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Report highlights business, political players behind Philippine environment defender deaths

An Manobo man in the Bukidnon, a province in Mindanao. Bukidnon's vast plantations have become a hotbed of land grabbing and environment defender killings. Image by Global Witness

  • Global Witness, an eco-watchdog, has linked businesses and investors, including development banks to the increasing violence against land and environmental defenders in the Philippines, a practice rooted in the country’s “business at all costs” approach, it says in a new report.
  • In a previous Global Witness report, released in July, the Philippines was named the deadliest country in the world for environmental defenders after recording 30 deaths in 2018 alone.
  • The report calls on international banks and providers of foreign loans and aid to refrain from investing in big-ticket projects that endanger environmental defenders in the Philippines.

MANILA — Development banks and other investors are fueling the violence against people in the Philippines who are protecting their land and environment from destructive industries, eco-watchdog Global Witness reveals in a new report.

In the past six years, 178 land and environmental defenders were murdered in the Philippines in the last six years, according to Global Witness data, with verification of more cases still ongoing.

“The Philippines has consistently ranked as the deadliest country in Asia to defend the environment and land rights ever since Global Witness began compiling data on murders of activists,” Ben Leather, a campaigner for Global Witness, told Mongabay. “This report is extremely timely as President [Rodrigo] Duterte and the Philippine government have just reached their mid-term and serves as an important review as their action on land and environment defenders in the first half of the Presidency.”

Released Sept. 23, the report, “Defending the Philippines,” is the result of a three-year investigation that aims to demonstrate how corporations are colluding with corrupt politicians to push through environmentally damaging projects such as agribusiness, tourism, illegal logging, coal plants, and mining.

“Justice to those who were killed means the Filipino government taking action on corporate greed and stopping businesses operating at any cost, even taking human lives to make an easy profit out of the Philippines,” Leather said. “While this crisis is serious, it isn’t new. Vast natural resources and fertile soils have long attracted foreign investment to the Philippines, yet widespread corruption and a culture of impunity for unscrupulous companies has seen the profits disappear into the pockets of tiny elite.”

Logging is a big problem in Palawan and has caused environmental defender deaths in the province. Image by Global Witness

The Philippines was named the world’s deadliest country for land and environment defenders in 2018, with 30 recorded deaths, including nine men, women and children who were massacred in a single incident on the island of Negros over disputed farmland. The Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE), an NGO that has recorded such killings since 2011, logged a total of 225 deaths since 2001.

The confluence of several factors — President Duterte’s extensive anti-drug policy, implemented with rigorous counter-insurgency campaigns and the imposition of martial law in the southern Mindanao region — triggered the highest death toll, with 2017 becoming the “bloodiest year on record” with 55 deaths of environmental defenders.

Militarization, criminalization, and the killings of environmental defenders expose weak government institutions susceptible to corruption by corporations that tolerate violence, Global Witness says. These corporations are backed by foreign financing institutions that turn a blind eye on the death toll, the report says.

Investments stained with blood

Killings associated with mining and agribusiness account for the biggest share of the death toll. But two other sectors follow suit: forestry and energy. The latest addition to the death toll was a forest ranger in Palawan, a logging and wildlife poaching hotspot.

Investors in forestry and energy, including development banks and institutions that provide foreign aid, are highlighted in the Global Witness report for financing government institutions and private corporations with “questionable practices” in Palawan.

A surge in tourism has also created strong demand for illegal timber for hotel construction, officials and NGOs says. This resulted in a 16 percent decline in the province’s forest cover from 1992 to 2011 — and all happening under the nose of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD).

The tourism boom is taking a toll on forests in Palawan. Premium tropical hardwoods from protected areas have furnished El Nido’s boutique resorts and hotels. Image by Global Witness

When financing an institution with a contested background, development banks “should use their leverage to ensure changes in the body’s practices and full civil society oversight,” Global Witness says.

Foreign private institutions that bankroll coal power projects associated with the deaths of environmental defenders should also not be spared, Leather said. It’s high time that they take responsibility for their investments, he added.

