 Well, welcome everyone. We're so happy to have you here today for this event, standing with environmental defenders under threat. My name is Carol Boudreau. I'm Senior Land and Resource Governance Advisor at USAID in the Land and Resource Governance Division. The Land and Resource Governance Division is co-hosting this event with colleagues in the Center for Conflict and Violence Prevention, along with our partners at the Integrating Natural Resource Management Project. We're so grateful for their support and we're grateful to have you here today to talk about this important issue. We're gonna be reviewing some work, research, programming, advocacy support that USAID has been providing recently. We're also gonna be talking about what more can be done to support environmental defenders. I wanted to note very briefly that while USAID works on this issue, so too do our colleagues at the Department of State and we'll be sharing with you some links and materials related to the work that they do. I'd like to also call out Deborah Klepp, who leads the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Defenders and a person who many of you I'm sure also know. Well, we've got a lot to cover in today's session. So without further ado, it's gonna be my pleasure and my honor to introduce our opening speaker today, Ms. Bama Athreya, who serves as Deputy Assistant Administrator for both the Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Hub as well as our Inclusive Development Hub that sits in USAID's Bureau for Development, Democracy and Innovation. Ms. Athreya is an expert on international labor issues on gender and social inclusion, business and human rights. Recently from 2019 to 2021, she was an Economic Inequality Fellow at the Open Society Foundations, as well as a Senior Advisor on Gender Equity and Inclusion to the Loudest Foundation. She served at USAID previously from 2013 to 2019 as Senior Specialist for Labor, developing programs on labor rights, countering human trafficking and promoting women's economic inclusion. Bama also is on the Board of Directors of Green America, the Advisory Board for Worker Info Exchange. She's affiliated as a Fellow with Just Jobs Network and she regularly contributes to inequality.org. Also, Bama hosts a podcast on the future of work called The Gig. So that's something I encourage you all to check out. She has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan as well as a Certificate in Strategic Management for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from Georgetown University. So it is my great pleasure to hand the mic over to Bama to provide us with opening remarks. Over to you, Bama. Carol, thank you so much and thanks for the opportunity to be with all of you today. I'm so pleased to open this important webinar. My name is Bama Atreya. My pronouns are she and her and I'm coming to you from Washington, D.C., which is the homeland to the NACOC tank people. And it is my privilege to lead USAID's efforts of our Inclusive Development Hub, which promotes the equity and inclusion of marginalized populations and protection for persons in vulnerable situations. And as this audience is doubtless aware, it's precisely those who are marginalized or in vulnerable situations that are most likely to pay the cost when we allow unsustainable extraction or degradation of the world's ecosystems and resources. Around the world frontline environmental defenders are standing up and working to defend land, territories and the environment so that future generations needs are not sacrificed for the short-term gains and short-sighted interests of the few. I will say, as someone who as Carol kindly described in my bio has worked on business and human rights issues for many years, I've had the pleasure and privilege of working with so many of these frontline environmental defenders. And so I can tell you personally, I recognize how vital you are to all of us. The environmental defenders that we are talking about today and hopefully are joining us today represent among those among us who can imagine a beautiful and sustainable future planet where we and other species can thrive. They, you are women, men, youth, taking a stand against unjust, corrupt or harmful projects that create environmental, social and economic harm to communities and to other people. The work that defenders do and the victories they achieve can benefit nations by catalyzing alternatives that we need for sustainable long-term economic wellbeing for communities and nations. That is the heart of our development work. Unfortunately, as we know, powerful forces benefit from immediate exploitation of the environment and sometimes take violent measures to oppose these ideas. In a toxic cocktail with corruption and weak or authoritarian governance, these forces can lead to violent and sometimes tragically fatal assaults on environmental defenders. In 2019, global analysis frontline defenders reported that land, environmental and indigenous peoples' rights remained the most dangerous sector of human rights defense due to the profit-driven exploitation of natural resources combined with rampant corruption, weak governments and systemic poverty. How serious are these concerns? Recently, Global Witness reported that nearly 200 environmental defenders were killed in 2021 alone. And that is surely an underestimate as they themselves note that given the rigor they use in establishing correlation, as well as the lack of reporting in many areas of the world, this is probably an underestimation. To put this in perspective, that is the equivalent of four people per week. And for every defender that is killed, many more are harassed, threatened, slapped with frivolous lawsuits or silenced. These attacks happened in all regions of the world. However, the majority of those reported and documented over 75% took place in Latin America, including in the Amazon region, the focus of the new USAID brief you will be discussing today. And a disproportionate number of these attacks, 40% were focused on indigenous defenders, even though indigenous communities make up only 5% of the world's population. We understand that to address these extraordinary challenges, USAID must listen to, partner with and support indigenous peoples and other brave community members who are doing the difficult, dangerous, but vital work to protect our environment and the critical ecosystems we depend on. A number of USAID policies outline