Defending the environment has become a suicide mission in many parts of the world

‘Am I going to get out of here alive?’ In one of Africa’s most dangerous corners, a fight to the death for the elephants

By Robyn Dixon

Dec. 22, 2017

Garamba National Park in northeastern Congo is one of the most dangerous places to be a wildlife ranger and one of the most difficult places to save elephants from rampaging militias.

‘If we’re attacked, we’ll die together,’ a 16-year-old anti-mining activist told her family. But when the bullets came, they killed only her

By Kate Linthicum

Dec. 27, 2017

Topacio Reynoso had devoted herself to opposing construction of a large silver mine planned near her hometown. “Nature is a paradise where we sow dreams and reap happiness,” she wrote. Now that she's dead, her father wonders whether it's worth carrying on the fight.

A Philippines grandmother fought to get a toxic coal stockpile out of her neighborhood. Three bullets stopped her

By Jonathan Kaiman

Dec. 28, 2017

Gloria Capitan was shot to death last summer after campaigning against a coal stockpile. That was only the beginning.

A farmers activist is beaten to death, and the video goes viral. How tensions over land are tearing at Myanmar

By Shashank Bengali

Dec. 29, 2017

Myanmar’s transition from military rule has reopened grievances over army land seizures that are pitting farmers against the government, influential business interests, foreign investors — and one another.

He defended the sacred lands of Mexico’s Tarahumara people. Then a gunman cut him down

By Patrick J. McDonnell

March 17, 2017

The killings of two Tarahumara community leaders dramatize how environmental issues have become a frontline human rights battleground in Latin America.

‘They should be thought of as heroes’: Why killings of environmental activists are rising globally

By Shashank Bengali

Dec. 22, 2017

Law professor John Knox, the first U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, says greater demand for natural resources and absence of the rule of law are putting activists in the crosshairs.