The sentencing on Thursday of seven men accused of murdering the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres is only partial justice, but it should inspire anyone committed to ending the slaughter of land and nature defenders around the globe.

A court in Tegucigalpa handed down guilty verdicts on all but one of the eight accused, including two employees of the hydro-electric dam company that the indigenous Lenca woman had been campaigning against before her assassination on 2 March 2016.

The Goldman environmental prize winner was shot in her home by armed intruders along with Gustavo Castro, a Mexican environmentalist, who survived by pretending to be dead.

The judge ruled the murder was carried out by a gang of hitmen on the orders of executives of the Agua Zarca dam company Desa, who wereassassin. The Cáceres family’s lawyers were also barred from participating and their access to the evidence has been restricted.

The most senior executive implicated - Roberto David Castillo, who was executive president of Desa at the time of the killing, is still awaiting trial. He and Desa have denied any wrongdoing.

Senior politicians and powerful families who were involved in the construction of the dam have not been called to account. There has also been inadequate focus on the international financial institutions who initially refused Cáceres’s request to stop providing loans to a dam that was opposed by local people. Dutch bank FMO, Finnish finance company FinnFund and the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (Cabei) only pulled out after the murder.

Yet there has been progress of a sort. It