The Fourth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Escazú Agreement (Escazú COP4), held in Nassau, Bahamas, between April 21 and 24, left an ambiguous feeling for those of us who closely follow environmental rights processes in Latin America and the Caribbean. There were some positive steps, such as the election of a new bureau and the creation of working groups on pollutant release and transfer registers and access to environmental justice. In the latter case, moreover, the public will have the opportunity to contribute through elected representatives, something important for sustaining participation within the framework of the Agreement.
Behind these institutional achievements, however, an uncomfortable reality once again became evident: States continue to show enormous difficulties in transforming the commitments they have undertaken into concrete public policies.
During the event, several countries presented progress reports on their National Implementation Plans. Most showcased advances centered on workshops, consultations, events, or training sessions. But there were very few examples of effective policies capable of guaranteeing access to environmental justice, protection for environmental defenders, or genuine mechanisms for public participation.
And perhaps the most troubling aspect was precisely what failed to appear clearly in the official presentations: concrete data on violence, criminalization, and persecution against environmental defenders. In a region where defending water, forests, or territories continues to be a high-risk activity, the absence of public information is also a form of invisibilization.
Civil society activates regional mechanisms
The reports presented by states during COP4 were, in many cases, broad descriptions of institutional actions that do not allow for measuring real progress in terms of protection and security for defenders, nor effective access to environmental justice. Faced with this lack of solid and comparable information, organizations, networks, and social movements began creating their own documentation and monitoring mechanisms.
The Public Representatives themselves presented progress on a regional report built with contributions from various organizations and institutions across Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, initiatives such as Escazú Ahora Chile and the Platform of Land and Territory Defenders promoted reports and monitoring systems aimed at assessing the situation faced by those defending territories.
Escazú Ahora Chile presented a report documenting 70 cases in the country. Meanwhile, the Platform launched the Monitor for Land and Territory Defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean, which compiles nearly 600 cases of threats, criminalization, and persecution against environmental defenders in Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras.
What is not named does not exist
Civil society in the region understood long ago that denouncing abuses alone is not enough. We also need to produce robust, comparable, and systematic information capable of exposing patterns, trends, and responsibilities. Producing data has now become a tool of political advocacy. Because what is not measured is not recorded. And what is not recorded, many times, does not exist for States either.
The data gathered by the Monitor reveal some particularly alarming elements. Only 26% of the recorded cases have some form of state protection measure. This figure is crucial for assessing the true level of implementation of the Escazú Agreement in the region and raises an unavoidable question: what are States Parties actually doing to guarantee the protection of environmental defenders?
Another significant figure is that 51% of the cases involve Indigenous communities. This is especially relevant following a COP where, driven mainly by governments such as Argentina and Chile, specific references to Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendant communities were removed from the final decisions.
Gender dimensions also emerge strongly. Although at the regional level 70% of the recorded cases affect men, when examining countries where right-wing governments and narratives have grown in recent years — such as Argentina, Ecuador, and Chile — cases affecting women defenders exceed 50%.
This shows that environmental criminalization does not occur in isolation, but rather combines with specific forms of gender-based violence, especially when women occupy visible roles in territorial and community leadership.
All of this is taking place within an increasingly complex regional context. Latin America is experiencing a deepening of conflicts linked to extractivism, mining expansion, agribusiness, and large-scale infrastructure projects, while many governments are reducing environmental state capacities and portraying territorial demands as obstacles to economic development. In this scenario, defending environmental rights continues to carry very high costs.
COP4 made clear that institutional progress does exist, but it is extremely slow and depends too heavily on the political circumstances of each country. Meanwhile, civil society has been demonstrating an increasingly solid capacity for coordination, sustaining regional networks, producing its own information, and generating concrete mechanisms of advocacy within the Escazú system.
Because today, across much of Latin America, it is organizations, communities, and defenders themselves who are upholding the ideals of the Escazú Agreement and pushing for it to cease being merely a legal framework and become genuine socio-environmental policy.
Autor
Facilitator for the Platform of Defenders of the Land and Territory - ILC LAC and Program Director of the Plural Socio-Environmental Fund. Master's degree in Science and Technology Policy and Management, Social Studies of Science and Technology, University of Buenos Aires.
