At the April session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in New York, participants identified three urgent challenges: criminal risks linked to climate transition and conservation projects, rising threats to environmental defenders, and growing pressures on Indigenous and local communities to safeguard their territories. Discussions point to a shift in the landscape of environmental governance, security and development, with these areas becoming increasingly interconnected.

While the correlation between environmental crime and violations of Indigenous rights is well established, this year’s discussions centred on the crucial role of territorial authority. Key questions included who controls land and resources, how rights are recognized within state or private projects, and whether Indigenous communities can sustain their systems of life under growing criminal, commercial and political influence.

Indigenous territories at the centre of overlapping crises

Illicit economies, extractive industries, infrastructure development, conservation initiatives and climate transition efforts are putting strain on land, forests, rivers and mobility routes. These forces often overlap in the same areas, creating complex, layered risks for Indigenous communities. The issue goes beyond environmental crime. Fundamentally, Indigenous territories are undergoing sweeping transformation due to external forces, weak state protection and competing claims over land and resources. As a result, Indigenous communities often face the social, environmental and security consequences of projects and economies they cannot control.

These developments also encompass legal activities. At the UNPFII, concerns were raised that renewable energy, conservation and carbon-market initiatives might create new territorial demands, particularly where Indigenous consultation, participation and benefit-sharing are lacking. In this context, climate and development agendas are becoming central to broader debates on territorial governance.

Frameworks like the Escazú Agreement, the first binding environmental treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean, are essential, as they connect governance, public participation and the protection of environmental defenders. Nonetheless, recent discussions have shown that mining, conservation and climate-related projects continue to expand into Indigenous territories, with insufficient consultation, participation or benefit-sharing. This fuels tensions over land and governance that increasingly intersect with environmental and criminal dynamics.

Organized crime as a territorial governance challenge

Another issue that was repeatedly raised during the session was how organized crime in Indigenous territories often functions not only as illicit activity, but also as a form of territorial governance. Illegal mining and logging, drug trafficking and illicit financial flows form interconnected systems that rely on territorial control. This enables criminal actors to regulate the movement of people, wildlife and goods; restrict access to land and rivers; intimidate communities; undermine Indigenous governance structures; and, in some cases, shape social norms and everyday behaviour.

The problem is therefore not only illegal extraction or trafficking itself, but who exercises authority over territory when state protection is weak or not trusted. In some cases, state institutions are largely absent. In others, communities encounter the state only through security forces, legal systems or institutions seen to be aligned with commercial or extractive interests. Together, these conditions facilitate the expansion and entrenchment of criminal governance.

Several conversations, however, also stressed that Indigenous communities are not passive participants in these contexts. For instance, many Indigenous and local communities are actively engaged in territorial monitoring, using digital tools, establishing early warning mechanisms and reinforcing collective governance structures.

This aligns with evidence from ECO-SOLVE, an EU-funded programme that provides financial support to communities developing practical and innovative responses to environmental crime. In Brazil, assistance to the Munduruku, an Indigenous community in the Amazon, has included drone and satellite training for territorial monitoring against illegal mining, illicit soy production and unlawful land conversion. In Indonesia, particularly around the Natuna and Anambas islands, new sea guardian hubs have improved the detection and reporting of illegal fishing by Indigenous coastal communities to law enforcement.

Escalating and poorly addressed risks for Indigenous defenders

A recurring concern at this year’s forum was the growing risks faced by Indigenous defenders. Speakers noted threats such as surveillance, legal harassment, smear campaigns, criminalization, disappearances and killings, targeting those defending land, forests and natural resources. Participants emphasized that violence often escalates in stages. It may start with intimidation, reputational attacks, surveillance or legal coercion, before developing into direct physical assault. As a result, protection systems that respond only after attacks have occurred are largely ineffective.

Existing protection mechanisms are poorly adapted to Indigenous realities. Many are based on individual, urban or reactive models and fail to address threats from criminal actors, the private sector and, in some cases, state-linked interests. Protection systems must recognize collective protocols, support community-based early warning systems, provide legal help against criminalization and directly involve Indigenous authorities in the design of protection measures.

Previous work by the GI-TOC has demonstrated the link between violence against defenders and disputes over territory, extraction and criminal economies. The global campaign Faces of Assassination documented cases of environmental activists who were murdered after exposing illegal activities. The assassination of Berta Cáceres, a defender of the Indigenous Lenca people in Honduras, illustrates how corporate interests, corrupt power structures and environmental disputes can converge to put defenders at serious risk. According to international observers, Cáceres’s death occurred within a broader context of structural violence against Indigenous, territorial and environmental defenders in Honduras, a situation that persists to this day.

Reframing the response

Three priorities have emerged for future UNPFII discussions. First, climate transition policies need to be assessed in relation to criminal risks. Weak consultation, unequal benefit-sharing and poor governance in mining, conservation, carbon markets and renewable energy projects can worsen land conflict and create opportunities for coercion, corruption and criminal exploitation.

Second, protection systems must adapt to the realities of Indigenous defenders by moving away from individual, urban-based or reactive models. Effective approaches would reflect collective land defence, rural territories, gendered risks, criminalization and threats from criminal, private-sector and state-linked interests.

Third, Indigenous-led monitoring and governance systems need stronger recognition and support. Indigenous guards, early warning systems, territorial monitoring and community protocols should be treated as central to prevention and protection, rather than as informal or secondary measures.

The broader challenge is that organized crime in Indigenous territories can no longer be understood solely through a law enforcement lens. Addressing the issue must involve governance, territorial authority and the protection of Indigenous systems of life under overlapping environmental, criminal and political pressures.