Garífuna lands seized for palm oil ahead of COP30
Despite holding ancestral land titles for over a century, Honduras’ Garífuna community faces displacement, violence, and environmental destruction fueled by corporate palm oil expansion
Berlin – As world leaders prepare for COP30, Transparency International highlights Honduras’ Garífuna community of Cristales and Río Negro, where corruption and corporate capture fuel palm oil expansion, land grabbing, and violence. Despite holding land titles for over a century, the community faces displacement and intimidation with impunity, showing what’s at stake when governance fails.
An investigation by Revistazo, the independent media outlet of Transparency International’s chapter in Honduras, Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ), reveals how corruption and weak rule of law have enabled companies to seize communal lands in climate-vulnerable regions governed by the Garífuna. It includes first-hand testimonies from residents who describe violence, dried riverbeds, and the erosion of ancestral land rights, to fund an expanding palm oil industry.
Despite the threats, the Garífuna of Cristales and Río Negro have continued resisting this unlawful attempted land seizure, holding the front line against climate corruption in Honduras. Community leaders have met with senior members of the national government to address the issue, with limited success.
Transparency International calls this case a clear and urgent reminder for the need for inclusive climate governance, one that protects Indigenous rights and ensures corporate accountability in global supply chains. Its latest global paper shows this is not an isolated case but an example of how corruption enables attacks on environmental defenders and related impunity.
Brice Böhmer, Climate and Environment Lead at Transparency International said:
“When it comes to attacks on environmental defenders, corruption is the glue that holds a vicious circle together. It is corruption that enables destructive activities in the first place, facilitates retaliation against those who resist them, and finally ensures impunity for the perpetrators”.
Transparency International welcomes two initiatives announced by the COP30 Presidency: the People's Circle and the Global Ethical Stocktake.
The People’s Circle gives citizens a direct platform to voice their perspectives and priorities on climate action, ensuring that policy-making is both inclusive and representative of diverse communities. The Global Ethical Stocktake aims at putting an ethical lens on climate commitments and equity standards, to strengthen accountability and transparency in global climate action.
Transparency International urges COP30 outcomes, especially the Action Agenda and Just Transition Work Programme, to ensure meaningful participation and protection of frontline and Indigenous communities like the Garífuna in Honduras.
Notes to editors:
The full investigation (in Spanish) can be read here: CRISTALES AND RÍO NEGROThe land grabbing for palm oil threatens the existence of a Garifuna community - Revistazo
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