Environmental Defenders

Join Dr. Mary Menton and Dr. Philippe Le Billon as they dive into their new edited volume,Environmental Defenders: Deadly Struggle for Life and Territory,published by Routledge as a part of their Explorations in Environmental Studies Series in 2021. The interview explores what/who defenders are, what threats they face, and what can be done to help support and protect them. Broken up into three parts: On Defenders, Dirty Projects, Green Projects,Environmental Defenders提供了洞察的挑战和职责onsibilities defenders assume through firsthand accounts and global perspectives. The accounts highlight the diversity of defender and the collective character of their struggles. It identifies how power struggles take place in various forms of violence on a daily basis. Recognizing the visible and invisible forms of violence allows the reader to understand the complex emotional and gendered dimensions embedded in environmental contests. While successfully documenting local communities, the twenty-two chapters also seek to explain the roles that corporations, NGOs, BINGOs, national, and international authorities play within the defender narrative by breaking down their complicated relationships with defenders. Finally,Environmental Defendersillustrates how assumptions derived from Global North knowledges, developmental infrastructures, and economies, while helpful and supportive in some cases, also undermine, appropriate, and/or delegitimize forms of indigenous knowledge, cultures, communities, and environments.