The world watches as corporations and governments add harmful gases, chemicals, and waste into the environment and dispose of the resources that help protect us from the effects of the gases. An example of this is deforestation, "the widespread cutting down of forests for the sake of commodities like fuel and building materials".
Indigenous communities use forests to carry out spiritual practices and traditional activities, and when the places they go to connect with their cultures disappear, it significantly impacts their cultural identity. For example, the indigenous group of the Yanomami live in the Amazon rainforest, but illegal groups of miners destroyed around 200 hectares of forest (approximately 200 football fields) in the first quarter of 2021 alone.
Indigenous peoples lose access to their traditional medical practices and are made more susceptible to the spread of disease as a result of the destruction of forests. Children in the Yanomami region suffer disproportionately high mortality due to various diseases including malaria and malnutrition; 570 children have died from preventable causes since 2018.
Every year, thousands of Indigenous activists and environment defenders face violence, criminalization, intimidation, attacks and murders. At least 196 environmental activists were murdered in 2023, and 43% of those murders were Indigenous people. While these groups collectively hold or manage at least half of the world's land under customary tenure systems, only 11.4% is legally owned by them.