Unidentified gunmen fired shots into the home of Peruvian environmental and indigenous rights activist Maxima Acuna while she was abroad in San Francisco to receive the Goldman Prize for resisting strong and often violent and deadly corporate and government pressure to defend the environment.

Ms. Acuna is a subsistence farmer in Cajamarca Highlands, where the neo-liberal government has turned over half of the land to the US mining giant Newmont for an open-pit gold and copper mine.  But her refusal to budge has effectively halted the US$4.8 project.  She believes the gunfire is an attempt to intimidate her and her family.

"Up until today I find myself threatened, the companies has not calmed down," Ms. Acuna told Peruvian television.  "Since 2011, I have been struggling against Newmont, and they have only come to mistreat me, beat me, my life is threatened."

Violence and intimidation against activists is widespread in infuriatingly common.  One of Maxima Acuna's fellow Goldman Prize recipients, Ouch Leng, says he expects to be killed by the Cambodian government for his efforts to stop illegal logging.  Leng's fellow activist Phon Sopheak remains in hospital after being attacked on 26 March by illegal loggers with axes during a patrol of the forest.  And earlier in March, 2015 Goldman Prize laureate Berta Caceres was murdered in her home by gunman.  She was standing in the way of a major dam project that will destroy indigenous peoples' land in Honduras.

Last weekend, world leaders gathered at the United Nations in New York to sign on to the Paris Climate accord, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 C Degrees over pre-industrial levels.  The goal will be more easily realized if forests in Asia, Africa, and South America are protected, as damaged forests are allowed to grow back.  The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) says that properly managing the forests will give developed nations an extra decade or more to phase out harmful fossils fuels that cause man-made global warming.  And that means working with the people of the forests.

"If we want to protect the world's forests, we must safeguard the rights of the indigenous peoples and forest communities who have sustainably managed their forests for generations," said the administrator of the UN Development Program, Helen Clark.  "Clarifying local land rights and tenure security will be a crucial determinant of success for the new global frameworks on climate change and sustainable development," she added.