our responsibility to act on this cross-cutting issue. USAID's policy on promoting the rights of indigenous peoples or pro-IP policy gives our missions and our other staff sound guidance to act to protect the women and men in indigenous communities to work with them, not for them. Our biodiversity policy advocates for an inclusive approach to environmental management, emphasizing rights for and participation of historically marginalized groups. And our new climate strategy explicitly calls for USAID to promote a safe political environment for environmental defenders to voice concerns about and participate in climate action. I'm proud to say our teams have taken up this mandate working to support environmental defenders on multiple fronts. And I've been asked to share just some top-line examples. I know you'll be talking more about these throughout the hour. In Peru, the PREVENT project works with environmental justice officials and government institutions to build capacity and enable needed reforms to reduce environmental crimes. You'll hear about this activity from our panelists. And in Colombia, USAID's Land for Prosperity program is working to promote more secure land and resource rights for rural peoples by supporting land restitution, strengthening local government capacity for land administration and integrating citizens in licit socioeconomic opportunities to improve security and reduce the spread of illicit activities. Through these and other efforts, USAID can help support environmental defenders by strengthening their capacities, improving the enabling environment and protecting and securing land and resource rights. We're also building new programs such as our jurist activity, which is designed to provide rapid assistance to justice and to human rights defenders worldwide through quick, discreet support actions. We recognize this is also a really important part of the support and the structure that we need to ensure environmental defenders can do their work. Also, USAID's Environmental and Climate Security Working Group is elevating the topic within USAID with issue briefs and by hosting this webinar. And thanks to our colleague at the Department of State, Deborah Klepp, who has been instrumental in leading an interagency working group on environmental defenders, as Carol mentioned. But we recognize that we need to continue to improve, learn and do so much more. And so with this event today, we wanna focus on that goal, learning about the most effective ways to support environmental defenders. Thanks again for allowing me to join and I look forward to learning with you in today's webinar. Bama, thank you so much. We appreciate your opening remarks. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. We're delighted you can stay with us also through the conversation. Yulia, over to you now. Thank you. Thank you very much, Bama, for those opening remarks and thank you, Carol. Hello, everyone. My name is Yulia Panfill. I'm the director of the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America and also the land and resource governance lead on the USAID integrated natural resource management activity. And I am so honored to be moderating a panel of experts and practitioners who are working on this extremely important issue. I will be chatting for about 35 minutes after which point I will open it up to audience Q and A. So first I will just briefly introduce our panelists starting with Jeff Stark who is the environmental governance lead for the integrated natural resource management activity and also author of the USAID environmental defenders issue brief that Bama mentioned in her remarks. Then we will move to Laura Pavlovich who is the acting director of the Democracy, Rights and Governance Center at USAID. Next, Kirk Herbertson, who is a senior policy advisor for Earth Rights International. And finally, we are thrilled to be joined by Martin Castro who is the project coordinator in the Office of Democracy, Human Rights and Governance at USAID Peru. Welcome everyone. Kirk and Jeff, I will begin with you. Bama sort of set the stage telling us a little bit about who environmental defenders are. And I'm hoping that you could build a little bit on that Kirk and then Jeff, could you frame up for us who are environmental defenders and why are they under such intense threat? Thanks so much, Julia. And thank you very much for your remarks Deputy Assistant Minister Arthreya. I think that was a great overview that really set the scene for us. And I think so we Earth Rights International is a nonprofit organization based in Washington DC and we have offices in the Amazon region and the Mekong region. And as the Deputy Assistant Administrator said, we are seeing people who are speaking up about environmental issues are facing very serious attacks in both regions and then across the world with our partners wherever we work. For example, we have, you know, indigenous communities that are speaking up about deforestation in the Amazon. We have local communities that are speaking up about pollution related to mining, different communities and groups, civil society groups that are speaking up and protesting against big development projects where they're concerned about the impacts. And a lot of the reporting has focused on the killings which are significant, you know, on average several happening every week. Global Witness has tracked almost 2,000 killings of environmental land defenders over the past decade. But even more than the killings, there's a huge number of other attacks that are happening that are far less documented because they're difficult to document. So we see a lot of criminalization happening. So the weaponizing of the legal system to try to silence people who are speaking up and challenging powerful interests. I wanted to point quickly to two examples that are happening right now as we speak just to help frame the issue. One is in Honduras. So just less than two weeks ago on January 7th in the Guapinol area, two environmental activists were assassinated. The assassinations appear to be linked to their longtime activism protesting against a big mining project where there's a mining project that's leading to a lot of a severe pollution of local communities. For years, the community has been rising up and protesting and raising awareness of the impacts of this mining project. There's been a series of criminalization actions happening, including a number of activists, local