When Corruption Kills: Extractives and Environmental Destruction in Western Honduras

Honduras is among the most dangerous places in the world to defend the land and natural resources. At least 23 environmental leaders were killed in 2023 and 2024 alone, making it the deadliest country for eco-defenders in Central America and the fourth-most lethal globally. Countless others faced criminalization, targeted threats, and constant harassment at the hands of organized crime groups, private companies, and government actors for their opposition to a range of projects that threaten the country’s natural resources.

At the center of this violence are corrupt networks made up of business, government, and criminal actors that stand to benefit from extractive projects that exploit Honduras’ natural resources. The extractives industry can be defined as the “people, companies, and activities involved in removing [raw materials] from the ground.” For the purposes of this investigation, this not only includes fossil fuels and precious minerals, but also work related to renewable energy projects like hydroelectric dams, illegal road construction, and residential development plans.

This report aims to highlight the corrupt elite networks operating in the extractives industry in western Honduras and describe how these forces accelerate environmental destruction and violence against environmental defenders and others. Specifically, it analyzes several cases in which corrupt-criminal blocs led by local politicians backed extractive projects that negatively impacted the environment and placed land activists at risk.

The findings are based on one year of desktop and field research across the western departments of Copán, Lempira, Ocotepeque, and Santa Bárbara, where extractive projects are prominent. It includes more than 150 in-person and remote interviews with anti-corruption activists, Indigenous leaders, environmental defenders, prosecutors, security experts, government officials, religious leaders, and criminal actors, among others. In addition, we analyzed government data on environmental crimes, judicial cases, state and private contracts, permit and property records, media reports, and previous studies on the topic.