Each week at least two people are being killed for taking a stand against environmental destruction. Some are shot by police during protests, others gunned down by hired assassins. As companies go in search of new land to exploit, increasingly people are paying the ultimate price for standing in their way.

This new report by major report by Global Witness shows that killings of human rights defenders protecting environmental and land rights increased sharply in the last decade due to the intensification of competition for natural resources. It calls on national governments and the international community to act urgently to protect the environment and the citizens who defend it.

A quarter of Liberia’s total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits, an investigation by Global Witness, Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) and Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) shows.

This report identifies risks associated with including sustainable forest management (SFM) within the scope of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). It describes how SFM has often become associated with destructive industrial-scale logging that fails to deliver development benefits, and is frequently a pre-cursor to the conversion of forests to other land uses.