The initiative to empower women land defenders in Latin America

“A groundbreaking legal instrument for environmental protection, but also a human rights treaty.” This is how the NGO La Ruta del Clima, based in Costa Rica, describes the Escazú Agreement. The agreement is named after the Costa Rican city where it was signed on March 4, 2018, and is officially entitled “Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Negotiations had begun much earlier, during the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), with the adoption of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which “aims to ensure that all have access to information, participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters, with the aim of protecting the right to a healthy and sustainable environment for present and future generations.”

A key point in understanding the Escazú Agreement is that it provides guiding principles for countries to develop legal and administrative instruments that promote its main goals: access to information and justice in environmental matters and participation in decision-making. The agreement provides a set of instructions for governments to enforce through legislative, regulatory, administrative or other measures, emphasizing that “each party shall endeavor to adopt the most favorable interpretation” of the guidelines.

Some items provide a more specific idea of ​​how the Convention might be implemented. These include: a 30-working-day deadline for authorities to respond to requests for environmental information; the need to designate impartial entities or institutions to promote transparency in access to environmental information; the obligation to submit the terms of a decision to the relevant public before it is adopted; and the requirement for authorities to identify the public directly affected by a project or activity and to facilitate their participation, and to ensure that decisions taken in environmental matters are recorded in writing.

Adriana Vasquez, Director of Operations at La Ruta del Clima, said the main beneficiary of the agreement is the people of Latin America, especially the most vulnerable groups and communities.

“This agreement is beneficial for conservation because it recognizes the interrelationship and interdependence of the three dimensions of sustainable development,” she said. “(It) also represents a mechanism for the protection of environmental movements, ensuring that activists can carry out their activities without putting themselves at risk.”

Hesitation to ratify

In April 2024, the States Parties met for the third meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 3) and committed to an Action Plan for Human Rights Defenders in Environmental Matters. This plan included a roadmap with “a series of priority areas and strategic measures to advance towards the full and effective implementation of Article 9 of the Escazú Convention on Human Rights Defenders in Environmental Matters.” However, numerous challenges remain that prevent the agreement from being fulfilled.

Notably, not all Latin American countries have signed the agreement. Only 16 of the 25 countries have ratified it since it entered into force on April 22, 2021. (The full list of countries that have signed, ratified, and are parties to the agreement is available here.)

While signing the deal indicates a country’s interest in the treaty’s terms, Vasquez explained, ratification imposes binding legal obligations. A country that has ratified the agreement must incorporate it into its legal framework and implement concrete actions to ensure compliance with the agreement’s objectives.

Osprey Orielle Lake, executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), told FairPlanet that ratification would mean countries would be “legally obligated to protect environmental defenders, ensure public participation, and provide access to environmental information and justice.”

One example is Argentina, which ratified the treaty in January 2021. Two years later, the government announced the first National Plan for the Implementation of the Escazú Agreement in Argentina, a document that lists dozens of concrete measures to achieve the Escazú goals, although most still use vague terms such as “promote” or “drive,” without specification.

For example, the country has committed to promoting access to public information based on an existing law, while technically aligning the different internal sectors of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MAyDS) to generate updated information. The plan also includes specific actions, such as making information on emissions and transfers of pollutants available online and promoting the participation of indigenous communities in environmental decision-making processes that may affect them.

Another country that is democratically promoting the implementation of the Escazú Agreement is Chile. The Escazú Agreement’s Participatory Implementation Plan distributes actions among responsible institutions, mainly ministries, with deadlines ranging from 2024 to 2030.

And while the plan includes similar broad goals, such as “establishing legislative, regulatory and/or administrative measures aimed at strengthening the Environmental Impact Assessment System,” it also outlines more concrete measures. Some of the most notable measures include developing educational, informative and didactic materials on the main contents of the agreement, as well as creating specific training programs for different target groups on the legal framework.

Vasquez confirmed that some countries are not ratifying the agreement for various reasons, including a lack of political will, economic and financial constraints, lobbying by mining and other economic interest groups, as well as economic inequality and social exclusion.

“The environmental agenda is not a priority for many governments, which indicates a lack of involvement of institutions and decision-makers in the ratification process, but also in its full implementation, as is the case in Costa Rica.”

Support for implementation

To increase the chances of advancing the implementation of the treaty, WECAN launched the “Escazú Agreement Toolkit for Women Land Defenders and Frontline Communities”, available to Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. Brazil is expected to have its own version in the fall of 2024.

The toolkits provide a comprehensive guide to each country’s laws and civil rights, both individually and collectively. They outline the violations and threats environmental defenders face in an accessible way and include lists of public institutions, NGOs, legal aid organizations, university legal services, and projects that address issues such as violence against women, with detailed contact information for each service.

Lake explained that the toolkits are designed to help women in different territories understand how to apply the Escazú Agreement within their unique contexts and how to effectively navigate the laws of their lands. This, she told FairPlanet, is one of many efforts to equip land defenders, particularly women in the Latin American region, with the tools to protect themselves as they advocate for their territories and communities.

Lake also noted that while the toolkits contain similar information, they are tailored to the specific sensitivities and characteristics of each country.

“We want these toolkits to become resources for how the Escazú Agreement can be implemented in relation to laws and policies that already exist in different countries, including whether a country has signed or ratified the agreement,” she said.

The importance of these initiatives is underscored by Patricia Gualinga, spokesperson for Mujeres Amazónicas Defensoras de la Selva and WECAN Steering Committee member for the Escazú Agreement. During the official launch of the toolkit, Gualinga, an indigenous woman from the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon, emphasized that her community defends their territories from extractive industries at great personal risk, especially for the women on the frontlines.

In an interview with FairPlanet, she stated that the Escazú Agreement “is an instrument in defense of human rights, but especially in defense of women defenders of nature and the Amazon rainforest.”

However, she stressed that “governments and companies continue to apply the same practices at the expense of rights.”

Regarding the role of women in the implementation of the Escazú Agreement, the leader of Sarayaku regrets that the voices of women are not being taken into account.

“I personally believe that indigenous women are not being heard and not being taken into account in the discussions about the agreement,” she said. “It is very important to take into account women from the area because they are the ones who suffer the most violence.

“The government must respect international laws and treaties, as well as court rulings. And when it comes to extractivism, it must respect the right to consent.”

Photo by Elianna Gill.