EnvJustice

The paper ‘Environmental conflicts and defenders: A global overview’ was featured in a report on the Aboriginal People’s Television News. Leah Temper, one of the paper’s authors, was interviewed to discuss the violence that environmental defenders face. The study includes the analysis of 2743 cases within the EJAtlas and demonstrates that globally, defenders encounter high rates of criminalization (in 20% of cases), physical violence (in 18%), and assassinations (in 13%). The findings also show that violence significantly increases when Indigenous people are involved. 

The Canadian news station mentions that Canada is where more than half of the world’s mining companies are based. Civil society has been largely critical of the human rights abuses of giant firms within the country and the federal government has not acted in a comprehensive way to mitigate conflicts of its national firms’ operations. As the EJAtlas shows, Canadian firms are overrepresented in the database and the research documents that over 150 conflicts involve the Canadian mining industry. Canadian corporations are among the biggest environmental and human rights offenders in the world.

Additional media coverage of the article includes McGill University Newsroom and Radio Canada International.