Environmental Defenders Killed Every 3 Days as Colombia and Brazil Account for Half of 2025 Deaths
At least 124 people were killed worldwide in 2025 for protecting their land and natural resources — one death every three days — with Colombia and Brazil alone responsible for more than half of those killings.
In 2025, 124 people were killed worldwide for protecting the environment, according to the watchdog group Global Witness [1]. That works out to one death every three days [1].
The victims included Indigenous people, small-scale farmers, and community organizers, all of whom were acting peacefully to defend their land and natural resources [1]. Researchers warn that the true number of killings is likely much higher, because repression and armed conflict make many deaths impossible to verify, meaning the documented figure is probably only a fraction of the real toll [1].
Colombia and Brazil were the deadliest countries for environmental activists that year, according to Global Witness [2]. Together, the two countries accounted for 52 percent of all environmental activists killed worldwide in 2025 [2].
The pattern reflects a broader crisis in which those who speak up for forests, rivers, and traditional territories face lethal retaliation, even as the full scale of the violence remains hidden by weak documentation and ongoing conflict [1][2].