The threat to global climate goals from organised crime in the Amazon

Irene Mia & Juan Pablo Bickel

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Despite momentum in South America to address climate threats caused by insecurity in the Amazon rainforest, the issue receives little attention outside the region.

Given the accelerating climate crisis and the interest of world leaders in keeping global warming on a path compatible with the Paris Agreement goals, the theme of protecting the Amazon rainforest from deforestation is set to feature prominently at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28. The summit began in Dubai on 30 November and participants are focused on the implementation of past climate-finance pledges, notably those intended to benefit developing countries that are at risk from climate change or potentially able to affect its future trajectory. In South America, many pledges relate to initiatives to protect the Amazon rainforest. In this case, however, security issues are arguably just as important as climate finance.

Criminal economies are a major and growing contributor to deforestation, and because they are transnational, they cannot be countered effectively by countries acting alone. Regional leaders are increasingly aware of this point, as highlighted during the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization’s (ACTO) summit in August 2023. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said in his summit speech that regional countries should create an Amazon NATO to protect the rainforest, while the Belém Declaration described new commitments on related police, judicial and intelligence cooperation. Global awareness of the issue is lagging, however, limiting the extent to which international expertise and financial support have been brought to bear on the problem.

Criminal economies and deforestationSecurity conditions in the Amazon region have been worsening due to the prevalence and strength of non-state armed groups and the weakness of traditional governance, particularly law enforcement and under-guarded and porous national borders. The homicide rate in the Amazonian states of northern Brazil increased by 260% from 1980 to 2019, and in 2020 the rate in these states’ urban areas was 10 percentage points higher than the national average. This is in part because drug-trafficking organisations have developed new export routes transiting the Amazon River basin. Roughly 40% of all cocaine produced in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia now flows into Brazil, either to satisfy domestic demand or to be trafficked onwards to Europe, Africa and Asia.

Criminal groups in the Amazon profit from drug trafficking and engage in wide-ranging activities to launder money and exploit the territories they control. Some of these activities cause serious damage to the rainforest and its biodiversity, sometimes called ‘narco-deforestation’, and include logging, land grabbing and clearing, and illegal mining and agriculture (including cattle ranching). Moreover, the region is among the poorest in South America, and the scarcity of opportunities in the legal economy encourages people to join criminal economies.

New regional momentumGiven the transnational nature of the Amazon rainforest, the countries in the region have long appreciated the need for regional approaches and coordinated actions. In 1978, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela signed the Amazon Cooperation Treaty, which led to the creation in 2002 of the related intergovernmental treaty organisation supporting the sustainable development of the Amazon region. The 2019 Leticia Pact for the Amazon, signed by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname, aimed to identify multilateral solutions to deforestation, in part by addressing environmental crimes. But political differences and a degree of distrust between regional leaders, along with the limited state presence in the Amazonian parts of all the signatory countries, have undermined progress towards effective cross-border cooperation and coordination.

Calls to environmental action have grown louder in 2023. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to office and has assumed an international leadership role on climate change, in broad alignment with the leaders of the other Amazonian countries (including Venezuela) on this issue and others. Attendees at the ACTO summit in August – the first such event after a 14-year hiatus – attempted to draw up common environmental policies and a regional agenda to protect the rainforest. Although the process did not produce specific commitments on ending deforestation by 2030 and halting oil production in the Amazon, as many had hoped, it affirmed the importance of regional diplomacy. It also highlighted environmental crime as a key challenge to protecting the rainforest, and the importance of international cooperation on the issue. While Petro’s idea of an Amazon NATO does not appear to have been discussed seriously, the participants did agree to create a coordination centre in Manaus, Brazil, for police officers from all eight Amazonian countries. The centre will serve as a base for collectively fighting environmental crime and drug trafficking. Expected to open by the end of 2024, the centre will also support counter-narcotics efforts by European Union member states and the United States, which are the main destinations for illegal goods exported from the Amazon, possibly including collaboration with Interpol, Europol and Ameripol.

Getting on the agendaDespite new regional momentum in addressing climate threats caused by insecurity in the Amazon region, the issue receives little attention outside South America. For example, the COP28 agenda makes scant reference to security issues in the Amazon. Regional strategies to address Amazon deforestation would be more effective if they operated with global support and coordination, matching the global scope of the international criminal supply chains cutting through the rainforest. These supply chains stretch to destination markets across the world and are enabled by governance problems and illicit financial flows transnationally; they could be curtailed through better international coordination and information exchanges.

Global support could better equip the Amazonian countries with the resources needed to reinforce existing institutions and crime-fighting capabilities, and to create new sustainable-development opportunities as alternatives to criminal economies. Funding recently granted by the internationally backed Amazon Fund for a security project against deforestation and environmental crimes, the first such project supported by the organisation, could provide a blueprint for future efforts.