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.2020 Jul:63:102104.
doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102104.

Environmental conflicts and defenders: A global overview

Affiliations

Environmental conflicts and defenders: A global overview

Arnim Scheidel et al. Glob Environ Change.2020 Jul.

Abstract

Recent research and policies recognize the importance of environmental defenders for global sustainability and emphasize their need for protection against violence and repression. However, effective support may benefit from a more systematic understanding of the underlying environmental conflicts, as well as from better knowledge on the factors that enable environmental defenders to mobilize successfully. We have created the global Environmental Justice Atlas to address this knowledge gap. Here we present a large-n analysis of 2743 cases that sheds light on the characteristics of environmental conflicts and the environmental defenders involved, as well as on successful mobilization strategies. We find that bottom-up mobilizations for more sustainable and socially just uses of the environment occur worldwide across all income groups, testifying to the global existence of various forms of grassroots environmentalism as a promising force for sustainability. Environmental defenders are frequently members of vulnerable groups who employ largely non-violent protest forms. In 11% of cases globally, they contributed to halt environmentally destructive and socially conflictive projects, defending the environment and livelihoods. Combining strategies of preventive mobilization, protest diversification and litigation can increase this success rate significantly to up to 27%. However, defenders face globally also high rates of criminalization (20% of cases), physical violence (18%), and assassinations (13%), which significantly increase when Indigenous people are involved. Our results call for targeted actions to enhance the conditions enabling successful mobilizations, and for specific support for Indigenous environmental defenders.

Keywords: EJAtlas; Environmental conflicts; Environmental justice; Environmentalism of the poor; Statistical political ecology; Sustainability.

© 2020 The Authors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Environmental conflicts registered in the EJAtlas and occurrence of assassinations of environmental defenders across conflict types (n = 2743). a: Geographical coverage of environmental conflicts reviewed here (each dot represents one case). b: Types of conflicts and coverage (pie colours corresponds to the colour of the cases shown in the map). c: Occurrence of assassinations of environmental defenders per conflict type. Error bars are 95% CIs.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Occurrence of types of environmental conflicts across world income regions (n = 2737).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Characteristics of actors mobilizing in environmental conflicts according to the EJAtlas (n = 2743). Error bars are 95% CIs.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Characteristics of forms of mobilization and protest reported globally in the EJAtlas. Protest actions are clustered following Sharp (1973) (n = 2743). Error bars are 95% CIs.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Mobilization strategies and project cancellation rates. (a) Percentage of cancellation of conflictive projects in relation to three different strategies: preventive strategy (n = 2533), legal strategy (n = 2743) and diversification of protest (n = 2743). (b) Percentage of cancellation of conflictive projects in cases with a combined strategy (preventive, highly diverse, lawsuits and EIA objections) (n = 101). Note: Highly diverse mobilizations = use of 10 or more different mobilizations forms as reported in Fig. 4; diverse mobilizations = use of 5–9 different mobilization forms; not diverse mobilizations = <5 different mobilization forms. For definition of other categories see supplementary Tables 6–9, 14. Error bars are 95% CIs.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Positive and negative conflict outcomes from the perspective of environmental defenders (a) and occurrence of repressive outcomes when Indigenous groups are involved (b). n = 2743, except for cases with lawsuits (court successes and failures), where n = 1220. Error bars are 95% CIs.
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