New York State. [5] Hazardous emissions generated by silicon manufacturing in China (the world’s leading manufacturer of solar PVs) likely has significantly less regulatory limits.
3. PV panels’ coating is toxic PV panels are coated with fluorinated polymers, a kind of Teflon. Teflon films for PV modules contain polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and fluorinated ethylene (FEP). When these chemicals get into drinking water, farming water, food packaging and other common materials, people become exposed. About 97% of Americans have per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs) in their blood. These chemicals do not break down in the environment or in the human body, and they can accumulate over time. [6] [7] While the long-term health effects of exposure to PFAs are unknown, studies submitted to the EPA by DuPont (which manufactures them) from 2006 to 2013 show that they caused tumors and reproductive problems in lab animals. Perfluorinated chemicals also increase risk of testicular and kidney cancers, ulcerative colitis (Crohn’s disease), thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension (pre-eclampsia) and elevated cholesterol. How much PTFEs are used in solar panels? How much leaks during routine operation—and when hailstorms (for example) break a panels’ glass? How much PTFE leaks from panels discarded in landfills? How little PFA is needed to impact health?
4. Manufacturing solar panels generates toxic waste. In California, between 2007 and the first half of 2011, seventeen of the state’s 44 solar-cell manufacturing facilities produced 46.5 million pounds of sludge (semi-solid waste) and contaminated water. California’s hazardous waste facilities received about 97 percent of this waste; more than 1.4 million pounds were transported to facilities in nine other states, adding to solar cells’ carbon footprint. [8]
5. Solar PV panels can disrupt aquatic insects’ reproduction. At least 300 species of aquatic insects (i.e. mayflies, caddis flies, beetles and stoneflies) typically lay their eggs on the surface of water. Birds, frogs and fish rely on these aquatic insects for food. Aquatic insects can mistake solar panels’ shiny dark surfaces for water. When they mate on panels, the insects become vulnerable to predators. When they lay their eggs on the panels’ surface, their efforts to reproduce fail. Covering panels with stripes of white tape or similar markings significantly reduces insect attraction to panels. Such markings can reduce panels’ energy collection by about 1.8 percent. Researchers also recommend not installing solar panels near bodies of water or in the desert, where water is scarce. [9]
Solar PV users may be unaware of their system’s ecological impacts. Photo credit: Vivint Solar from Pexels
6. Unless solar PV users have battery backup (unless they’re off-grid), utilities are obliged to provide them with on-demand power at night and on cloudy days. Most of a utility’s expenses are dedicated not to fuel, but to maintaining infrastructure—substations, power lines, transformers, meters and professional engineers who monitor voltage control and who constantly balance supply of and demand for power. [10] Excess power reserves will increase the frequency of alternating current. When the current’s frequency speeds up, a motor’s timing can be thrown off. Manufacturing systems and household electronics can have shortened life or fail catastrophically. Inadequate reserves of power can result in outages.
The utility’s generator provides a kind of buffer to its power supply and its demands. Rooftop solar systems do not have a buffer.
In California, where grid-dependent rooftop solar has proliferated, utilities sometimes pay nearby states to take their excess power in order to prevent speeding up of their systems’ frequency. [11]
Rooftop solar (and wind turbine) systems have not reduced fossil-fuel-powered utilities. In France, from 2002-2019, while electricity consumption remained stable, a strong increase in solar and wind powered energy (over 100 GW) did not reduce the capacity of power plants fueled by coal, gas, nuclear and hydro. [12]
Comparing GHG emissions generated by different fuel sources shows that solar PV is better than gas and coal, but much worse than nuclear and wind power. A solar PV system’s use of batteries increases total emissions dramatically. Compared to nuclear or fossil fuel plants, PV has little “energy return on energy Invested.” [13]
7. Going off-grid requires batteries, which are toxic. Lead-acid batteries are the least expensive option; they also have a short life and lower depth of discharge (capacity) than other options. Lead is a potent neurotoxin that causes irreparable harm to children’s brains. Internationally, because of discarded lead-acid batteries, one in three children have dangerous lead levels in their blood. [14] Lithium-ion batteries have a longer lifespan and capacity compared to lead acid batteries. However, lithium processing takes water from farmers and poisons waterways. [15] Lithium-ion batteries are expensive and toxic when discarded. Saltwater batteries do not contain heavy metals and can be recycled easily. However, they are relatively untested and not currently manufactured.
