Awarforour future

• Published date: 18 June 2022

Bravery takes many forms, but this is a new one — a tower made from chainsaws

Given the danger inherent in a motorised cutting machine, it might be expected that the bravery involved was in the stacking.

But not in documentary maker Karl Malakunas’ film Delikado. In his film, the danger is people with guns.

The tower stands in the front yard of an NGO office run by charismatic Filipino lawyer and environmental activist Bobby Chan, and as high as it is, it represents just a fraction of the machinery he has confiscated in an effort to protect the rainforests on Palawan, in the Philippines.

When the documentary was made he had about 700, their long chain-bars blunted, among other trophies, including boats and trucks. He and his fellow Palawan NGO Network Inc (PNNI) land defenders confiscate the equipment from illegal loggers and fishers in an effort to preserve the island’s still relatively untouched environment, and in so doing put themselves in the sights.

‘‘There has been a long history of environmental campaigners being killed in Palawan, as in the rest of the Philippines,’’ Malakunas, an Australian documentary maker and journalist, says over the phone during a visit to his home country. ‘‘The Philippines is one of the deadliest countries in the world to be a land defender, environmental campaigner — but also a journalist, human rights activist, or even a member of the judiciary — anyone who stands up to authority faces death threats.’’

The PNNI has faced more than death threats. It has had 13 of its people murdered going back over a decade. And that’s just one organisation, in one part of the Philippines.

Globally, campaigning organisation Global Witness has recorded more than four killings of land defenders on average every week since the 2015 Paris climate accords.

That dreadful reality made headlines this past week, by a familiar path, the fact of a Westerner appearing to have become caught up in the slaughter.

British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira are missing in the Amazon, evidence pointing to their probable murders, where they were researching a book on how to save the rainforests there.

Malakunas too has experienced the risks confronting journalists doing his sort of work, but brushes it off in comparison with the dangers faced by local activists.

The Australian stumbled across the life and death struggle playing out in a part of Southeast Asia best known as a burgeoning ecotourism destination, while Agence...