“The international businesses named in our report — everyone from major food companies to investors pouring money into destructive projects by global corporates — not only need to take responsibility for their role, but also ensure that they’re taking the steps to support and protect defenders and get to the root causes of violent and hideous attacks like these,” Leather said.

When investments become “projects of national significance”

The Philippines’ economic roadmap makes it challenging for defenders. Duterte’s industrialization agenda has created a tug-of-war between development and environmental protection, with land and resources as the coveted prize. The imbalance has left environmental defenders, including indigenous communities, facing warrantless arrests, violent attacks, and even murder attempts.

Defenders are often labeled as “anti-development” or painted as rebel sympathizers, exacerbating the intensity of the threats that they already face.

“There has been shift in strategy … a shift to criminalization,” Leon Dulce, of the Kalikasan PNE, told Mongabay. “Defenders are terror listed and receive trumped up charges [a long list of unrelated cases to incarcerate them]. It was actually a tool to justify the furtherance of killings.”

A large-scale mining site ni Dinagat Island. Mining contributes only a small proportion to the Philippines’ GDP yet this industry sees the most number of murdered environmental defenders in the Philippines. Image by Erwin Mascarinas / Global Witness

“These kind of smear campaigns fit a global trend, in which the rich and powerful stigmatize human rights activism with the aim of deterring participation, leaving those on the front lines isolated,” Global Witness says.

Aware of the local conflicts associated with big investments, former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo created an Investment Defence Force (IDF) in 2008, which serves as the government’s “investment guarantee.” The IDF aims to protect infrastructure projects from “terrorists and … other rebel groups that stand in the way of development.” The group, trained by the military, is tapped to protect projects that the national government has identified as pivotal to national development.

Most of these projects are large-scale mining operations, contested coal-fired power plants, and large swaths of plantations. Under Duterte’s Build-Build-Build program, they include the creation of smart cities, airports, and economic zones, many of which entail the wholesale displacement of entire communities.

Like Arroyo, Duterte adapted the IDF. The president, famous for his iron-fisted leadership, has deployed the military and employed brute force to quell dissent in contested areas, creating a culture of impunity further exacerbated as he threatened to bomb indigenous people’s schools and shoot female rebels in the vaginas.

But despite clashes over land, companies continue to operate and deal with ranchers or leaders who are involved in land-grabbing practices.

“It is Global Witness’s view that local ranchers operating on disputed land are willing to allow violence and intimidation to be used, in order to retain control of the land and lucrative contracts with overseas investors,” the report says.

Forced eviction and environmental damage prompted the community to stand up against a coal-fired power plant in Bataan. Image by Global Witness

Human costs of government negligence

Half of the 225 environment defenders slain in the last 18 years in the Philippines were killed within the last three years. The victims hail from the most marginalized sectors of the rural countryside, according to the Kalikasan PNE.

Indigenous peoples form a third of the casualties. Half are impoverished small farmers and landless agriworkers. They defended nearly 2.7 million hectares (6.7 million acres) of important landscapes and seascapes. More than 19,000 people have been displaced since 2016, mostly indigenous peoples driven out of their ancestral domain lands in the fight against destructive mining practices.

“The disproportionate numbers of indigenous people killed after standing up for their land rights and the environment is evidence in and of itself that the institutions mandated to protect their rights are failing,” Global Witness says.

Companies and financing institutions should enhance due diligence, ensure that no human rights violations are committed by partners, and guarantee remedies and reparations wherever credible complaints are reported.

“The Filipino government, companies operating in the Philippines, investors backing those companies and governments providing trade and aid to the Philippines must take strong and urgent steps [to address this crisis],” the report says. “International and national companies [as well as] private investors must clean up their acts or be held accountable.”

Banner image of man from the Manobo tribe in Bukidnon, a province in Mindanao. Bukidnon’s vast plantations have become a hotbed of land grabbing and environment defender killings. Image by Global Witness

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