community activists who were placed in jail for over a year, maybe almost two years without charge for their actions. And so this escalation now with assassinations is very serious. It's also part of a bigger pattern of attacks on environmental defenders in Honduras. So we see in places like Honduras, there are these patterns happening that include killings, criminalization, other types of attacks. On the other side of the world, in Vietnam, next week on Tuesday, January 24th, is going to be the one-year anniversary of the conviction of environmental lawyer Dung Dinh Bach, who was arrested about a year and a half ago on bogus tax charges by the Vietnamese government as part of a broader crackdown on environmental defenders in Vietnam who have been speaking up about climate change issues. This is at the same time that the Vietnamese government is trying to attract more investment on clean energy and climate. And so this seems to be an effort by the government to silence, civil society organizations have been involved in that. So I think as we go into this discussion more, we'll be talking about why this is happening. I just will flag that it does seem to be happening in situations where there's a popular movement on the ground or civil society that's speaking about issues. And then there's some form of capture of the state by organized crime or ruling elites, the military, the police, the judges are not necessarily acting in a way that would happen with good governance. So I think this is the kind of atmosphere that we're seeing in a lot of these countries. And I think we'll be exploring that in more detail. Thanks so much, Kirk and over to you, Jeff. Great, thank you, Yulia. It's nice to join everyone. I think Kirk has given some pretty vivid examples of the kinds of situations that we're looking at and it reminds us that actually environmental defenders are many different kinds of people. They might be human rights advocates or lawyers or journalists or just rural folk in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, as well as different sort of leaders, indigenous leaders, community organizers, women and youth leaders and so on. But the term environmental defenders gets its usefulness from the shared focus of all of these on fighting unjust and harmful exploitation of natural resources. Often environmental defenders just consider themselves ordinary citizens with grievances about environmental disruptions in their communities from activities like mining, oil and gas, logging, road building and in some instances land grabbing. So they're peacefully protesting and advocating for what they see as their basic rights to things like clean water or land for agriculture, community forests, artisanal fisheries and ancestral territories. Individually, sometimes their circumstances and personal trajectories grow. We can think of Francia Marquez who's now the vice president of Columbia. She began as a teenager protesting a dam that had negative effects on her community. She became a human rights and environmental lawyer. She won the Goldman Prize, environmental prize in 2018. Now she is the vice president of Columbia. So we can see that in some instances environmental defenders can evolve and become political leaders, which is another reason why it's important for us to engage with them. The term environmental defender itself is a bit of a double-edged stored in many countries to be termed an environmental defenders to be placed at risk as a dissident or a troublemaker or a criminal or even a terrorist and those kinds of labelings can lead to intimidation, arrest or attacks as an alleged security threat. But the term also signals the need for the protection of their rights through pre-expression, peaceful protest and their physical safety. That also includes special attention to heightened risks for women environmental defenders who experienced gender-based intimidation, defamation of youth, abuse and violence. And in terms of the use of the term environmental defenders, we can see that internationally the work of the UN, the US and other governments has kind of focused attention on the dangers faced by environmental defenders and helped to strengthen their networks of support. So the term has gained a considerable international traction and perhaps the best formal expression of that is the Eskizu Agreement, which was signed by 25 Latin American and Caribbean countries. It's now been ratified by I think 14 of them and that agreement sets out basic rights and protection provisions for environmental defenders and it has a secretariat based in Santiago, Chile. So we can see that this term has become an issue area that has international recognition and sort of agendas of action surrounding it. In terms of this question of why the intense spread, I think you can look at two fundamental trends. One is this sort of continuing expansion of high value extractives, energy projects, dams, logging, ranching and agribusiness that sort of multiply the instances and the scope of encroachment into lands, waters and forests of indigenous people and local communities. And then on the other side, environmental civil society organizations become more numerous, better organized including at the local level. And in the media, traditional and social media have raised awareness about environmental harms and allowed citizens to learn more about shared challenges and alternative strategies to promote change. So the intersection of these trends means more environmental defenders in more places. Citizens also have rising expectations about transparency and public information. The concept of free prior and informed consent of affected communities is more widely accepted as a floor, not a ceiling in terms of appropriate behavior and the private sector has many stronger standards and norms in relation to corruption, human rights, land rights and security arrangements that they did in the past. So standards for unacceptable company behaviors have become higher and better defined. And the same is true for governments as well. So there are laws that have been passed for community rights, for consultation and consent prior to large-scale natural resource exploitation but the gap between legal prescription and actual performance is very large and that generates the protests of the sort that Kirk described. And at the same time now, the work that Global Witness has been doing in compiling and publishing annual reports on