Indigenous peoples’ action in tribute to murdered and missing women ©Babawale Obayanju / Friends of the Earth Nigeria

Emergildo Criollo was born on the banks of the Aguarico River, in a vibrant Amazon where he learned to hunt, fish and drink clean water from streams. He grew up listening to the elders teach traditional medicine and the importance of honouring the ancestors of the A’i Cofán people. His childhood unfolded in harmony with the forest, and he imagined his life would always remain that way. 

Everything changed abruptly when he was just five years old, with the arrival of Texaco— now part of Chevron—in 1964. Helicopters, explosions and heavy machinery carving roads through the forest wreaked havoc. The rivers became contaminated, and it was no longer safe to drink their water. Animals disappeared. Families, including Emergildo’s, were forced to rely on outside foods, foreign to their culture. Pollution brought serious illnesses, which led to the deaths of several of his family members. All of this happened without prior consultation with the community, while their rights to water, health, territory, and culture were disregarded.

The Ecuadorian state protected the oil company by deploying the military, while the social and spiritual life of Emergildo’s people crumbled. Over time, the Cofán people began organising and resisting. Emergildo grew up amid this struggle and became actively involved. Through the years, he witnessed arbitrary detentions, state violence, intimidation and restrictions on the rights of those defending the forest. He continues today in the pursuit of justice.

What Emergildo’s story shows is that biodiversity destruction and human rights violations are not separate crises unfolding side by side. They are part of the same machinery. Corporations in oil like Chevron and Total, in mining like Vale and BHP Biliton, and in agribusiness like Unilever need access to land, water, forests, and subsoil wealth. Indigenous Peoples and local communities live in these territories. They have long-standing relationships with the ecosystems that sustain their livelihoods and cultures.

What corporations call “development” often begins with breaking that relationship. This rarely happens through meaningful consent. Again and again, companies overrule communities, manipulate consultation processes, pressure governments or simply move ahead without proper agreement. They arrive with promises: jobs, progress, compensation, sustainability. But when communities resist the destruction of their forests, rivers, coastlines or farmlands, the language of partnerships quickly fades out and intimidation begins. Community leaders are threatened, criminalised, jailed, legally harassed, assaulted, and many times killed. The attack on one is an attack on the whole community and their right to defend their territories.

Environmental defenders are killed at alarming rates: in 2023, one was killed every other day. But they are never only individuals. When a community leader is murdered, when land defenders are imprisoned, when women protecting water are threatened, the attack is really on the collective right of a people to defend their territory and the ecosystems on which their life depends. Corporations undermine the community’s capacity to resist which fractures collective defence and allows extraction to proceed.

That is why so much official rhetoric on biodiversity feels empty. There is no serious commitment to protecting nature if those who stand up for it are left unprotected. And there is little value in repeating that human rights matter for biodiversity, as international institutions often do, if they refuse to name the corporate and political forces driving both ecological destruction and the repression of peoples.

Corporations have become highly skilled at speaking the language of environmental protection and human rights while continuing business models that depend on dispossession and destruction. They publish sustainability reports, adopt zero-deforestation pledges, join voluntary initiatives, and present themselves as responsible partners in the transition to a greener future. They speak of due diligence, corporate social responsibility, Environmental Social Governance commitments, and respect for communities. But these are not tools of transformation; they only enable delay, distraction and impunity.

Voluntary corporate promises don’t alter the structures of power that drive biodiversity loss in the first place. A mining company may advertise reforestation while contaminating rivers. An oil corporation may publish a human rights policy while the people affected by its projects face intimidation, land loss, and criminalisation. The contradiction is not accidental: these commitments are designed to improve legitimacy without changing the underlying model.

That is why glossy commitments and technical frameworks are not enough. Without binding rules, liability and the protection of collective rights, corporate promises remain empty words. Global rules need to be established. After more than a decade of delay, the international legally binding instrument to regulate transnational corporations and other companies with respect to human rights should be concluded, approved and implemented. And the Biodiversity Convention cannot claim to care about the link between biodiversity loss and human rights without paying attention to what drives them both: the corporate greed of extractive industries.  

Emergildo Criollo’s story is unfortunately not unique. It is the story of countless communities whose lives have been upended by the unchecked power of corporations that prioritise profit over people and the planet. The destruction of nature and the attack on its defenders are two sides of the same coin. To break this cycle, we need binding rules that hold corporations accountable and protect those who stand on the frontlines. The time for empty promises is over; the time for justice is now.

Read more in our new report ‘Biodiversity and Human Rights’.

This blog was written by Nele Marien, Coordinator of the Forests and Biodiversity programme of Friends of the Earth International