Using, or misusing, laws and the courts, governments and industries, intent on driving indigenous people or activists away, criminalize resistance or proclaim them to be “terrorists,” choking off their funding and tying them up in costly legal battles. The United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, was among 600 people the government of her home country, the Philippines, labeled terrorists.

Human Rights Watch called the action “a virtual government hit list” and noted that state security forces and pro-government militias in the Philippines had a long history of murdering people labeled terrorists or Communists.

Things are not looking much better for 2019. Though Brazil is no longer No. 1 in the number of people killed, the populist president installed in January, Jair Bolsonaro, has vowed to open previously protected indigenous lands to commercial development. The Times reported on Sunday that the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, which plays a crucial role in absorbing and storing carbon dioxide and thus slowing global warming, has dramatically accelerated under Mr. Bolsonaro, in large part because of deliberately lax enforcement of laws and regulations. Mr. Bolsonaro simply dismisses his own government’s data on deforestation as lies.

“The Amazon is ours, not yours,” he told a foreign journalist.

Mr. Duterte and Mr. Bolsonaro were two of the new breed of populist leaders Global Witness identified as contributing to worsening the plight of those who defend the land, through their disdain for the environment and hostility to dissenters.

Predictably, President Trump and his “energy dominance” agenda came in for their share of opprobrium.