environmental defender attacks sort of has helped us to connect the dots and understand that environmental defenders attacks are not just occasional anecdotal stories in the newspaper but something more systemic about unequal political and economic power, the role of natural resources and national development strategies, corruption and the rule of law, the grievances of indigenous people in local communities and even the state of democracy in the countries where environmental defenders are at risk. So thinking about this issue opens up larger issues. Oh, they're very important in terms of democratic governance itself. Thank you so much, Jeff. And Kirk and Jeff, I really appreciate you describing the sort of escalation that occurs in threats against environmental defenders that it's not often that somebody is just assassinated out of thin air. It really starts with even just naming that person as an environmental defender and then escalating to intimidation and then criminalization and that pattern, I think will be useful. We'll talk later about what can be done to try to counter these threats. So I really appreciate both of you describing that. We'll turn now to Martin. Martin, both Bama and Kirk described that the Amazon region and Latin America are hotspots for threats against environmental defenders. And of course, this is happening in Peru as well. Can you tell us a little bit about what USAID Peru is seeing on this issue in the context of your environmental work through the PREVENT project? Sure, thank you. Thank you, Yulia. And thanks for letting us to make a presentation of our work on this specific matter to protect the rights of environmental defenders in Peru. So I will present first what prevents briefly, what PREVENT is, what is their, its main purpose and also explain what we are seeing regarding the situation of environmental defenders in the context of the activity we are implementing in Peru and provide also a general overview regarding the legal framework for their protection. And also I will try to present briefly our main results and also the most important challenges that we have to address this problem in our country. So what is combating environmental crimes? This is the name of PREVENT and our activity supports the Peruvian institutions and civil society organizations in reducing the environmental crimes. Our activity is focused on support the prosecution of specific environmental crimes in our Amazon regions where the project is focused on. So we are trying to provide the most technical assistance to the Peruvian agencies for combating illegal logging, illegal mining and one life trafficking. And PREVENT main objective is to extend the justice system just for prosecution of this type of crimes and also increase the protection for environmental defenders. PREVENT is part of a larger project that we have at USAID Peru that it's named Amazonia Verde whose purpose is conserving the biodiversity, forest and ecosystem services in priority areas of the Peruvian Amazon. The activity is implemented in three regions of the country in Loreto in the north side of the country, Ucayali and Madre de Dios which is in the south part of the country. Both three regions are from the Amazonian basin of Peru. And in the context of this activity in fiscal year 22, we received funds from the DRG center to include a specific component for addressing the rights of environmental defenders regarding the situation of them in the context of the illicit economies of these regions that we are working on. Our main purpose is that the environmental defenders could have the security conditions needed to promote and defend the right to live in a safe, healthy and sustainable environment. And we prevent and we look for to increase the capacities of the government and civil society to strengthen effective prevention and protection measures in the geographic areas where our activities is being implemented. What we are seeing in Peru regarding the environmental defenders? First of all, we just need to say that most environmental defenders in Peru are indigenous peoples whose vulnerability is exacerbated by discrimination, poverty, geographic isolation and lack of access to government assistance. Those are the most important characteristics of these populations and their threat in the regions where we are working on to combat environmental crimes. Indigenous leaders cite the government protection failures as a major problem, which includes lack of access to justice, intimidation, death threats, attacks, criminalization, judicial harassment and killings, of course. Between April 2019 and August 2022, the Peruvian Ministry of Justice and Human Rights identified 81 situations for freaks affecting 257 defenders in Peru. And the regions of Ucayali and Madre de Dios, which are the regions where we are working on, were considered to be the riskiest. Those are the most important areas of criminal organizations for illegal logging, illegal mining. In the case of Madre de Dios, illegal mining is a big problem several years ago and the people who live there and the people who defend their lands and protect the environment are the most important victims of these type of organizations. Environmental defenders have been facing the increase of threats and risks for a long time. In fact, since 2015, several attacks and murders were registered in Madre de Dios against people who had reported activities related to illegal mining. And this situation was aggravated during the pandemic for the COVID-19 when the government controls diminished particularly in the areas, in the rural areas of the country. According to a report that was disseminated last year by Proetica, which is the Peruvian chapter of Transparency International, between April 2020 and April 2022, 2022 environmental defenders were murdered or disappeared. Out of this total, 20 took place in the Peruvian Amazon regions and 19 of them were from indigenous communities, from indigenous peoples. As of October 2022, there were nine, only nine open investigations in the Peruvian prosecution offices. Those investigations are about 10 defenders murdered between 2020 and 2022. The killings took place in the regions of Kunin, Pasco and Guanugo. Those are the central Amazon area in the country and Madre de Dios and Ucayali. Again, those regions, the most important regions where Prevent is working on, Ucayali and Madre de Dios. None of the cases has yet reached a final