8. Huge solar arrays require huge battery electric storage systems (BESS). A $150 million battery storage system can provide 100 MW for, at most, one hour and eighteen minutes. This cannot replace large-scale delivery of electricity. Then, since BESS lithium-ion batteries must be kept cool in summer and warm in winter, they need large heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) systems. (If the Li-ion battery overheats, the results are catastrophic.) Further, like other batteries, they lose their storage capacity over time and must be replaced—resulting in more extraction, energy and water use, and toxic waste. [16]
9. Solar PV systems cannot sufficiently power energy guzzlers like data centers, access networks, smelters, factories or electric vehicle [EV] charging stations. If French drivers shifted entirely to EVs, the country’s electricity demands would double. To produce this much electricity with low-carbon emissions, new nuclear plants would be the only option. [17] In 2007, Google boldly aimed to develop renewable energy that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired plants can in order to “stave off catastrophic climate change.” Google shut down this initiative in 2011 when their engineers realized that “even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adaptation of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions…. Worldwide, there is no level of investment in renewables that could prevent global warming.” [18]
10. Solar arrays impact farming. When we cover land with solar arrays and wind turbines, we lose plants that can feed us and sequester carbon. [19]
11. Solar PV systems’ inverters “chop” current and cause “dirty” power, which can impact residents’ health. [20]
12. At the end of their usable life, PV panels are hazardous waste. The toxic chemicals in solar panels include cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl fluoride. Silicon tetrachloride, a byproduct of producing crystalline silicon, is also highly toxic. In 2016, The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that the world had 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste that year; and by 2050, the amount could reach 78 million metric tons. The Electric Power Research Institute recommends not disposing of solar panels in regular landfills: if modules break, their toxic materials could leach into soil. [21] In short, solar panels do not biodegrade and are difficult to recycle.
To make solar cells more recyclable, Belgian researchers recommend replacing silver contacts with copper ones, reducing the silicon wafers’ (and panels’) thickness, and removing lead from the panels’ electrical connections. [22]
Aerial view of a solar farm. Photo credit: Dsink000
13. Solar farms warm the Earth’s atmosphere.
Only 15% of sunlight absorbed by solar panels becomes electricity; 85% returns to the environment as heat. Re-emitted heat from large-scale solar farms affects regional and global temperatures. Scientists’ modeling shows that covering 20% of the Sahara with solar farms (to power Europe) would raise local desert temperatures by 1.5°C (2.7°F). By covering 50% of the Sahara, the desert’s temperature would increase by 2.5°C (4.5°F). Global temperatures would increase as much as 0.39°C—with polar regions warming more than the tropics, increasing loss of Arctic Sea ice. [23] As governments create “green new deals,” how should they use this modeling?
Other areas need consideration here: dust and dirt that accumulate on panels decreases their efficiency; washing them uses water that might otherwise go to farming. Further, Saharan dust, transported by wind, provides vital nutrients to the Amazon’s plants and the Atlantic Ocean. Solar farms on the Sahara could have other global consequences. [24]
14. Solar PV users may believe that they generate “zero-emitting,” “clean” power without awareness of the GHGs, extractions, smelting, chemicals and cargo shipping involved in manufacturing such systems—or the impacts of their disposal. If our only hope is to live with much less human impact to ecosystems, then how could we decrease solar PVs’ impacts? Could we stop calling solar PV power systems “green” and “carbon-neutral?” If not, why not?
Katie Singer’s writing about nature and technology is available at www.OurWeb.tech/letters/. Her most recent book is An Electronic Silent Spring.
REFERENCES
1. Schwarzburger, Heiko, “The trouble with silicon,” PV Magazine, September 15, 2010.
3. Kato, Kazuhiko, et. al., “Energy Pay-back Time and Life-cycle CO2 Emission of Residential PV Power System with Silicon PV Module,” Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
4. Gibbs, Jeff and Michael Moore, “Planet of the Humans,” 2019 documentary about the ecological impacts and money behind “renewable” power systems, including solar, wind and biomass. www.planetofthehumans.com
7. Rich, Nathaniel, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” January 6, 2016. About attorney Robert Bilott’s twenty-year battle against DuPont for contaminating a West Virginia town with unregulated PFOAs. See also Todd Haynes film, “Dark Waters,” 2019.
9. Egri, Adam, Bruce A. Robertson, et al., “Reducing the Maladaptive Attractiveness of Solar Panels to Polarotactic Insects,” Conservation Biology, April, 2010.
10. “Exhibit E to Nevada Assembly Committee on Labor,” Submitted by Shawn M. Elicegui, May 20, 2025, on behalf of NV Energy.
15. Katwala, Amit, “The spiraling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction,” 8.5.18; https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact. Choi, Hye-Bin, et al., “The impact of anthropogenic inputs on lithium content in river and tap water,” Nature Communications, 2019.
Indigenous peoples worldwide are the victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that humans as a species are not inherently destructive, but a societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption, accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy (i.e. civilization) is. DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples.
David Kaimowitz describes his career as a “a 30-year quest to understand what causes deforestation,” one that has brought him full circle to where he started: at the issue of land rights.
Kaimowitz, who heads the Forest and Farm Facility, based at FAO, says the evidence shows that secure communal tenure rights is one of the most cost-effective ways to curb deforestation.
In that time, he’s also seen the discourse around the drivers of deforestation change from blaming smallholders, to realizing that a handful of large commodities companies are responsible for the majority of tropical forest loss.
In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Kaimowitz talks about why it took so long for Indigenous people to be recognized as guardians of the forest, the need for conservation NGOs to address social justice, and society’s capacity to effect meaningful change.
Over the past 20 years, the conservation sector has increasingly recognized the contributions Indigenous communities have made toward achieving conservation goals, including protecting biodiversity and maintaining ecosystems that sustain us. Accordingly, some large conservation NGOs that a generation ago were heavily focused on establishing and fortifying protected areas are today advocating for Indigenous rights and helping communities secure land tenure.
As a researcher who has worked at the intersection of forests, agriculture and local communities for more than 30 years now, David Kaimowitz has been well-positioned to observe the recent evolution of the conservation sector’s relationship with such communities.
“Indigenous Peoples and local communities have increasingly been recast as heroes, rather than villains,” said Kaimowitz, who currently serves as the manager of the Forest and Farm Facility, a partnership between the the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the IUCN, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and the AgriCord Alliance. He attributes this shift to three factors: changing realities on the ground, a growing body of evidence, and better messaging.
“As more and more forest not managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities disappears, the conservation community has realized that increasingly these are the only forests left; at least, the only intact forests with large undisturbed areas,” Kaimowitz told Mongabay. “A growing [amount of] literature showed that, given a favorable policy environment, Indigenous Peoples and local communities often manage common property forests and other natural resources sustainably.
“The Indigenous Peoples and forest community groups themselves have become more effective at getting their messages across and making their voices heard. They have become powerful political forces in many countries and on the global stage, and conservation groups have had to listen.”
But while conservation is changing, it hasn’t yet been transformed: Indigenous peoples and local communities still face marginalization, lack of meaningful engagement, and underrepresentation, especially in conservation decision-making an leadership roles. Kaimowitz says conservation organizations need to become more inclusive.
“The more these organizations reflect the true diversity of the broader societies, the better they will be able to do that,” he said.
