Cop28: US commits to close coal-fired power plants – as it happened

Here are the key takeaways from the third day of Cop28:

Far from the suits and jargon of the climate summit – but still tightly linked – the fight for environmental justice continues in a very different form.

The authorities in Honduras have issued an arrest warrant for the alleged mastermind in the case of Berta Cáceres, the murdered Indigenous environmental leader, writes my colleague Nina Lakhani.

Cáceres was shot in her home by hired hitmen in March 2016 in retaliation for leading a grassroots campaign to stop construction of an internationally financed hydroelectric dam on a river considered sacred by the Lenca people. Cáceres was assassinated less than a year after being awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental defenders.

Latin America is the most dangerous region in the world for those defending rivers, land and other natural resources against corporate greed, pollution, and extractive industries like mining and energy projects. Honduras, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia are among the most deadly countries in Latin America, and Indigenous people in particular are on the frontlines of fighting environmental destruction and the climate crisis.

Earlier this week, Quinto Inuma Alvarado, an environmental defender and Indigenous leader, was shot dead by hooded men in response to his work defending his land from illegal logging and drug trafficking in the San Martín region of Peru. He had spent years working to achieve collective titling for his community, which would allow them to effectively protect their land and forests of the Peruvian Amazon.

Indigenous environmental defenders like Caceres and Quinto risk their lives to protect the environment and address the climate crisis, yet they lack “adequate protection and are excluded from decision making”, according to a Global Witness report from 2022.

Indigenous delegates at Cop often struggle to get a seat at the negotiating table, and have long complained that their traditional knowledge and sustainable solutions are not taken seriously.

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