sentence. So the common things in this type of investigations under the prosecution offices and the judiciary is the delay in the process of investigating the cases and there are not results as of today. In 2022 in the region of Ucayali, many local leaders receive death threats after the invasion of their territory for narco traffickers. Such is the case, for instance, of the Florida Ucayali indigenous community where the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights in Coordination with the Federation of Native Communities of Ucayali and a local AGO activated a mechanism to protect five of leaders who have received threats while defending their territory against the cultivation of illicit crops, coca, basically. Finally, the lack of communication and access to institutions is a big barrier for access to justice for environmental defenders, specifically in remote areas of the Peruvian Amazon where so many people cannot access to the justice services for reporting attacks or risk situations. And it's important also to underscore that the language barriers and lack of internet access are also important barrier for accessing to government protection services. Let's review briefly the legal framework that we have for the protection of human rights defenders, including the environmental defenders. In compliance with the Peruvian National Human Rights Plans 2018-2021, the government adopted a measure for the protection of human rights defenders. And this includes advancing the protocol to ensure the protection of defenders of human rights and the creation of an intersectoral mechanism for the protection of human rights defenders in April 2022. It's sad to say that the intersectoral mechanism for the protection doesn't have the enough resources for its effective implementation. The Ministry of... and also this mechanism just need to be implemented through specific rules or guidelines for the different agencies that just need to implement their rules and regulations. But any of the agencies that just need to put in place their actions to effectively protect the environmental defenders in the territories have not approved yet their specific protocol of the actuation or guidelines for the implementation of the prevention and protection measures when environmental defender request this type of protection from the government. So in terms of the mechanism, we don't have an effective implementation in the field because of the lack of resources. They don't have the enough funding for doing the work and they don't have the guidance for the effective implementation of the regulations that the mechanisms establish. Martin, I'm so sorry to cut in, but I'd like to give some space to a few other questions. If you're able to just wrap up in the next 30 seconds or so and then we'll come back for more discussion. Sure, sure, sure. Maybe I will brief the most important challenge that we have for handling this type of activities. First of all, the structural factors that generate risk of insecurity and potential human rights violations, which is how to combat environmental crimes effectively and how to support the government of Peru for being more effective for combating environmental crimes this is the scenario where the most important violations against environmental defenders take place. The second one, the ineffective implementation of the regulatory framework to prevent abuses and protect environmental defenders, including the intersectional mechanisms, there is sufficient funds for doing that. And third, we need to build political will for getting more protection in favor of environmental defenders. So as I can say that, so I am willing to answer the questions for that. Thank you. Thank you so much Martin for laying out so vividly the threats being faced by environmental defenders in Peru and really laying out some of the structural barriers that layer on top of each other to increase those vulnerabilities. Laura, we'll turn to you. USAID's democracy programs are also working to support from Washington to support environmental and human rights defenders. You're approaching this challenge in a slightly different way. Tell us a little bit about how you are looking at the challenge of threats to environmental defenders and human rights defenders and what the DRG Center is doing to counter them. Thanks, Julia. And thank you Carol for including us in this really, really important panel. I think this is a really kind of critical discussion at a critical time for us. So DRG offices around the world have engaged in programming to support environmental defenders because of the fact that we see environmental defenders as human rights defenders. But we also see the issue of environmental defense as a core democracy challenge as evidence mounts of the interrelationship between environmental and democratic challenges. So from a DRG perspective, as we continue to grapple with increasing challenges to global democracy, both from abroad and within, and the societies in which we work, we see environmental issues as huge mobilizers of public participation that cut through the apathy that plagued a lot of the countries where we operate, especially with youth and with social movements. So engagement with environmental activists and defenders can help in creating a positive agenda that can galvanize broader and more inclusive political participation at the same time, DRG programs can play a really important role in fostering a supportive legal and policy-making environment and help in identifying feasible pathways forward for this activism through governance systems. But at the same time, increasingly we're seeing the accelerance of environmental degradation and democratic decline are also closely interrelated from corruption to backsliding in transparent and accountable decision-making. So environmental defenders are often at the front lines putting themselves at great risk to highlight the failures of governance systems and the linkages between human rights and communities of the environment. BAM has noted that environmental defenders face a unique set of threats and that perpetrators largely benefit from impunity. And as Jeff has pointed out in his brief, women environmental defenders are especially vulnerable to multiple forms of discrimination and violence. But I'd also note that from a DRG perspective, increasingly in the countries in which we're working, the attacks that we're seeing against environmental activists