From Chico Mendes to Berta Cáceres: Responses to the murders of environmental defenders

Environmental defenders commonly face violence in response to their activism against socially and ecologically destructive development projects. While various protection mechanisms have been developed in the last decades, the level of repression they face is on the rise—especially in Latin America. This chapter discusses different ways through which the public and international community have responded to the violence experienced by environmental defenders, as well as the limitations of such responses in preventing future violence against them. We examine, as indicative case studies, the responses to the murders of two high-profile defenders—Chico Mendes (murdered in Brazil in 1988) and Berta Cáceres (murdered in Honduras in 2016)—and propose a schema which maps responses according to: 1) their institutional character, and 2) their transformative capacity. We argue that while conventional institutional and non-institutional responses are crucial to address violence against defenders, more transformational responses that aim to recast the logic of extractivism are needed for the protection of environmental defenders. Furthermore, we argue these responses need to incorporate a wider understanding of violence and go beyond demands for retributive justice and incorporate demands for the protection of the territories and ways of life of environmental defenders.