“Conservation has two strong long-standing strains. One harks back to nobles and moguls, who wanted to stop villagers from poaching big animals they hunted for trophies. The other finds its voice among those who depend on (and often nurture) nature to survive. The question is who will speak for conservation? The sheriff of Nottingham, protecting his majesty’s fowl and game, or Robin Hood, with his merry men (and women), living in the forest. That same unresolved tensions persist today; and will determine the movements’ future.”
In parts of the world, those tensions have been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led some international conservation groups to pull out of projects, triggered a collapse in ecotourism, disrupted access to markets and the flow of remittances, and led some city dwellers to return to the countryside to farm. In some places, those developments have pushed local communities to take up subsistence farming and hunting in protected areas or become poachers, putting them in conflict with conservationists.
Colombia. Photo credit: Rhett A. Butler
The pandemic, says Kaimowitz, has been devastating to local communities, causing “profound pain” and loss of traditional knowledge with the death of elders. But COVID-19 has also shown us that governments are capable of taking dramatic action when facing a crisis.
“If the pandemic proves anything, it is that political and economic elites can take extraordinary measures to stave off disaster if they decide to do so,” he said. “Many things that ‘could not be done’ suddenly were. Central banks and ministries of finance pulled out their checkbooks and spent money they supposedly did not have. Both governments and the broader society stepped up to the plate. It has not been smooth or easy, but the world has largely pulled back from the abyss.
“Something similar will have to happen to avert catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss; and there are signs that elites are getting the message.”
Kaimowitz spoke about these issues and more during an April 2021 conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Mongabay: What sparked your interest in land rights and land use change?
David Kaimowitz: My whole life has revolved around an intertwined concern for social justice and the environment.
The land rights interest comes from undergraduate courses I took highlighting the huge inequalities in Latin American landholdings. It became clear that, in places where natural resources represent a large share of economic wealth, who owns and manages them influences every aspect of society.
We studied agrarian reforms in class, but I never imagined that one day I would be involved in one myself. Then, by pure coincidence, I entered a doctoral program in Wisconsin, just after the Nicaraguans overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The university had just gotten funding for a project with Nicaragua’s Ministry of Agricultural Development and Agrarian Reform (MIDINRA), and I became a research assistant. When Somoza fell, the Sandinistas took over many large farms and prominent experts flocked to the country to debate what to do with them. As a budding professional, it was an amazing opportunity to witness history being made.
Soon after, MIDINRA hired me directly, and we were asked to do oral histories of village elders in the northern Segovias region. The elders talked about major changes in how they farmed during their lifetime and the rapid loss of forest cover and soil fertility. That brought home how much daily life and the environment could change in a single lifetime.
Even so, I did not focus on land use change until the 1990s, when the United Nations held the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and “sustainable development” became the buzzword. I had read about how government subsidies and burgeoning export markets for beef triggered mass forest clearing for pastures in Central America. But by 1994 the situation had changed, and the region’s livestock sector was in crisis. That made me wonder if high beef prices and subsidized credit bolstered deforestation, would low prices and no credit bring the forest back? (It turned out, not much; but that is a story for another day.)
This initial puzzle led to a 30-year quest to understand what causes deforestation. Ironically, that has now brought me back full circle, to land rights. Because the evidence shows that secure communal tenure rights is one of the most cost-effective ways to curb deforestation and people won’t restore forests unless they have rights to trees.
Mongabay: What is your current focus at the FAO?
David Kaimowitz: The realization that Indigenous Peoples and local communities’ land and forest rights were so important for protecting forests led me to champion the need for greater funding to that end. It turns out that such rights and community resource management are key for addressing many major global challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, social conflict, and rural poverty, as well as forest loss per se.