are often harbingers or broader rollbacks in the freedom of association and assembly that we're increasingly grappling with locally, globally and locally. So in this sense, protecting environmental defenders is critical not just to environmental outcomes, but also to inclusive democracy in the defense of human rights. So in order to address these challenges, our colleagues across the sector have developed comprehensive approaches to enhancing respect for the rights of environmental defenders at risk by programming that seeks to prevent human rights violations, protect defenders where they're at risk or threatened due to their work and respond to human rights abuses. A fantastic example is the human rights grant program that Martine and the team at USA Peru put forward that we funded. But we're also seeking to draw on a broader toolkit that seeks to leverage holistic and systems-based approaches that can also address the root causes of these attacks. By improving democratic governance, strengthening the rule of law in people-centered justice, promoting human rights, and strengthening civil society and media, we can both improve support for environmental defenders directly, but also address the national and local systems that they operate within to ensure that they're more safe, more democratic, more just, more transparent, more inclusive, and thus better able to protect and enforce environmental rights on the ground. To cite one example, our forthcoming rule of law policy focuses on the fact that sustainable development in all sectors can be hampered by the weak rule of law and inadequate justice systems, especially environmental justice issues that are brought to bear by environmental defenders. The UN's first environmental rule of law report in 2019 found that despite a 38-fold increase in environmental laws put in place since 1972, the failure to fully implement and enforce these laws is one of the greatest challenges to mitigating climate change, reducing pollution, and preventing widespread species and habitat loss. So environmental defenders really play an important role in upholding, implementing, and advancing the rule of law at the front lines. And the challenges that they face, whether from corruption and national or local government, lack of access to formal justice, failures in security sector to prevent violence, those are all signaling urgent threats to the rule of law overall. So what we're really trying to do within the DRG Center is seek to support through technical assistance and through support for programming, strengthening of democratic governance systems as a whole to protect and support environmental rights defenders and ensure greater ecological and climate resilience. So what does this look like in practice? In Mexico, our civil society and media programming is supporting efforts to protect and prevent violence against journalists and human rights and environmental defenders by partnering with federal institutions to increase prosecution rates for crimes against freedom of expression, bolster public awareness of and support for freedom of expression and the defense of human rights, including through support to local human rights and victims commissions, as well as media outlets, independent journalists, and civil society organizations. USAID's Global Innovation for Change initiative is supporting network-based approaches and local community exchanges between activists and citizens, as well as supporting local researchers and citizen journalists to help raise awareness around environmental degradation and other impacts of the PRC's Belt and Road Initiative on local communities and connecting these to local wider advocacy efforts. Activists in civil society are using digital storytelling tools to highlight how the PRC built hydropower dams are limiting the Mekong River's fish and water supplies that impact 70 million people downstream in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and beyond. This community and citizen engagement work won the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize. It celebrates grassroots leaders who take significant action to support and protect the environment. And finally, in Ethiopia, another human rights grants program supported local indigenous communities in the lower Omo Valley to develop their political voice to ensure that their basic human rights and livelihoods are protected in the face of large-scale development projects on their territory. These are a few examples, but overall, I'm hopeful that given the increasing evidence of the interrelationship between environmental and democracy challenges, that we'll be able to continue to work across sectors to improve not only protections for environmental defenders, but also to strengthen the systems needed for effective advocacy and transparent and accountable policymaking to address the challenges that they are raising up to all of us. As Bama noted at the top, USAID's new climate strategy provides an outstanding platform for a more integrated approach to addressing threats to environmental and democratic resilience moving forward. And the DRG Center is already working very closely with our climate colleagues to provide cross-sectoral support to developing programming and technical resources to scale up our joint work in the space. Thanks so much, Laura, for outlining the DRG Center's approach to this issue. And I really appreciate and it struck me this observation that threats against environmental defenders are almost like a canary in the coal mine that can alert you of larger governance and transparency rollbacks. That's really interesting. So, Jeff, I'm going to turn to you just very briefly. In your environmental defender's brief, you described this dynamic where governments work together with large companies often to give away land or extract minerals in indigenous or environmentally vulnerable areas. And that's sort of what catalyzes the interaction with environmental defenders who then stand up against that action. Can you tell me a little bit more about this dynamic of state-sponsored land and resource grabbing and offer any ideas for how we can fight against these very powerful and entrenched interests in just a minute or two? Thanks so much, Jeff. Sure. I'll just be very brief. I mean, we can observe in instances like that. You sort of have intertwined political and economic elites who are working together to exploit natural resources for their joint benefit and at the expense of local inhabitants. So it's one point to remember is that the state owns and controls normally subsurface mineral rights, marine and freshwater resources, wildlife and most forests. And then conversely, there's a large overlap between intact ecosystems and the land holdings of indigenous peoples and local communities who typically are politically weak. And the formal recognition of indigenous and local community rights to land and resources is often quite limited or contested. So what can be done in relation to some of these issues? Certainly a core issue is advancing secure land rights and resource rights for indigenous people in local communities. This is an area that USAID is devoting a lot of time and effort to. And another is just a message that I hear from Latin American colleagues, which is just get governments to implement the laws and regulations they already have on the books for consultation, consent and protection. Thank you so much, Jeff, for laying that out. Kirk, we'll turn to you. Again, briefly, Martin and Laura laid out some of the work that USAID is doing on this issue. But from your perspective, what are the best approaches that you've seen to helping environmental defenders and specifically what can an agency like USAID be doing to help? Thanks, Gula. So to focus on the U.S. government. So first and foremost, I think the key message here is that we need an all of government response here. In order to be effective on this, we need actors in the U.S. government that are working on political diplomacy, international development, security assistance, law enforcement, economic affairs and so forth. We need to bring them all together. But within that interagency cooperation, USAID has a central role, both because it has a presence in all the hotspot areas where it's happening and also it is often more in contact with the rural remote areas than other parts of embassies are. So very briefly, I can go into more detail on this later, but a couple of different ideas on where USAID could play a role. One is specific programming to support environmental defenders. So that's both programming to address root causes like land conflicts and impunity and corruption, and also programming to build resilience of the most vulnerable communities like Indigenous Peoples. Secondly is to integrate this issue into other programming that in hotspot areas by making sure that there's enhanced due diligence and emergency protection if this issue arises in other USAID projects. Third is direct engagement with the private sector partners because USAID has a strong track record of doing this. So in the coming year, there's going to be a lot of several big international standards for the private sector that will help guide companies on how to address human rights defenders risks, including environmental defenders, as the voluntary principles on security and human rights is coming out with guidance this spring. The OECD is developing an updated standard that should include human rights defenders issues, and Unilever, the big multi-national corporation, is expected to come out with a groundbreaking human rights defenders policy later this year. So USAID certainly is in a position to help encourage uptake of these types of standards in the private sector. And then finally, USAID can play a proactive role in direct engagement at the embassy level. You know, as the first point of contact for the U.S. government for many of these environmental defenders, USAID can encourage its staff on the ground to really play a role in the embassy responses when emergencies take place. Thanks so much, Kirk. And turning quickly to Laura and Martin before turning to Q&A. Laura, Martin, how do you react to these suggestions that Kirk is putting forward? How do they align with USAID's thinking on the best approaches to this challenge? Are they achievable within the constraints that aid faces? Any reactions would be very helpful. You can get us started. Certainly, I think that both of them have put some really key issues on the table that, you know, we kind of, to be argued for a number of things. Number one, you know, kind of, again, this issue and Kirk has just raised us about the importance of taking a cross-sectoral approach, right? The importance of, you know, kind of sustained engagement in ensuring that we've got, you know, kind of effective, you know, support for policymaking and also policy implementation rule of law support is a really critical piece of this. Certainly, you know, as we think through, you know, kind of getting to root causes, you know, making sure that, you know, our missions in these hotspots have got the analytical resources through conflict and political economy analyses to both understand and develop strategies to address these root causes, deepening our understanding and developing programming to address the corruption networks that underlie many of these environmental challenges is critical. And then Kirk has put on the, you know, on the table as well, really, you know, kind of seeking to improve protections. Certainly in an increasingly risky environment for human rights defenders globally, we're struggling to develop the tools and policies that we need to effectively support defenders. So strengthening and standardizing risk mitigation and scenario planning, providing legal, digital, psychosocial, financial support, these are all issues that we are, you know, seeking to put on the table. I would add in very close, in very close collaboration with our partners in the implicit development hub and Bama's team, but these are certainly issues that we're very interested in taking forward in the year ahead. Martín, over to you. Thank you. I think that in the context of the current Peruvian situation, I would say that the all of government response is key to build a bridge for dialogue and consensus among Peruvians to maintain the rule of law and respect for the human rights. In the specific case of environmental defenders, I think that the US government diplomacy, along with the technical assistance that USAID could provide, will stimulate the political will to allocate the necessary resources to the agents with competencies for effectively implement the intersectional mechanism, for instance, to protect the rights of environmental defenders. And this year, in terms of our programming in the context of Prevent, we are going to strategize important actions to move the government for allocating resources for the implementation of the legal framework for effective protection of the environmental defenders and also work with the justice system for being more effective in the prosecution of environmental crimes. This is the most important factor for the threats against environmental defenders in the country. We should recognize that the challenges is tremendous, but I think that we are in the correct way to help environmental defenders, at least in the regions where Prevent implemented its activities. Thank you very much, Martine. We have a whole bunch of audience questions that we will not be able to get through. I'm so sorry, but I will try to move us through just a couple of them in the last few minutes we have. And the first one, I will direct to you, Laura. We had a question around engagement with the new administration in Brazil on the topic of territorial claims of Indigenous peoples. And the question is, how can USAID work with the Lula administration to support these claims and protect the environment in Brazil? It's a fantastic question. Certainly from our perspective as a global center, we do have resources that would be available to the mission in Brazil to the extent that they wanted to take these issues on. I will flag that we do have kind of rapid response mechanisms available as well as grants programming that is allowed to missions like Peru. Martine spoke about this, that certainly we could avail to the mission that they were interested in taking these issues on. But certainly we are seeing a real increase in interest and certainly we are seeking to support to the greatest extent possible efforts to strengthen the legal enabling environment to address these massive issues. Thanks, Laura. Next question. Kirk, I think I will direct this to you. Although, Jeff, you may want to jump in here as well. And this is a question around sanctions. Basically the question is, are sanctions a useful tool for protecting environmental defenders and sanctions against any companies or people related to threats against environmental defenders? The short answer is yes, in theory they are. And Human Rights first put out a report last year that looked at implementation of the Global Manezki sanctions program so far and did find that there is missed opportunities and not as much focus on environmental defenders and other issues where there could be more efforts on these sanctions. One limitation with sanctions is that they, you know, their focus, they would help with killings. They would not necessarily help with some of the other types of attacks that are happening. But anyway, yes, sanctions could be scaled up for this purpose, for sure. Thank you. One more question. And here I think I will start with Martin and Laura and then Jeff and Kirk, if you want to jump in, you're welcome to. And the question is, how does USAID ensure that environmental defenders are not at risk by other USAID activities? So for example, activities that may promote private investment that's not aligned with the environment. So how does USAID employ a do no harm approach in its programming to make sure that, you know, activities don't inadvertently harm environmental defenders? Dean, do you want to take that on from the proof perspective? Okay, I don't have the correct answer yet, I think. But in our programming, we're trying to address the focus related with don't help by working with the communities and with the agencies with responsibilities in the country to protect the rights of the people, particularly the rights of the indigenous communities by working with the Ministry of Culture, with the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations. So we can envision strategies to work in those areas without harming the people that is in the field. So, and this is a common practice here in the mission to do this type of assessment before implementing our activities in the field. Laura? No, I would just add that, you know, certainly one of the trends that we've seen over the past several years is, you know, kind of really thinking through these issues from a cross-sectoral perspective. And so I think the more that we can be providing, you know, kind of the analytical resources to missions that are grappling with these issues to really, you know, kind of look at this issue and think about the implications that, you know, kind of corruption, you know, deeply, you know, kind of discriminatory practices when it comes to land tenure, the implications that has across our portfolios and ensuring that, you know, kind of we are bringing, you know, kind of that lens to all of the work that we do and thinking through those provisions cross-sectorally, I think is a really important issue. The other thing I would just kind of add my plus one to is Kirk's point earlier about the importance of ensuring that USAID is also using its seat at country team to be bringing these analyses forward, because obviously above and beyond USAID's programming, it's also the work of our colleagues across the interagency at posts that are engaging private sector and thinking through these issues to ensure that we all have visibility on these, you know, kind of deeper root causes of the issues that our environmental defender partners are raising and making sure that everyone has visibility on them and is thinking through them. Certainly this issue of, you know, do no harm and thinking through more sustainable systems is something that the DRG center is very engaged with right now. Just given the increasing risk that these defenders are facing and this is certainly something that our partners are flagging for us as well. And so I think over the course of the next year we're going to be engaging much more deeply and thinking through kind of how we can have, you know, resources available to our implementing partners and certainly to partners on the ground to be able to address the risks that they face. Well, thank you so much to everyone for your participation. Thank you to the audience for tuning in and thank you to our really wonderful panel of experts for your contributions. For everyone who has tuned in, we'll be circulating a follow-up email in the coming week or so just highlighting some of the main points that were made and sharing some of the resources from the speakers. So please be on the lookout for that. And with that, I would like to thank everyone once again and wish everyone a great rest of your day.