In 2025, environmental crimes spread into corners of the Amazon Basin that had so far largely escaped the rampant plunder of the forest and its inhabitants by criminal networks and regional elites over the past decade.
New illegal gold mining fronts were established in southern Ecuador’s Amazon and along the Puré River, on the border between Colombia and Brazil. Others multiplied throughout Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela during 2025, driven by record-high prices for the precious metal. This illegal mining is part of an ecosystem of illicit economies that includes land grabbing, planting illicit crops, illegal logging, and forest clearing for agricultural purposes. These criminal activities are driving deforestation and biodiversity loss in the region, eroding the Amazon’s role as a carbon sink and pushing it toward a point of no return.
Despite the central role of illicit economies in the climate crisis, a decade ago they barely registered on authorities’ radars and were not included on the list of urgent challenges related to climate change. At the United Nations COP30 climate conference, held in November 2025 in Belém, Brazil, the final declaration did not set out a clear roadmap to curb deforestation or address its drivers, including organized crime.
But over the past decade, organized crime has played an increasingly central role in the climate crisis facing the Amazon, and addressing it must be a priority.
Illegal Gold Mining
The boom in illegal gold mining in the Amazon Basin over the past decade has been fueled by rising international demand and record prices for the precious metal. Between 2015 and late-2025, the price of an ounce of gold rose 280% from $1,060 to $4,030.
To date, illegal mining has affected dozens of protected areas and Indigenous territories across the Amazon Basin, according to data from Amazon Conservation, and has spread across more than 4,000 illegal sites in the Amazon — though the real figure is believed to be higher. In Ecuador, mining areas have also expanded rapidly. In Napo province, in the center of the country, mining areas grew from fewer than 50 hectares to over 1,300 between 2007 and 2023. And in Podocarpus National Park to the south, the number of hectares affected by mining activity jumped 127% between 2023 and 2024.
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This growth has left a deep mark on the Amazon Basin. Between 2018 and 2024, mining caused the loss of more than 2 million hectares of forest, and one-third of this deforestation occurred in Indigenous territories and protected areas. Mining uses extensive quantities of mercury to separate gold from sediment, contaminating water sources and soil and, consequently, local communities.
Deforestation Driven by Coca Crops
Amid a global boom in cocaine production and demand, illicit crops are multiplying across the Amazon Basin and contributing to forest loss, especially in national parks and protected areas in Colombia and Peru.
In Colombia’s Amazon departments, coca crops increased 65% from 39,069 hectares in 2015 to 64,562 hectares in 2023, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The vast majority of coca plantations are concentrated in the department of Putumayo and in protected areas, including national parks, protected areas for Afrocolombian, Indigenous and campesino communities, and “segunda ley” forest reserves, or areas originally designed for conservation.
Meanwhile, in Peru, coca crops have expanded beyond the country’s traditional coca epicenter — the Apurímac, Ene, and Mantaro River Valley (VRAEM) — and are moving deeper into the Amazon. While in 2015 the VRAEM recorded 18,333 hectares and the rest of the country 21,967, in 2024 the VRAEM registered 36,345 hectares and the rest of Peru 53,110.
Alarmingly, over the past decade, drug trafficking has been closely linked to other environmental crimes in the region rather than operating in isolation. Criminal networks often use timber shipments to hide cocaine, share trafficking routes, or rely on drug trafficking profits to open more illegal mining sites, build illegal roads, and traffic land.
The Orchestrators of Environmental Crimes
Countless criminal actors have entrenched themselves in the Amazon’s tri-border areas between Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Brazil over the past decade. They have taken advantage of the profound institutional fragility throughout the region to consolidate their territorial control, often through violence, corruption, the provisiono of services, and the co-optation of institutions, to establish a form of criminal governance.
This criminal governance can compete or coexist with state institutions, enforcing social norms and controlling territory with devastating effects on the Amazon and its inhabitants. When a community is forced to abide by rules imposed by criminal groups or live under constant threats, the very idea of rights is left in limbo.
