What does Peru's 'anti-forest law' mean for the environment?

• Lawmakers forgive past deforestation; weaken protections
• Campaigners fear amnesty may encourage more landgrabs
• Indigenous groups and NGOs speak out against law changes

LIMA, Peru - Changes to a key forestry law in Peru are opening up its Amazon rainforest - the second largest expanse after Brazil - to more deforestation for agriculture and making it easier for illicit industries like logging and mining to prosper, researchers warn. 

Congress made changes to the Forest and Wildlife Law 31973 in December, which pardon all historical illegal deforestation of areas cleared for agriculture before January 2024 and undo any future legal constraints.

While Brazil and Colombia have dramatically cut their rates of deforestation, Peru lost 1,465 sq km (146,575 ha) of forest cover in 2022, an increase of 6% on the previous year, according to official figures.

What does the new "anti-forest law" - as critics have dubbed it - and other recent legal changes mean for Peru?

What are the latest major changes to environmental laws in Peru?

The new forestry law is "forgiving all the historical illegal deforestation in the country, independently of any of the conditions in which that happened, or connected crimes," said Julia Urrunaga, head of the Peru Programme for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

"It's a massive amnesty," she told Context in a phone interview.

"It's an incentive for more deforestation because the message that the government is sending is: 'You can come, you can deforest without respecting the laws and then eventually you will get an amnesty'. This is setting a horrible precedent," Urrunaga added. 

The law's modification suspends the "obligation to demand forest zoning as a requisite for the granting of enabling titles" which is supposed to benefit small farmers, giving them more stability in the agricultural sector, its backers say. 

In March, lawmakers revoked a decree that obliged illegal miners in the process of formalising their status to speed up their compliance or drop out.

A spokesperson for the environment ministry was not available to comment.

How do the legal changes affect different sectors, like logging and mining?

Critics say the legal changes prevent agribusinesses from being held accountable for any previous unlawful forest clearance. 

An EIA investigation 'Carving Up the Amazon' said that businesses linked to cacao and palm oil production would get an amnesty for abuses including illegal deforestation and acquiring illegally titled land.

The investigation says the changes also allow them to circumvent a new EU Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR, which comes into force in December and will ban the import of commodities resulting from any illegal deforestation (as well as legal deforestation post-2020).

Urrunaga said industrial-scale players such as Ocho Sur, which supplies palm oil to transnationals including Kellogg's, Nestlé, Colgate, Vandemoortele and LIPSA, would benefit from the law. Ocho Sur has denied allegations of illegal deforestation.

She added that other beneficiaries include religious groups such as Anabaptist Mennonites and the Israelite Mission of the New Covenant who have deforested swathes of land in the Amazon for their settlements and farms, according to satellite images from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, or MAAP.

Have there been any efforts to counter this?

The 'anti-forest law' has sparked an outcry among civil society groups, Indigenous people, NGOs, and farming federations who sent a letter in January to the Office of the United States Trade Representative and Peru's trade and tourism ministry.

A lawsuit challenging the move as unconstitutional was filed with Peru's highest court in April.

The US State Department's 2023 report on human rights practices in Peru said that while the country's "constitution recognized the right of Indigenous communities to own land communally, Indigenous groups often lacked legal title to demarcate the boundaries of their land". 

The new forest law modification also violates the terms of the U.S.-Peru Trade Agreement, which obliges both countries not to weaken environmental protections to encourage trade, critics say. 

Peru's umbrella federation of Indigenous Amazon people, AIDESEP, condemned the modification, saying it "represents a serious danger to indigenous peoples and will promote large-scale deforestation of the Amazon".

José Francisco Calí Tzay, the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, said in January that the changes could legitimize and incentivize the "dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their lands", around a third of whom had not been titled "leaving them without legal security and vulnerable against third parties". 

Alluding to lobbies linked to illegal mining, Cesar Ipenza, a lawyer and spokesperson for Peru's Illegal Mining Observatory, told local radio in Peru that "illegal mining has taken over many areas, including the Congress of the Republic". 

In April, the international gold price reached a new record high of more than $2,400 per oz. Recent years have seen illegal mining spread throughout the Amazon region. 

A 2023 study by Peru's National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy of Peru (SNMPE) said that illegal gold mining is responsible for about $6 billion in annual losses, some 2.5% of domestic GDP.

More than 30 Indigenous leaders have been killed in recent years for standing up to drug traffickers and illegal loggers and miners.

"Not only did the government not protect them when they were alive, nor the families of the victims but, in addition, it is legalising the illegal economies that violated their rights," said Urrunaga. 

(Reporting by Dan Collyns, Editing by Zoe Tabary)