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- Illegal logging is widespread and a high percentage of Peru’s timber exports are high-risk for illegal harvest.
- Fraud and corruption are common and there is a risk that illegal timber is laundered into supply chains for all species.
- Official documentation is therefore not, in and of itself, sufficient to guarantee the legal origin of timber sourced from the Amazon.
- Despite several high-profile enforcement operations that revealed systemic fraud and illegal logging, enforcement is limited and Peru still lacks a system to track or verify back to the forest.
- There have been attempts to weaken OSINFOR, the government agency charged with supervision and audit of the harvest and conservation of forest following industry pressure.
- There have been several high-profile cases under the U.S. Lacey Act, and actions taken under the United States–Peru Trade Promotion Agreement highlighting that illegal timber from Peru is entering international markets.
- Violence and land grabbing of indigenous territories continues to be tied to illegal logging in Peru’s Amazon.
Read more by downloading the Peru Timber Legality Risk Dashboard here.
Deforestation for illegal drug production is on the rise in and around Otishi National Park, Asháninka Communal Reserve and Machiguenga Communal Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon.
During aerial reconnaissance, Mongabay Latam reporters observed clearings, trails and unauthorized airstrips in the park and Indigenous reserves.
The report by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, published on Oct. 26, said that “critical gaps” in the U.S. anti-money laundering system are vulnerable to exploitation by criminal groups, including those behind the destruction of the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest.
FACT’s analysis focuses on forestry crimes and illegal mining in Peru and Colombia. The report also summarizes how U.S. importers sidestep the law by not trading directly with the blacklisted Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE) but instead with non-sanctioned Myanmar exporters and middlemen based in Singapore, Thailand and other third countries.
For the past 11 years, Global Witness has documented and denounced waves of threats, violence and killings of land and environmental defenders across the world, and 2022 marks the beginning of our second decade documenting lethal attacks. The world has changed dramatically since we started documenting these in 2012. But one thing that has not changed is the relentlessness of the killings.
Last year, at least 177 defenders lost their lives for protecting our planet, bringing the total number of killings to 1,910 since 2012. At least 1,390 of these killings took place between the adoption of the Paris Agreement on 12 December 2015 and 31 December 2022.
New Global Witness report shows nearly 90% of all environment-linked killings in 2022 were in the region, driven by land disputes, armed conflict and extractive industries.
Colombia was found to be the deadliest country in the world, with 60 deaths in total last year – more than a third of all killings globally. These figures come despite the country’s move in October 2022 to ratify the Escazú Agreement, a legally binding regional treaty to protect environmental defenders, and is almost double the number of killings reported in the country in 2021.
Other vulnerable countries in the region where Brazil, where 34 defenders lost their lives, compared to 26 in 2021, and Mexico, although the 31 murders recorded in the country last year were a drop from 54 in 2021, when it was the country with the highest number of killings. With 14 land- and environmental-linked murders recorded, Honduras was the country with the world’s highest per-capita killings. Mexico has ratified the Escazú Agreement, while Brazil is yet to do so, having only signed the treaty at its creation in September 2018; Honduras has neither signed nor ratified the agreement.
For the past 11 years, Global Witness has documented and denounced waves of threats, violence and killings of land and environmental defenders across the world, and 2022 marks the beginning of our second decade documenting lethal attacks. The world has changed dramatically since we started documenting these in 2012. But one thing that has not changed is the relentlessness of the killings.
Last year, at least 177 defenders lost their lives for protecting our planet, bringing the total number of killings to 1,910 since 2012. At least 1,390 of these killings took place between the adoption of the Paris Agreement on 12 December 2015 and 31 December 2022.
Amazon nations have attacked in a joint declaration the “proliferation” of environmental rules in trade, echoing a growing backlash against new EU deforestation requirements.
The final document does not single out the European law specifically, but it condemns “the proliferation of unilateral trade measures based on environmental requirements and norms which constitute trade barriers”.
cross the more than 4,000 kilometers of border that divide Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, the gold mining rush has threatened the very existence of Indigenous communities and trampled on national parks. Illegal gold mining has soared to become the biggest destroyer of the rainforest, especially when supported by guerrilla groups, business owners, and political elites alike.
Meanwhile, on the border between Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, illegal logging and illicit crops are expanding as quickly as the loggers can tear down the trees. After promising jobs and training to Indigenous residents and gaining their trust, brokers become proxies for the forest management plans which these communities oversee. This allows them to launder illegal timber.
