Whereas, around the world, environmental defenders—individuals exercising their human rights to try to peacefully protect an area or the natural resources of such area from negative environmental impact by an ongoing or proposed activity—face persecution from government, private sector, and criminal actors, including restrictions on free speech and assembly, criminalization, civil lawsuits, surveillance, harassment, verbal, cyber, and physical intimidation, sexual assault, and targeted murder; Whereas at least 1,733 environmental defenders have been reported killed since 2012, with at least 200 killed in 2021; Whereas at least 1,179 environmental defenders have been reported killed in Latin America and the Caribbean since 2012, making it the region with the highest number of environmental defender deaths and persecution overall, exemplified by the cases of— (1) Homero Gómez González, who was forcibly disappeared and found dead in Mexico with reported signs of torture after fighting to protect the wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly from illegal logging; (2) Bruno Pereira, an advocate for the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil’s Amazon, who received threats and was murdered for standing up to illegal logging, mining, and drug trafficking; (3) Berta Cáceres, a Lenca Indigenous woman, whose murder was ordered by the Honduran company, Desarrollos Energéticos SA, for organizing protests that led to the cancellation of the proposed Agua Zarca Dam; and (4) the Q’eqchi Mayan Indigenous community, which faces defamation, violent evictions, harassment, and assault by the Guatemalan National Civil Police Force for peacefully protesting the operations of the Fénix mine and growth of palm plantations on their territory