A fire in the Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world, which is suffering from the spread of organized crime.GETTY IMAGES
The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world, an area equivalent to the European Union and of unbeatable biodiversity and beauty, through which some strategic international drug trafficking routes also cross, where even drug submarines ply. Organized crime, which has been on the rise for years, is already present in a quarter of communities in the Amazon, and violence has increased more sharply than in the rest of Brazil. The growing presence of criminal groups in the Amazon since 2016 and its impact pose a threat to the fight against climate change, warns a report published by the NGO Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública on the eve of COP28, which begins this Friday in Dubai . UN World Summit on Climate Change. The authors claim that it will be impossible to take decisive steps to protect the valuable ecosystem without addressing the problem of public safety violence.
Renato Sérgio de Lima, President and Director of the FBSP, warns on the phone: “We cannot talk about meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and changing the energy matrix.” [de Brasil]”To reduce deforestation, to guarantee rights without talking about violence in the Amazon.” The future of tropical forests like this one, which stretches across Brazil and eight other countries, is crucial because they play a crucial role in the Regulating the planet’s temperature and thus playing a role in curbing global warming.
This NGO wants to use the climate summit to alert Brazilian authorities and the world to the urgency of bringing within their reach the growing power that criminal groups wield along the rivers, under the treetops and in the Amazon. Debates about how to protect the jungle, its inhabitants and its biodiversity.
Lula will arrive at COP28 accompanied by a dozen ministers, including environment and climate change chief Marina Silva, with whom he formed an environmental policy pair during his previous term. Lula’s Brazil has managed to overcome the environmental villain image that accompanied the country during Jair Bolsonaro’s years in power. The government wants to boast that it is prioritizing environmental issues, that it has achieved successes on deforestation – according to the first annual report of this mandate, deforestation in the Amazon fell by 22% – and that it is proposing an international mechanism for rich countries to to contribute to the preservation of tropical forests. standing.
Violence in the Amazon is nothing new. The brutal exploitation of its natural resources to transport them far away has been going on for centuries. The state’s weak presence in an area that occupies half of Brazil is also not new. What represents a change is that since 2016, criminal groups dedicated to drug trafficking have been expanding their tentacles and taking control of areas. “The factions are already starting to organize people’s lives, as they do, for example, in the outskirts of São Paulo or in areas of Rio,” warns De Lima.
According to the report, 22 criminal groups operate in the Amazon: the Red Command based in Rio de Janeiro dominates the interior of the Amazon, while its rival, the First Capital Command (PCC), focuses on border expansion towards neighboring countries. Along with these nationally established bands, there are around twenty local factions. Alliances and conflicts are diverse and changing. The forum’s director claims that the Amazon “represents a scenario that resembles a time bomb about to explode.”
The vast area is strategically important for transporting cocaine from producing countries to its destination, be it Europe or Asia, but it is also fertile ground for money laundering, thanks, for example, to the last gold rush a few years ago.
The expansion of organized crime is one of the factors explaining the accelerated increase in violence in Brazil’s nine Amazonian states. The FBSP report details that the murder rate is 34 per 100,000 inhabitants, 45% higher than the Brazilian average, 15 municipalities have over 80 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, violent indigenous deaths are 26% higher, and femicides are 30% higher than the national average lay. And cocaine seizures have doubled in four years. In 2022, 56 tons of white powder were discovered heading to Spain, the Netherlands and Australia… At the environmental level, crimes such as illegal timber trade, deforestation, deliberate fires and land grabbing are also increasing… “When we fight organized crime “Not, it can pose a threat to sovereignty,” says De Lima.
The X-ray data gives an idea of the scale of the challenge, starting with the size of the territory. Each police officer in the Amazon must patrol 83 square kilometers, four times more than the average in the rest of the country. De Lima gives another example: The state of Roraima, which is half of Spain, has 50 investigative commissioners.
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