Latin America accounted for 85% of environmental defender killings in 2025, report says

# Why This Matters The concentration of environmental defender killings in Latin America reflects a systemic failure to protect citizens exercising basic rights, with cascading consequences for both conservation and regional stability. When activists documenting illegal mining, deforestation, and land theft face lethal retaliation with relative impunity, it effectively silences the witnesses and monitors who constrain corporate and criminal environmental destruction—meaning degradation accelerates in regions that contain critical carbon sinks and biodiversity reserves affecting global climate outcomes. The violence also signals deeper state weakness, as governments either cannot or will not prosecute killers, creating power vacuums filled by organized crime and extractive industries that destabilize communities and drive migration pressures northward. Without reversing this pattern through credible prosecutions and security measures, Latin America will continue losing both the people documenting environmental crime and the ecosystems their work protects.