Bloomberg
Drug trafficking proceeds increasingly are getting laundered into illegal logging, ranching and gold mining in the Amazon in a development that is accelerating deforestation of the rain forest, according to a United Nations report.
Drug trafficking groups in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are diversifying into these environmental crimes, and are leveraging their existing supply chains to transport timber, gold and even wildlife from the Amazon, according to the findings of the World Drug Report 2023.
“Cocaine production in the last couple of years is off the charts,” said Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarape Institute, a think tank in Rio de Janeiro, who wrote a chapter of the report on the drug trade in the Amazon. “Brazil is a huge transshipment and consumption country.”
Rising proceeds from trafficking will make it even harder for Brazil to meet its goal of eradicating illegal deforestation of the Amazon by 2028. About half of Brazil’s carbon emissions result from clearing forests.
