A new report by the International Crisis Group finds that organized crime has become a “major obstacle” to protecting the Amazon. Criminal groups often operate across borders and are expanding control over huge swathes of land, which undermines state efforts to combat environmental crimes such as drug trafficking, deforestation and illegal mining.
“In Colombia, park rangers have been blocked from entering their own protected areas by non-state armed groups, leaving vast stretches of forest unmonitored and effectively undefended,” report author Bram Ebus, an International Crisis Group consultant and founder of Amazon Underworld, an investigative journalism project, told Mongabay via WhatsApp messages. “NGOs [non-governmental organizations], U.N. agencies and bodies belonging to the environment ministry have similarly been denied access to Amazon territories with troubling regularity, meaning that local development programs, reforestation initiatives and conservation efforts simply cannot be carried out.”
Ebus said this is not incidental and that armed groups deliberately keep communities at a distance from the state to maintain a governance vacuum that serves their economic and territorial interests.
The spread of organized crime has fueled rising violence and environmental damage across the Amazon including in Colombia’s Putumayo, Caquetá and Amazonas departments. The Comandos de la Frontera, a FARC dissident group that controls coca plantations and illegal mines, exerts control in those areas. Other criminal organizations operating across the Amazon, including in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru are also driving instability and environmental harm.
While criminals continue to expand their reach and coordinate with one another, the report says national governments are struggling to work together and pool sufficient resources and information to crack down on criminal activity. The report also identified a lack of coordination between state authorities and Indigenous communities, stemming from a history of mutual distrust, fear of criminal collusion, a lack of resources and logistical challenges.
Latin America has the highest homicide rate in the world, and the number of deaths across the Amazon is even higher, according to the report. Globally, two-thirds of environmental defenders killed are Indigenous, Afro-descendant and small-scale farmers.
“Indigenous guard groups are under enormous strain from organized crime,” Ebus said. “Members are typically volunteers, protecting natural assets that the state itself cannot or will not defend, often leaving their families without a primary provider during guard rounds that can last days or weeks at a time. Compounding this is the problem of corruption and complicity within local security forces.”
The report recommends that law enforcement agencies and Indigenous communities work together and combine local knowledge to confront illicit activity. It also advocates for improvements to cross-border collaboration and harmonized environmental laws.
In addition, international gold and commodity buyers have a responsibility to ensure that their supply chains are free from illegitimate products, the report notes.
Banner image: Dredge on the Purité River between Brazil and Colombia, bordering Amacayacu National Park. Credit: Amazon Regional Alliance for the Reduction of the Impacts of Gold Mining.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