These criminal organizations are rapidly expanding into new areas of the Amazon Basin and broadening their portfolios.
Among them are the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC), Brazil’s largest criminal network, and its rival, the Red Command (Comando Vermelho – CV). Both have expanded into border zones of Brazil’s Amazon to profit from illegal mining. The Red Command has also crossed into Peru, causing coca cultivation and base paste production in the departments of Loreto and Ucayali to surge dramatically over the past five years.
In Colombia, forest protection underwent a complete reversal over the past decade. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) protected the rainforest, using it as a shield from government operations. But signing a peace agreement with the Colombian government in 2016, that changed. With the group’s demobilization and the expansion of dissident factions, deforestation skyrocketed, with levels fluctuating partly based on different criminal structures’ influence in their territories.
The situation grew worse in 2023, as many groups entered into peace negotiations with President Gustavo Petro’s government. Dissident factions like the Central General Staff (Estado Mayor Central – EMC) and the General Staff of Blocks and Front (Estado Mayor de Bloques y Frente – EMBF) have exercised control over logging in the departments of Meta, Guaviare, and Caquetá. Within the framework of Total Peace negotiations with the Colombian government, both structures have enforced bans to reduce deforestation in areas under their control, using it as a bargaining tool.
“They used the lifting of ceasefires as a pressure mechanism to say, ‘Well, if you lift the ceasefire, we’ll order logging to resume,’” Juanita Vélez, an expert on armed conflict and deforestation in Colombia, told InSight Crime.
SEE ALSO: GameChangers 2023: A Win Against Deforestation in the Amazon, For Now
In the last year, another FARC dissident faction called the Border Command (Comandos de la Frontera – CDF), which operates in Bajo Putumayo, allied with the Lobos, one of Ecuador’s most notorious criminal groups, as part of a push into illegal mining in the Amazonian provinces along the shared border between Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador.
Behind these criminal organizations are many political elites, businesspeople, intermediaries, and corrupt officials who work together to profit from the global demand for gold, timber, drugs, and meat extracted from the Amazon.
In Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, many networks of logging “patrones,” the local term used for wood extractors, operate illegally and abuse the permits granted to Indigenous communities in the Amazon to launder timber, leaving these communities in vulnerable situations and even exposed to million-dollar fines.
Between Forest Loss and Violence
Today, Brazil has the highest rate of forest loss in the world. Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia are not far behind, and all rank among the world’s top 10 countries with the most forest loss.
But it is not only the forests that are disappearing. Those who defend them are also being threatened and attacked.
Between 2012 and 2024, 1,018 land and environmental defenders were killed in the Amazon, according to the latest report by Global Witness. Together, Colombia and Brazil accounted for 90% of the land and environmental defenders killed or disappeared over the past 10 years.
Colombia is currently the most dangerous place in the world to defend the land and environment due to the convergence of illicit economies in the Amazon Basin and the direct involvement of armed groups and elites in these activities.
Peru is also among the most affected countries. Between 2012 and 2024, 62 environmental defenders were killed there, most of them Indigenous leaders resisting illegal mining, logging, and drug trafficking in their territories. However, the violence has intensified at an alarming rate: nearly half of these killings have occurred in the last five years.
The last decade shows that protecting the Amazon’s forests will be difficult. The sustained boom in the gold and cocaine markets incentivizes criminal actors to expand and consolidate their control over the region. Conservation or sustainable development strategies will have a limited impact as long as these territories and their inhabitants remain trapped in the current criminal ecosystem, where following the rules of regional elites and criminal networks is the only means of survival.
And as climate diplomacy continues to overlook the role of organized crime in the climate crisis, these challenges may only grow more pressing.
In this year’s event, we’re looking back at the last year and the last decade to better understand what’s to come in 2026. Our donor-exclusive event will brief you on the most important criminal shifts in the region and what to expect in the coming year from organized crime and the governments tackling it in the Americas.
