When world leaders gather at the COP31 climate summit in Turkey on Wednesday, one urgent reality will demand attention: in many countries, defending land and the environment can put lives at risk.
The meeting comes as pressure mounts for governments and international bodies to give greater recognition—and stronger protections—to land and human rights defenders, many of whom face intimidation and violence.
Honduras, in Central America, is frequently cited as one of the most dangerous places to do that work. Journalists Kate Varley and cameraman Bram Verbeke travelled there to meet some of the people living with the consequences.
For Yoni Rivas, daily life has become a careful exercise in survival.
He keeps away from public spaces, rarely remains in one place for long, and moves around in a bulletproof vehicle because he says the threats against him are real.
Rivas has spent years defending farmers’ rights in Honduras—advocacy that he says has placed him in the crosshairs of repeated and credible death threats.
Yoni Rivas has faced multiple credible death threats
“It is no secret that there is a strategy to assassinate the leadership of the agrarian platform, especially me,” he tells us, speaking from what he describes as the relative safety of a cooperative farm in the north of the country.
“There are assessments that reflect a 90% risk of doing human rights defence.”
Rivas represents small-scale farmers and cooperatives in the Aguán Valley who say they have endured intimidation, violence, forced evictions and landgrabs carried out by criminal groups allegedly connected to powerful agribusiness interests.
Those dangers, campaigners say, are not abstract.
Since 2010, hundreds of farmers and human rights defenders are reported to have been killed amid the dispute, and advocates say most cases are never punished.
African palm oil has become a large-scale lucrative industry dominated by a few businesses
Global Witness, an international human rights organisation, says Honduras records the highest number of murders of land and environmental defenders per capita in the world.
Even with that backdrop, Rivas says he will keep pursuing justice through non-violent means.
“We know that on any day we could suffer a criminal attack,” he says. “However, love is stronger than fear.”
Impact of African palm expansion
Many of the disputes trace back to the rapid spread of a crop tied to products found in homes worldwide—from shampoo and chocolate to sliced pan.
That crop is African palm, which produces palm oil. In Honduras, it was once grown mainly by small-scale farmers alongside other crops across the fertile plains of the Aguán Valley,
Now, campaigners say, African palm oil production has shifted into a lucrative, industrial-scale business controlled by a small number of influential agribusiness companies and families.
As plantations expand, farmers and cooperatives in the region say they are being forced from land they have worked for generations.
They link the current crisis to changes made to Honduras’s agrarian law in 1992, which facilitated the transfer of thousands of acres from ‘campesino’ communities—made up of small-scale farmers—to large agro-industrial firms.
Agrarian groups argue that many of those transfers were illegal, and they say dispossession and evictions have continued ever since.
“It generates terror and fear for farmers at the national level,” Rivas says. “And it does not allow production to develop calmly in the field.”
For Wendy Castro, she says challenging that dispossession has exacted a heavy toll.
Castro coordinates the Agrarian Platform and is a member of the El Chile agricultural cooperative, whose farmers say land was unlawfully transferred to agribusiness interests in the 1990s.
Wendy Castro says farmers face threats from organised crime groups
“I have long denounced the forced displacement carried out by criminal groups against farmers. As a result, my brother was murdered, my sister was tortured and forced into exile, and my entire family was driven out of the community where they lived.”
“Yet we must continue to tell our story.”
“We conduct our protests and activities peacefully and legally,” Rivas says. “But we are under permanent attack by governments and also by the criminal structures that operate to protect the interests of the agro-industrial in this region of the Aguán.”
Major African Palm Oil producers in Honduras reject those allegations. Corporación Dinant, one of the country’s largest palm oil producers, said: “We categorically deny allegations of violence against any individual or community where we operate.
“Dinant is a constant victim of coordinated and deliberate efforts to spread false information about the company in an attempt to damage our reputation and gain ownership of land that is legally ours.”
Across Honduras, conflicts over land and natural resources are not limited to palm-growing areas.
In 2024, prominent environmental campaigner Juan López was shot dead after opposing an iron ore mine outside the city of Tocoa, a killing that sparked international attention and condemnation, including from the late Pope Francis.
Juan López was shot dead in 2024 for opposing an iron ore mine
Eight other activists were also imprisoned for more than two years in connection with protests against the same mining project. They said they feared it was contaminating two local rivers, the Río Guapinol and Río San Pedro. Although they were later acquitted, they say threats have not stopped.
“To continue fighting is to be aware that we cannot live without water,” one of the former detainees, José Cedillo says.”We will always keep fighting – for the whole community and even for those who criticize us. Going to prison wasn’t easy.It was a bit terrifying, but God gave us strength to go on.”
Another local campaigner, Javier Maradiaga, says he will keep protesting to defend rivers that have sustained nearby communities for centuries, even as the personal risks mount.
“My family has expressed to me that they wish me to leave the struggle. They fear that something may happen to me.”
“But we know that we should not surrender. We are committed to a just cause”.
Jose Cedillo and his wife Juan Zuniga
Inversiones Los Pinares, the company behind the iron oxide mine, has previously defended the project as a driver of economic development and employment.
The company did not respond to RTÉ’s request for a statement, but told the Guardian newspaper in 2020 that “Inversiones Los Pinares is a serious, responsible company that respects human and environmental rights, and complies with all laws, regulations and operating standards.”
As of November 2026, the company and some of its executives are facing legal proceedings over alleged environmental offences.
Legal system ‘weaponised against human rights defenders’
Campaigners say the climate for rural communities has grown even harsher over the past year.
In June, Honduras’s right-leaning government approved a contentious law it says is intended to safeguard investment in large-scale agriculture, energy developments and tourism.
Opponents argue it could deepen harm to rural communities by making it easier for authorities to remove families from land they have lived on and farmed for decades.
More than a thousand eviction notices have already been issued, according to the UN, with peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities reporting the biggest impact.
Read more: ‘The sea took everything’ – communities at the forefront of the climate crisis
The Honduran Government has previously said it is committed to resolving land conflicts through comprehensive and peaceful measures, though international organisations have questioned how fully those promises have been carried out.
“This is an example of how the legal system is weaponised against human rights defenders,” says George Redman, Country Director for Irish NGO Trócaire, which works with Honduran land rights organisations.
“They’re being evicted in many cases by big business, be it mining, hydroelectric power, African Palm. And with the complicity, and sometimes the support, of the government.”
“So they’re fighting just to remain in the place they call home – the place that gives them the food that they eat and the water they drink.”
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences.