So, I left my job in forest research (at CIFOR) and moved to the Ford Foundation to fund this work. Much of my work centered on supporting Indigenous Peoples and community groups and convincing international agencies to do the same. Many colleagues at those agencies found the arguments compelling but did not know how they could fund that work. Some great new initiatives emerged, like the International Forest and Land Tenure Facility, Indigenous and community-managed territorial funds in Brazil, the Nia Tero Fund [Mongabay Interview with Nia Tero’s Peter Seligmann], and the World Bank’s Direct Grant Mechanism, but they were all tiny compared to the need.
Rainforest creek in the Colombian Amazon. Photo by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.
So, I became manager of the Forest and Farm Facility so I could champion that cause. The Forest and Farm Facility is a partnership between the FAO, IUCN, IIED, and AgriCord, which supports forest and farm organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which has been doing great work since 2013. I saw an opportunity to build on that and demonstrate that international agencies can support rural grassroots organizations effectively and achieve results at scale.
The FFF focuses on improving rural livelihoods and resilience and promoting more climate and biodiversity friendly landscapes. We provide funding and technical support and advocate for local, national, regional, and global farmer, community forestry, and Indigenous Peoples organizations. We also help organizations strengthen their advocacy, community enterprises, and operations, with special attention to women’s rights and youth inclusion, and facilitate links between these rural membership organizations with other internationally funded programs and with private investors and buyers.
Mongabay: How are the drivers of deforestation different today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s?
David Kaimowitz: Not only have the drivers of deforestation changed since then, but people’s thinking has also changed. The discourse of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio was that poverty drove deforestation. Environmental policies might be important, but ultimately the trick was to lift people out of poverty, so they would not have to overexploit their natural resources. While some talked about large cattle ranchers and logging companies, blame for deforestation was squarely on small-scale shifting cultivation.
Deforestation in Kapuas Hulu, Indonesian Borneo. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
That discourse probably overplayed the role of poverty and poor people in forest clearing even back then. Moving to forested regions, logging or clearing large forests and replacing them with crops or livestock requires more capital and labor than poor people usually have. It is true that clearing many small patches of forest can affect large areas — and we definitely see that in some regions — but that has always been responsible for a smaller portion of total tropical forest loss than many people thought.
In any case, since the 1990s large companies and landholders have played a more dominant role in global deforestation, both empirically and in the discourse. An increasing portion of deforestation has been linked to a small number of commodities — beef, palm oil, soy, and pulp and paper — where only a few hundred large companies dominate global value chains. The trend has been toward clearing larger areas (although this has varied over time and by region).
Soy field and forest at the transition zone of the Cerrado, Chaco and Amazon biomes. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Mining, of various scales, and production of illicit crops and related money laundering have become much more prominent causes of deforestation. In contrast, commercial timber production has lost prominence in the discussion, in part because timber resources have largely been exhausted in many regions, especially in the dipterocarp and teak forests of Southeast Asia.
Small-scale shifting cultivation, logging, and charcoal and fuelwood collection have increasingly disappeared from the global agenda and have lost importance in many regions. The main exception has been Sub-Saharan Africa, where small farms and common property resources remain dominant and burgeoning urban markets for forest products sometimes fuel overexploitation.
Mongabay: You’ve been working at the intersection of forests, agriculture and local communities for more than 30 years now. In that time, what have been the biggest changes in this space?
David Kaimowitz: As I began to discuss earlier, both the drivers of forest loss and the narratives about them have changed. To some extent the narrative change reflected empirical trends, but it is more complex than that.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities have increasingly been recast as heroes, rather than villains. Studies from different regions of the world called into question alarmist reports about the fuelwood crisis, devastating effects of shifting cultivation, and the extent of small farmer deforestation more generally. The motives behind these discourses were also questioned and cataloged as neocolonial attempts to justify stripping poor families of their resources, as often occurred in colonial days.
Indigenous man holding Tinamou eggs.
A growing literature showed that, given a favorable policy environment, Indigenous Peoples and local communities often manage common property forests and other natural resources sustainably. Elinor Ostrom became the first woman (and first non-economist) to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for demonstrating that, and it was a clear sign the tide had changed.
