How Many More Brazilian Environmental Defenders Have to Perish Before We Act? President Lula’s Challenge to Protect Environmental Defenders, 47 WM. & MARY ENVTL. L. & POL’Y REV. 657 (2023)

Author ORCiD Identifier

0000-0002-1022-1830

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-2023

Abstract

The Global South has been historically marginalized and continues to suffer from systemic oppression, impeding the realization of their human rights. Afro-descendants and other minority populations in the Global South live in disproportionately environmentally unsafe conditions and are disproportionately more vulnerable to climate change and environ- mental harm. One of those populations are Quilombolas. Quilombolas are Brazilian Afro-descendant communities who continue to fight to pro- tect their community rights to ancestral lands, natural resources, and survival as a people. The Brazilian government under former Brazilian President Bolsonaro engaged in a persistent and systematic campaign to target, attack, and kill defenders, including Quilombola defenders, who sought to protect the environment and human rights. His government engaged in the systematic deforestation and extraction of natural re- sources in the Amazon. It is up to Brazil’s re-elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his new administration to ensure that the Amazon is protected, and that human rights defenders, including Quilombola de- fenders, are protected and are able to have justice and accountability for their human rights violations. We must hold the Brazilian state and private actors responsible for human rights violations through the existing rights-based framework through the newly ratified Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environ- mental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (“Escazú Agree- ment”) and the Esperanza Protocol.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS