PBI-Mexico: “The Escazú Agreement, a necessary tool for the fight against climate change”

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has posted this article in support of the Escazú Agreement.

The Escazú Agreement has been described as the first treaty in history to include specific provisions to protect environmental defenders. The legally binding treaty was negotiated under the supervision of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

PBI-Mexico notes:

“This work to combat climate change has gradually increased in danger, making 2019 the year in which there were the highest number of murders of land defenders, indigenous peoples and the environment.

It is worth noting that these are the people on the front line of the climate crisis, the ones trying to protect climate-critical areas and reverse the most devastating practices.

In Mexico, as well as throughout Latin America, communities that confront extractive industries and expose unsustainable business practices that wreak havoc on ecosystems and the climate face a series of risks and attacks that show the contradictions to overcome to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations.

That is why the implementation of the Escazú Agreement will bring multiple benefits in the consolidation of environmental democracy and the strengthening of governance in decision-making, key to sustainable economic development.

In September 2018, PBI endorsed the Escazú Agreement as ‘a means to guarantee a safe environment in which individuals, groups and organizations that promote and defend human rights related to the environment can act without facing threats, restrictions, attacks or danger’.

PBI Mexico also signed, along with other civil society organizations, a public statement on the occasion of the murder of defender Julián Carrillo, in which it urged the Mexican authorities to take all the necessary steps to sign this Agreement.”

To read the full article by PBI-Mexico, please click here.

It is also available in Spanish here.

For additional context, please see the PBI-Canada article: September 26 deadline approaches to sign world’s first treaty that protects environmental defenders.