I recently wrote a report about forests in Indigenous and tribal territories in Latin America, published by FAO and FILAC, that cites dozens of relatively new studies that show that these territories’ inhabitants have generally managed their forests better than other groups. The most surprising thing about the peoples’ reaction to that conclusion was that no one was surprised. In a few decades, claiming that Indigenous Peoples were “guardians of the forests” went from being heresy to an established fact.
That is not to say that small farmers, or Indigenous Peoples for that matter, never destroy forests, or that it is not a problem when they do. Poor rural households clearly overexploit forest resources in some places, and the issue must be addressed. However, most experts now hold large-scale actors responsible for a majority of global tropical forest destruction and think it is better to work with communities to reduce smallholder overexploitation of forest resources, rather than repressing them.
Mongabay: Over the past decade, there seems to be much greater awareness in the conservation sector about the contributions Indigenous peoples and local communities have made toward achieving conservation outcomes. What has driven this shift?
David Kaimowitz: Part has to do with changing realities on the ground. As more and more forest not managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities disappears, the conservation community has realized that increasingly these are the only forests left; at least, the only intact forests with large undisturbed areas.
Part also has to do with the avalanche of rigorous research highlighting those contributions. When I did my meta-analysis of research on forests in Indigenous and Afro-descendant territories in Latin America for the FAO-FILAC report, the sheer volume of high-quality recent research that all pointed in the same direction amazed me. These territories’ forests have been better preserved, even when accounting for things such as distance from roads and soil fertility. When the territories have formal rights and additional support, their forests are doing better still.
Finally, the Indigenous Peoples and forest community groups themselves have become more effective at getting their messages across and making their voices heard. They have become powerful political forces in many countries and on the global stage, and conservation groups have had to listen.
Mongabay: We’ve heard a lot more about stakeholder inclusivity in recent years, especially in the context of the past year between the social justice movement in the U.S. and criticisms of colonial practices among some big NGOs. Is this being translated at the levels of decision-making within the institutions that fund and implement conservation projects?
David Kaimowitz: The big conservation NGOs are large bureaucracies with strong institutional cultures, dominated by upper-middle-class whites, like me. In any such bureaucracy, transformative change rarely happens overnight. I do think, though, that the dramatic upswing of the racial justice movement in the United States and elsewhere, and the growing environmental justice movements have shaken them to their core. They have been forced to come to grips with sordid elements in their past, recognize implicit bias against people of color, and focus more on how environmental problems affect poor people and people of color disproportionately.
How far this will get is hard to say. Many previous efforts to get these organizations to address social and racial justice concerns petered out over time. But I am cautiously optimistic that this time will be different, and we will see real change. Many funders that support these organizations expect that.
Mongabay: What do you see as major gaps that still persist in the conservation sector?
David Kaimowitz: Most immediately, there are staffing issues, bringing in more people of color and from low-income households. But more broadly the question is, will they embrace an approach that is not so elite? Can they speak to regular peoples’ daily lives in ways that they can understand and respect those peoples’ lived experience and traditional knowledge, be they rural or urban? The more these organizations reflect the true diversity of the broader societies, the better they will be able to do that.
Clouds reflected in a blackwater oxbow lake in the Peruvian Amazon.
Conservation has two strong long-standing strains. One harks back to nobles and moguls, who wanted to stop villagers from poaching big animals they hunted for trophies. The other finds its voice among those who depend on (and often nurture) nature to survive. The question is who will speak for conservation? The sheriff of Nottingham, protecting his majesty’s fowl and game, or Robin Hood, with his merry men (and women), living in the forest. That same unresolved tensions persist today; and will determine the movement’s future.
Mongabay: You spent some time in the philanthropic sector. What was your most impactful grant during that time? And why? Or if not a single grant, what type of grant was the most impactful?
David Kaimowitz: The greatest impact came from communications grants, which allowed Indigenous and community leaders to be heard for the first time. Most media coverage about tropical forests cites government officials, companies, NGOs, and scientists from the Global North. Everyone except those who live in and from forests and often protect them most. When politicians plant a tree, it is a big photo op. Farmers plant millions of them all the time, and no one seems to notice.
