Who Are “Environmental Defenders”?

Environmental defenders assisted by EDLC are courageous people in developing countries around the world who are fighting against harm to their environment. Many are individuals who suffer direct and often severe violations of their fundamental human rights as the price for their advocacy for the environment and for their affected communities. And communities themselves act as environmental defenders when they fight for the health of their families and their land, their culture and way of life, and even their very survival.

Environmental defenders are men and women, young and old, and come from all walks of life. Most live in remote and pristine lands that their ancestors have used for countless generations. These are people who never dreamt they would become environmental activists, let alone embattled spokespeople for their communities and for the environment.

What all these individuals and communities have in common is a shared belief that people cannot survive without a healthy environment, but that neither can a healthy environment exist without the actions of committed citizens willing to fight to defend it. For EDLC and the lawyers and law firms with which it works, defending the rights of these environmental defenders is both a duty and a privilege.

EDLC helps environmental defenders without charge by finding top law firms to advocate, negotiate, or litigate on their behalf; advising, filing legal briefs, and providing resources; and giving grants to fund cases.

Environmental defenders helped by private lawyers and EDLC include:

• Local farmers jailed in Mexico on fabricated criminal charges because they opposed illegal logging of their communities’ old growth forests.
• Thousands of Mayan indigenous people in Guatemala seeking reparations for the loss of their land, their way of life, and even their loved ones, as a result of the construction of a huge hydroelectric dam.
• Thirty-three Peruvians who were kidnapped and tortured in retaliation for their opposition to a mining project.
• Victims of the Bhopal gas disaster in India, who have suffered for decades from the worst industrial health accident in history.
• Villagers in Cameroon opposed to a giant palm oil plantation that threatens their rainforest.
• The family of a seventy-three year old American nun murdered in broad daylight in the Brazilian Amazon for fighting deforestation by powerful ranchers and loggers.

- Chico Mendes, from an interview December 9, 1988, published posthumously.