This five-part investigation traces the actors involved in environmental crimes and reveals the supply chains which support the looting of these border areas. To do so, InSight Crime has partnered with the Igarapé Institute, an independent thinktank located in Brazil that focuses on development, security, and climate issues.
Scattered domestic laws and competing interests intersect in the tri-border regions of the Amazon. Commitments to protecting its wilderness change with new political administrations.
Outgoing Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro scaled back efforts to fight illegal logging, ranching, and mining as part of an aggressive campaign to open the Amazon to more commercial development. President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, has promised a complete reversal.
Former Colombian President Iván Duque (2018-2022) put environmental crime at the heart of his security policy, but then did little as deforestation soared. Colombia’s current president, Gustavo Petro, has called protecting the Amazon one of the pillars of his agenda.
The Amazon forest and watershed shared by Peru, Colombia, and Brazil provide ideal cover for coca cultivation and processing. As a result, a cocaine trafficking chain has emerged there — one that begins with coca grown in Peru. The criminal infrastructure created to feed this trade also protects and promotes environmental crimes, such as illegal deforestation, timber trafficking, and illegal gold mining. The remote areas have little state presence, and the dense forest canopy makes illicit activities and armed groups largely invisible.
The tri-border where Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela meet has continued to maintain its longstanding role as a transit corridor for cocaine. Though it’s not known as a drug production hub, the Venezuelan side may be seeing new coca cultivation.
Illegal loggers have begun to migrate to Brazil’s northern Amazon. According to a 2019 study that looked at illegal logging in the Anauá National Forest, loggers and sawmills are relocating from the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia to Roraima, on the border with Venezuela and Guyana. The region has come to be seen as a “new gold woodland,” thanks to the large swaths of forest, low cost of land, and few controls on deforestation and logging, the study authors wrote.
Illegal timber harvesting in the tri-border regions is most prevalent in the Amazon forests of Peru, where a multinational operation with many tentacles targets high-value hardwood species, such as spruce (Virola calophylla), tornillo (Cedrelinga catenaeformis), and cedar (Cedrela odorata). Trees are felled, transformed into planks, and eventually exported. The process includes legitimizing the timber through logging and transport permits, sawmills, and brokers before shipping it to regional capitals like Bogotá and Lima, or to international markets such as China.
On the Colombian and Venezuelan sides, mining activities and businesses that have sprung up around the sites are taxed by criminals, ranging from a few gunmen to factions of Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs). The latter include the ex-FARC, made up of dissident groups of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), which demobilized in 2017, and units from Colombia’s last remaining guerrilla force, the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN). Brazil’s most powerful mafia, the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC), also appears to be making inroads into the illegal gold trade.
Deep in the vast jungle of the Amazon, critical primary forests are being razed to mine gold, grow coca, and harvest timber.
Three rivers — the Caquetá (known in Brazil as the Japurá), the Putumayo, and the Amazon — and their many tributaries serve as arteries for this cross-border trafficking. The shared waterways are also highways for timber cut by illegal loggers, where gold dredges are operated by illegal miners.
Eight Amazon rainforest nations are expected to face divisions over proposals to block new oil drilling and end deforestation when they meet on Tuesday for their first summit in 14 years.
At a pre-summit meeting last month, Colombian President Gustavo Petro pushed his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to block all new oil development in the Amazon. Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River.
Mongabay has begun publishing a new edition of the book, “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon,” in short installments and in three languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.
Chronicling the efforts of nine Amazonian countries to curb deforestation, this edition provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the region’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models that are vying for space within the regional economy.
Forest conservation initiatives in Peru in the past decades have had little to no effect, as deforestation continues to skyrocket in the country, according to a new study by the International Forestry Research Center, CIFOR.
Peru has attracted millions of dollars in forest conservation initiatives and has 254 public and private parks and protected areas, yet deforestation has been rising steadily since 2001 by more than 326,000 acres per year. In 2020, forest loss peaked, reaching 502,000 acres of tropical forest, the equivalent of 379 football fields.
CIFOR’s research includes a literature review of 17 studies evaluating the impact of conservation initiatives in the country over the years. REDD+ mechanisms consistently performed poorly, having the least effect both on forest cover and community economic situations.
Original CIFOR report: extension://elhekieabhbkpmcefcoobjddigjcaadp/https://www.cifor.org/publications/pdf_files/OccPapers/OP-240.pdf
With the technical assistance of the National Forestry and Wildlife Service (SERFOR) the regional governments of Madre de Dios, Loreto, Ucayali San Martín and the Central Forestry and Wildlife Technical Administration have developed digital tools that will help verify the legal origin of wood.