We funded communications firms, filmmakers, social media wizards, innovative digital media groups like Mongabay, and worked with musicians and actors to help grassroots leaders and villagers give their own account, in their own words. Not to be used as props by some NGO or project, but to tell their own story. What they were proud of, worried them, or needed to change.
Arhauco indigenous leader in a former coca-producing area of Colombia.
It was incredibly powerful, authentic, like reality TV. These were people who walked the walk, and often risked their lives; and made the world greener and cooler in the process. These were the real Guardians of the Forests; and their message resonated well beyond Wall Street and ivory towers.
Minutes ago, I watched an advertisement from the Guatemalan government showcasing the community forest concessions in the Peten. That would have been almost unimaginable a few short years ago. These communities that manage the concessions have gone toe to toe to keep some of Central America’s most powerful groups from wresting control over their forests. But once the wider audiences heard their stories, they won the PR battle. Now even the president wants them in the photo.
Something similar happened with the murder of local environmentalists and land rights defenders, many of them Indigenous. This is a long-standing problem, although the situation may be getting worse. But the communications groups were able to shine a light on it, and help people realize that these were not just local disputes over land or water, the outcomes affect us all. Indigenous martyrs like Berta Cáceres in Honduras, Edwin Chota in Peru, Isidro Baldenegro in Mexico, Charlie Taylor in Nicaragua, or Paulo Paulino Guajajara in Brazil died in the defense of Mother Earth, and we all have a stake in that.
At first Global Witness was the only high-profile NGO to raise the issue. But as it got more attention, all the big international human rights groups got on board. The problem is by no means solved, but the intellectual authors of these attacks can no longer be so confident that they can act with total impunity.
Mongabay: COVID-19 has obviously had an enormous impact around the world. What have you heard from the partners and allies you have in the field?
David Kaimowitz: The first thing, of course, is the profound pain. So many leaders and elders lost. People we knew or hoped to meet. Stories, wisdom, languages gone. Sickness, hunger, markets lost. And too many governments shamelessly indifferent.
But also, amazing resilience. One Forest and Farm Facility partner, AgriCord, surveyed grassroots forest and farm organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and found that practically all had stepped up and were responding to the pandemic. They were providing masks and information, planting gardens, finding new markets, pressing governments for support, and caring for those in need. They didn’t sit back and wait for aid. They acted.
A U.N. study about the pandemic and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America found the same thing. Indigenous organizations took the initiative and monitored the virus’s spread, regulated entrance into communities, and supplied Western and traditional medicine, with women often in the lead.
Mongabay: And what do you expect the impacts of the pandemic to be on deforestation in the near term?
David Kaimowitz: It is hard to say. At first, I thought the global economy would practically collapse, and deforestation would decline as a result. Last March and April there were many signs of that. But then the world’s central banks stepped in with huge stimulus plans, which turned things around. Now the global economy is starting to boom and that could easily increase the pressure on forests.
The pandemic has also affected politics, not just economics. For example, one could argue that Trump would still be president in the United States if it were not for the pandemic, and that might have affected what happened to forests. We may see similar stories play out elsewhere, but it is too early to say who stands to benefit.
Mongabay: And what do you see the longer-term impact of COVID-19 being on the relationship between society, especially Western society, and the world around us?
David Kaimowitz: The pandemic made us all feel more vulnerable and realize how fragile and tenuous our societies are. Now when we hear discussions about the devastating effects of climate change, they seem less abstract and distant. COVID-19 was a wake-up call, a reminder that we are still linked to the natural world, and of the many links between forests and health. But it is still unclear how many heard that wake-up call or how long they will stay awake.
Short term, most people are probably desperate to go back to how things were. To go out, socialize, and travel. That will tend to pull us back toward the status quo. But there does seem to be greater awareness of the Anthropocene; that the ecosystems we depend on are severely strained and the limits are not far away. As people experience that in daily life, that awareness will probably grow.
