Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) are increasingly threatening the Brazilian Amazon, seriously contributing to deforestation through drug trafficking, gold mining, and logging. Their activities contaminate and degrade the environment and encourage violence, a recently released study indicated.
According to the third edition of Cartographies of Violence in the Amazon, by the Brazilian Public Security Forum, in partnership with the Mãe Crioula Institute, which studied data between 2021 and 2023, TCOs occupy more than 25 million hectares of public land and a third of the municipalities in the Brazilian Legal Amazon are under the influence of these criminal groups.
The Brazilian Amazon is made up of nine states, with 772 municipalities. In 260 of these, some criminal factions are present and in the remaining 176, TCOs have total control, the study indicated. The Red Command (CV) controls 130 municipalities, while the First Capital Command (PCC) call the shots in 28. The rest are under the control of other criminal groups.
According to the study, 59 percent of the population — 15.4 million people — live in areas under TCOs control. In all, 19 criminal factions, including Brazilians, Bolivians, Colombians, and Venezuelans, operate in the Amazon. This reality is reflected both in the percentage of violence and in the destruction of the forest. The Amazon’s rate of intentional violent deaths is 32.3 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, which is 41.5 percent higher than the Brazilian average, the study indicated based on 2023 data.
According to the Amazon Underworld report — a project by media outlets InfoAmazonia, Armando.Info, and La Liga Contra el Silencio — and nongovernmental organizations Amazon Watch and Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the Amazon’s climate crisis is part of a vicious cycle fed by criminal economies and illicit activities, which lead to environmental devastation, and in turn opens up more opportunities for criminal markets to expand.
“When we look, for example, at the Andean countries, the whole [criminal] economy, mainly the production of skunk [marijuana] and Erythroxylum [coca], which is the original plant source of cocaine, occupies quite vast areas,” Roberto Magno Reis Netto, an international relations expert who studies violence in the Amazon, told Diálogo. “So, large areas destined for agriculture are affected by these illicit species, and this obviously affects the biome.”
Other TCOs activities that contribute to the advance in deforestation, according to Netto, are the laboratories set up to process drugs in the middle of the forests and structures to transport it, such as landing strips.
Regional governments have been ramping up actions to fight environmental crime at the hand of TCOs, with several ambitious declarations committing to increase support for the fight against organized crime that drive illegal deforestation, gold mining, narcotrafficking, and other related illegal activities. Most recently, and perhaps one of the most important regional actions was the creation of the Amazon Center for International Police Cooperation (CCPI-Amazon), in Manaus. The CCPI-Amazon brings together the eight countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), as well as partners from the United States and the European Union and dozens of other countries.
Launched in 2024, “the CCPI-Amazon is a project coordinated by the Federal Police [PF], created to strengthen the fight against crime in the Amazon region,” the PF Press Office said in a statement. “Its aim is to promote cooperation and the exchange of information between national and international public security forces, with the main focus on combating environmental crimes and preserving biodiversity.”
In July 2024, the United States launched an initiative in partnership with the countries of the Amazon Basin, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Suriname, which seeks to target the proceeds of nature crimes, such as illegal logging and mining. The Amazon Region Initiative Against Illicit Financing seeks to harness the resources of regional partners to combat TCOs and their threats to local economies and the environment.
In Brazil, in late January 2025, Minister of Justice and Public Security Ricardo Lewandowski presented the results of PF’s actions in 2024, pointing to several advances such as an increase in drug seizures, a reduction in deforestation, and the strengthening of international cooperation to combat organized crime.
In 2024, the PF seized 74.5 tons of cocaine, 2.8 percent more than the amount seized in 2023. Across Brazil, there was a 30 percent drop in deforested areas, from 16,500 square kilometers in 2023 to 11,500 square kilometers. In all, 5,690 police investigations into environmental issues were opened.
Andrei Rodrigues, director-general of the PF, highlighted the PF’s commitment to expanding integrated action at the borders. “There have been more than 400 operations, more than 2,000 search and seizure warrants, several preventive and temporary arrests in all the border states where we operate. Many of these operations even involve international cooperation with neighboring countries,” he said.
In Colombia, the world’s leading cocaine producer, Operation Orion brought together institutions from 62 countries to combat drug trafficking and recently seized 1,400 tons of drugs, worth some $8.5 billion, during a 45-day operation, the Colombian Ministry of Defense said in a late November 2024 statement.
“These results… show us that synergy between international allies is indispensable to continue confronting transnational criminal networks,” Vice Admiral Juan Ricardo Rozo Obregón, commander of the Colombian Navy, said during a presentation of the results of the operation.
For Netto, to combat organized crime, drug trafficking, and environmental crimes in the Amazon, “national efforts are essential, but international cooperation is indispensable,” he concluded.
