Brazil is at risk of losing control over its Amazon rainforest region to organized crime and traffickers, who use the region to smuggle illegal drugs, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge warned.

According to Reuters, Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso proposed that environmental experts, investors, and local authorities come together to discuss how to foster sustainable development that could preserve the Amazon rainforest.

The Amazon rainforest, the world's largest, provides a home and livelihood to the 25 million people who live there. Barroso told Reuters that there is a "real risk of losing the sovereignty of the Amazon" not just to any other country but to organized crime.

The Supreme Court justice added that Brazilian authorities will have to be very committed when it comes to facing environmental crimes such as illegal logging, deforestation, mining, land grabs, and the murder of defenders of the forest.

Barroso, who attended COP27 United Nations climate talks in Egypt last month, proposed a "bioeconomy" plan for the Amazon to stop the degradation of the region. 

Outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro has lambasted foreign environmentalists and non-governmental organizations for invading Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon.

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Brazil: Organized Crime Violence and Deforestation in Amazon

British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous rights defender Bruno Pereira were killed in June, exposing a web of crime involving drug trafficking, money laundering, and illegal fishing deep in the Amazon in Brazil. The organized criminal network has become responsible for increasing deforestation rates and soaring violence in the region.

A 2021 study from the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, in partnership with the Climate and Society Institute of Brazil and the University of the State of Para, revealed that national and transnational criminal networks caused much of the forest destruction in the Amazon.

The research also showed that drug trafficking is increasingly connected with environmental crimes in the Amazon. Drugs like cocaine and marijuana are being trafficked along the same forest routes as illegal gold and timber. They are then smuggled together to Europe and other overseas markets.

Aiala Colares, the research coordinator for the study, noted that the risk to life is real and that indigenous people are "being murdered," while the riverside people are "being enticed by drug traffickers."

According to the study, some of the most prominent criminal organizations in Brazil operating in the Amazon region include the First Capital Command of São Paulo and Red Command of Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil's New Administration to Amazon

Incoming President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has promised to reverse the environmental destruction and work towards zero deforestation by tackling crime in the Amazon. He also guaranteed the protection of indigenous rights.

Natalie Unterstell, president of the climate policy think tank Instituto Talanoa, said Lula will be facing the challenge of "how to be ambitious of climate issues" while being effective and meeting the promises he made. Unterstell added that Brazil's climate leadership will have to be re-established on the basis of "results, not just of talk."

Ilona Szabó of the Instituto Igarapé, a think tank focused on public and climate security, said deforestation is just the tip of the iceberg in the Amazon as there are many illicit economies and actors with a much higher level of organization, sophistication, and violence.

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This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

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