So will the backlash. Denialism, Western fundamentalism. The parallel universe on Facebook and Youtube. Many people are scared and feel threatened, and that rarely leads anywhere good.
Mongabay: You’ve done a lot of research in Latin America. While there are exceptions, taken as a whole, the region is experiencing rising authoritarianism, tropical deforestation, and violence against defenders. Why is this and what’s your medium and long-term outlook for the region in terms of these issues?
David Kaimowitz: Latin America faces difficult dilemmas. The population is increasingly urban, but the economies depend heavily on rural agriculture, oil, and mining. The predominant economic and political model of the last decade was to increase government revenues from extractive activities and use them for clientelist programs that earned political support. But this model has largely run its course; and the environmental costs piled up. Nor can countries simply expect to live off remittances from migrants abroad. Most countries failed to invest enough in education, research, innovation, and technology, so they could transition to less extractive economies, based on more skilled labor. On top of this, the pandemic has left the region much more indebted, and no one knows how it can pay its bills.
All of this has tended to undermine the existing political systems, opening paths for authoritarians. Organized crime has become an erosive force, filling in spaces where governments are fragile, and weakening them even more. Meanwhile, many predominantly white middle-class civil society groups run by professionals concerned with conservation, human rights, feminism, and other important issues failed to connect with the broader public, leaving them vulnerable to attack.
There are no simple solutions or magic bullets, but my vision of a potential route forward includes some of the following: Economic models that depend more on small-scale and communal enterprises that can innovate and produce value added. Less funds for buying votes and more for investing in people and landscapes. A renaissance of local democracy, real recognition of the plurinational and multiracial character of most Latin American societies, and more political space for women and youth.
It will not be simple and may not happen. But the region needs to find a way forward, because it cannot go back to where it was.
Mongabay: What are the levers that need to be pulled to drive systemic change toward averting catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss?
David Kaimowitz: If the pandemic proves anything, it is that political and economic elites can take extraordinary measures to stave off disaster if they decide to do so. Many things that “could not be done” suddenly were. Central banks and ministries of finance pulled out their checkbooks and spent money they supposedly did not have. Both governments and the broader society stepped up to the plate. It has not been smooth or easy, but the world has largely pulled back from the abyss.
Something similar will have to happen to avert catastrophic climate change and biodiversity loss; and there are signs that elites are getting the message. We may soon see truly massive investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. It is less clear whether the forest and biodiversity messages are getting across. There is no way to meet global climate goals without more robust forests, but most people don’t realize that, not even many experts.
Sungai Utik rainforest in Indonesian Borneo. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
In any case these efforts will only succeed if they address inequality. One reason climate action is moving forward is it has been linked to jobs. “Green New Deals” are not just partisan political slogans, they are essential to reach wider audiences. Agriculture and land use are big parts of the problem and must be front and center in the solutions; but the policies must speak to — and with — rural and small-town people, in all their diversity. Cleaner air, more urban trees, parks and gardens, public transportation. It is nice to listen to the scientists; but we also have to listen to workers, farmers, nurses and waitresses, people of faith.
Mongabay: What would you say to young people who are distressed about the current trajectory of the planet?
David Kaimowitz: I am truly sorry we let you down. We thought we knew what we were doing and got many things wrong. But it is not too late, and you have many things going for you that we never had. New ways to organize and communicate, more empathetic and accountable women leaders.
No matter how things seem now they may look different later. Many things I used to believe proved wrong and many I thought were permanent proved ephemeral. Some turned out worse than I expected, but others much better. No matter how things look these days, they can and will change. In the meantime, we cannot afford to stop trying to make things better and learn along the way.
Continue to demand the impossible. It is only impossible until it is not. It may be too late to restore much of the natural and cultural riches we lost, but you/we can still save some; and it is definitely worth the effort.
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