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Written Question
Latin America: Environment Protection
Wednesday 27th October 2021

Asked by: Lord Mountevans (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the challenges faced by environmental defenders in (1) Colombia, and (2) other Latin American countries; and what guidance is available to British companies involved in sensitive sectors, such as mining.

Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

The British Government remain committed to delivering a broad human rights agenda across Latin America. Our programming across the region has included projects to strengthen democracy, protect civil society space by fostering freedom of expression and build capacity for local human rights defenders, which includes environmental activists.

As set out in the FCDO Annual Human Rights Report, we expect British businesses to respect local and international law wherever they operate. The UK was the first country to create a National Action Plan to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This plan sets out what is expected of the conduct of UK businesses, including compliance with relevant laws and respect for human rights; treating the risk of causing human rights abuses as a legal compliance issue; adopting appropriate due diligence policies; and consulting those who could potentially be affected.

We remain concerned about the persistent level of violence and threats towards environmental defenders in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America and we regularly raise human rights issues with the Colombian Government and in multilateral fora. Most recently, the UK's Minister for the Environment, Lord Goldsmith, visited Colombia and raised our concerns around violence and threats toward environmental defenders on 5-8 October and discussed ways in which the UK can support the Colombian Government’s efforts to tackle that violence.