State weakness could hamper US bid to stem Amazon organised crime

• Nature crimes in Amazon rainforest on the rise
• Cooperation needed to halt multi-billion dollar profits
• Organised crime behind illegal logging and mining in

BOGOTA/RIO DE JANEIRO - A new U.S.-backed initiative to disrupt illicit financial flows from nature crimes such as illegal logging and mining in the Amazon rainforest has been welcomed by security experts, but the effort could be hampered by lawlessness and state weakness.

Launched by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in July, the plan is to boost cooperation in South America to tackle an illicit industry worth billions of dollars that is leaving a trail of destruction in the Amazon rainforest.

Organised crime gangs launder money through land speculation, seizing land either by force or threats, and through illegal mining, logging, fishing and poaching.

Such activities endanger the world's largest tropical rainforest, one of its most critical and fragile ecosystems. Indigenous peoples also rely on the forest for their survival.

But "cross-border cooperation is in short supply," said security expert Robert Muggah, and that hampers efforts to curb crime in the Amazon.

The latest U.S.-led effort is just one of a series of regional initiatives launched to protect the Amazon in recent years, but excludes the Amazon basin countries Bolivia and Venezuela due to political differences with the United States.

"Ideological tensions and mistrust routinely hamper regional efforts, even where there are clear converging interests,"     said Muggah, co-founder of Brazil-based think tank Igarape Institute.

"This helps explain why grand declarations and bold strategies to fight nature crime tend to generate underwhelming results," he said.

Environmental crimes, meaning illegal exploitation of natural resources, are a growing source of financing for organised crime groups generating hundreds of billions of dollars a year, experts said.

They estimate that illegal gold mining in nine Latin American countries alone is worth about $7 billion each year.

Protecting the Amazon is vital to curbing climate change because of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving global warming, trees absorb and store.

Rainforest conservation is more urgent as scientists say climate change, deforestation, fires and other human impacts are pushing the Amazon to a "tipping point" that threatens to alter the forest irreparably.

The Amazon Region Initiative Against Illicit Finance aims to boost cooperation among five out of the nine countries in the Amazon basin - Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname - plus the United States.

As part of the initiative, the U.S. government will organise "follow-the-money" training sessions for finance ministries and law enforcement agencies to trace proceeds from nature crimes, and help "break down barriers" between national authorities.

The U.S. government and Brazil will convene a regional meeting to set priorities.

President Joe Biden's administration has pledged to provide $500 million in funding by 2028 to protect the rainforest and promote sustainable development through Brazil's Amazon Fund.

Among projects supported by $1.8 million from the fund is a new international police cooperation centre in the Brazilian city of Manaus to crack down on illegal logging and mining, and other nature crimes.

"It builds on the growing determination of several Amazon basin countries to 'follow the money' rather than simply throwing more police and military assets at the problem," said Muggah.

Dirty money

As the United States is the world's largest illicit drug market, and a key destination for illegal timber and gold from the Amazon, joint efforts can play an important role in tackling complex nature crimes, said Vanessa Grazziottin, who heads the Brazil-based The Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, an intergovernmental body of eight Amazon nations.

"Environmental crimes are increasingly connected to others, such as drugs and arms trafficking," Grazziottin said.

In Brazil, criminal groups often use existing drug routes to get illegally extracted gold and wood to market.

The latest effort could cut criminal groups off from the dollar-based financial system.

"When it comes to environmental crimes in the Amazon, the U.S. is a destination country for both illegally sourced products and the dirty money associated with them," said Julia Yansura, programme director for illicit finance and environmental crime at The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, an international alliance of organisations combating illicit finance.

"It's time for the U.S. to change this dynamic, and the Amazon Region Initiative is a major step in the right direction," she said.

In Brazil, which has the largest share of the Amazon, high gold prices have encouraged criminal groups to expand into illegal mining, said Nivio Nascimento, former head of the United Nation's Unit of Public Safety and Crime Prevention in Brazil.

Challenges

The challenge is that the Amazon is a vast, remote and often lawless region, in which criminal groups flourish.

"In a significant part of the Amazon basin, the presence of the state is weak," said Mercedes Bustamante, a professor at the University of Brasilia and member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, an international panel of experts.

That weakness allows land grabs that drive deforestation to make way for agriculture and cattle ranching.

"The land market in Amazonian countries is part of an entire ecosystem of illegalities surrounding the appropriation and transformation of public land into private land," Bustamante said.

In the rainforests of Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia the nature crime of "narco-deforestation" is also on the rise.

Traffickers use drug profits to buy forest land that is then turned into cattle pasture, experts say.

Criminals involved in nature crimes can face financial penalties and prosecution, but the effectiveness of such measures depends on the quality of enforcement, said Muggah.

Most police agencies and judicial institutions in Amazon basin countries "have limited expertise" in combating money laundering related to environmental crimes, Muggah said.

This combined with a patchwork of different money laundering laws across the region makes punishing criminals difficult.

"This is a challenge in the Amazon Basin where most actors involved in nature crime go unpunished, much less pay fines when they are prosecuted," he said.

(Reporting by Anastasia Moloney in Bogota and Andre Fabio Cabette in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Jon Hemming.)