With the announcement by the US of a new initiative to counter the illicit financing of environment crime in the Amazon, there are signs the issue is finally an international priority. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen launched the Amazon Regional Initiative Against Illicit Finance last month with the stated aim of boosting training, cooperation, and information sharing to help authorities pursue money-laundering investigations against transnational criminal organizations. The US is poised to step-up the fight against the world’s third most profitable category of organized crime.
Nature crimes include a cluster of activities that enable illegal deforestation, degradation and biodiversity loss. Among the most common are land grabbing, illegal logging, illicit mining and irregular agriculture and ranching – all of which are prolific across the 6 million km² Amazon basin. As noted in the US’s latest strategy on fighting terrorist and other financing, nature crimes are perpetrated by a bewildering array of actors, from organized crime groups, drug cartels, and corrupt land brokers to legitimate companies in the agriculture and cattle sector and large, medium and small-scale landowners.
Nature crimes are part of a wider ecosystem of criminality affecting the eight countries sharing the Amazon rainforest. Alongside illicit timber extraction, illegal gold mining, poaching, and wildlife trafficking are other criminal practices such as targeted assassinations, harassment and intimidation, extortion, fraud, and tax evasion, money laundering, and corruption. The interconnectedness of nature crime with these other illegal activities make the former particularly hard to police and prosecute, especially when committed by hardened criminal syndicates that operate across borders.
One of the reasons why the US is stepping-up efforts to disrupt illicit financial flows related to nature crime in the Amazon is precisely because of the increasing involvement of transnational organized crime. Cartels, gangs, and militia from Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and other countries are increasingly involved in laundering profits from the drug trade into “legitimate” businesses in the Amazon. Many of them operate across borders, including so-called triple frontier regions in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela. Some of these “forest mafia” are fueling “narco-deforestation” through illegal land acquisition, mineral extraction, and poaching.
The latest initiative announced by the US builds on the growing determination of several Amazon basin countries and western partners to “follow the money” rather than simply throwing more police and military assets at the problem. Groups such as the UN Office for Drugs and Crime and the Igarape Institute are already training law enforcement agencies and financial crimes units of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru to improve evidence collection and operational responses to crimes involving the environment.
While several types of environmental crime can be curbed by financial penalties and sanctions on legal and illegal groups involved in criminal activities, the effectiveness of such measures depends on the quality of enforcement. This is a challenge in the Amazon Basin where security and justice institutions are weak and many actors involved in committing nature crime go unpunished, much less pay fines when they are prosecuted. Owing to deeply entrenched corruption and informality, there are often strong political and economic disincentives to take action at the local level.
The scaling-up of counter-money laundering efforts related to nature crime also depends heavily on smooth transnational cooperation. Yet cross-border cooperation is in frustratingly short supply across Latin America, especially among Amazon basin countries where political spats are routine. Ideological tensions and mistrust routinely hamper regional efforts to fight environmental crime, even where there are clear converging interests.
More positively, there appears to be growing agreement on the shared threats posed by nature crime across the region, particularly in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. In the wake of the 2019 Leticia Pact,leaders from all Amazon countries signed a Belem Declaration in 2023 which described environment crimes as a threat to climate and environmental priorities, as well as governance and sustainable development. There is a marked shift in tone and a sense of urgency. The US announcement to target money laundering and transnational criminal organizations is not coincidental.
At the regional level, governments appear determined to strengthen the fledgling Amazon Treaty Cooperation Organization(ACTO), though this is a slow moving process. Brazil also launched an international police center (the CCPI- Amazon) in early 2024 to foment cooperation, including on financial crimes. Alongside the US commitment,ad hoccoalitions have emerged to expand police and prosecutorial cooperation, including to counter financial crimes and money laundering with support from the EU, Interpol and Europol.
Notwithstanding growing determination to fight nature crime, US-led sanctions and technical support to the region’s police forces are only part of the solution. Drug cartels, major companies, large landholders, and corrupt government agents involved in nature crime are the most likely targets of anti-financial crime units. However, lower level crime groups, small firms and land owners, and landless people involved in illegal deforestation and degradation are not going to be dissuaded. Comprehensive responses are needed, including strategies to strengthen the rule of law and offer meaningful economic alternatives to slow extractivist activities.
Law enforcement agencies across the Amazon basin face multiple obstacles to preventing and reducing nature crimes, including tackling the complex illicit financial networks and practices that enable them. A persistent challenge facing all countries is the deficit in technical expertise: there is a chronic shortage of experts in anti-money laundering and illicit financial flows. While they have some experience in disrupting money laundering related to drug proceeds, most police agencies and criminal justice institutions have limited expertise in countering money laundering related specifically to natural assets.
Another challenge facing law enforcement relates to the patchwork of money laundering norms and laws across the region. The definition of offenses varies from place to place. A key priority, then, involves harmonizing money laundering legislation and policies across jurisdictions. Without minimum alignment of laws, procedures, and standards between countries, police are simply unable to pursue cases across borders. This applies not just to countries in the Amazon basin, but also the US and EU.
There are other obstacles to disrupting illicit finance networks driving nature crime. For example, many of the actors involved in financing it are not based in the Amazon.
Ultimately, the most significant impediments to disrupting illegal financial flows connected to nature crime are political and economic. Specifically, elected politicians and civil servants may directly and indirectly benefit from nature crimes such as logging, mining, and poaching and have limited incentive to cooperate with police and criminal justice authorities. Likewise, large numbers of local businesses and residents are often heavily dependent on illegal and informal practices linked to nature crimes linked to forestry, mining, and agricultural and livestock rearing, presenting a challenge for law enforcement and prosecutors.
Dr Melina Risso, Director of Research at the Igarapé Institute, contributed to this article.