There are three applications that are part of the Control Module of the National Forest and Wildlife Information System (MC-SNIFFS), the Issuance and Registration of Forest Transport Guide, the Electronic Operations Books of Authorising Titles and the Electronic Operations Books of Primary Transformation Centers.
The new tools provide a means for recording information on the traceability of the wood from its origin, tracking the location and movement of forest products throughout the production chain in order to be able to corroborate the legal origin and promote competitiveness.
Government officials and other stakeholders react to news from the Office of the Auditor, which shows the amount of funds lost at the regional due to corruption, inclusive of illegal mining, illegal logging, and other illicit activities.
Some 60 percent of the world’s lithium reserves can be found in the so-called lithium triangle, a region that encompasses Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. It’s not just lithium either: Peru and Chile are the world’s two largest copper producers, while Brazil is home to 17 percent of all nickel reserves.
That has sparked a global scramble to tap the region’s wealth—one in which Chinese companies have an edge. Beyond lithium, Beijing has also struck deals for solar, wind, and hydroelectric projects across the region, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into solar parks in Argentina and Brazil as well as signing contracts for hydroelectric projects in Bolivia and Argentina.
Part of the allure of partnering with Beijing, experts say, is the very nature of Chinese deals. China has boasted about its no-strings-attached financing, with fewer economic and political conditions than Western lenders. “[Governments] know that they’re not going to get the same level of quality by partnering with Chinese companies, but they also will get fewer headaches, fewer regulations, fewer lessons on the environment, fewer complaints from [nongovernmental organizations],” Berg said.
Puerto Maldonado, Peru, Jun 3 (EFE).- The towering, slow-growing, reddish-barked shihuahuaco, a giant tree found in the Peruvian Amazon, is on the verge of extinction from indiscriminate logging and high international demand for its hard, dense wood.
In Peru alone, estimates are that an average of 504 of these trees are being felled daily and that 80 percent of that activity is occurring in Madre de Dios, a rainforest-clad southeastern department that is regarded as the country’s biodiversity capital.
Tatiana Espinosa, a forestry engineer and director of the Arbio organization, which since 2010 has sought to protect more than 900 hectares (3.5 square miles) of Amazon rainforest in Madre de Dios’ Las Piedras River basin, provided those figures to Efe.
Peru is the world’s ninth largest cocoa producer (roughly 71,175 tons/year) and the world’s largest organic cocoa producers, and it is now on a mission to develop a deforestation-free supply chain by 2025, making it ready for new European market regulations.
The deforestation of large swaths of the Peruvian Amazon not only deserves attention due to its environmental ramifications, according to the non-governmental organization Proetica. A study by that organization found that more than half of the environmental crime proceedings launched in the Andean nation between 2009 and 2021 corresponded to crimes against forests or forest formations, illegal trafficking of timber forest products and illegal mining. It also noted that these types of crimes have risen by nearly 50 percent since 2020.
Demand for wood from ipê trees in the Amazon Basin could lead to their extinction if better international trade regulations aren’t implemented soon, according to a new report from Forest Trends. Ipê hardwood is in high demand in the luxury timber market, especially for outdoor boardwalks, decks and furniture, as well as hardwood floors.
Drug trafficking, illegal mining, and illegal logging in Latin America not only fuel violence, but also destroy the environment.
“There was record destruction of the Amazon in 2020, as the rainforest loss an area around the size of Belize, and the situation looks even bleaker in 2021,” Insight Crime, an organization that studies organized crime in Latin America, said in a December 2021 report.
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) labels are present on hundreds of forest products we consume daily, which claim to be legal in origin and sustainable. But their audit systems certifying their customers have shown flaws around the world, even in Latin America, where companies investigated for timber trafficking and exporting timber of illegal origin show their green label. Vices and problems of a control system traversed by millionaire interests. One of OjoPúblico journalistic teams investigates the issue in the Amazon and in Europe.
Interventions designed to monitor and report environmental crimes (such as illegal logging and trafficking in protected species) are being undermined by shortcomings in the Peruvian state.
Communities affected by land grabbing face major challenges when reporting to authorities such as the police, attorney general, the ombudsman, or forest authorities. Reporting has become even tougher during the Covid pandemic.
A Peruvian governor is accused of playing a lead role in a timber trafficking network that involved Chinese logging businesses – in a case that provides further evidence of the growing involvement of Chinese actors in Peru’s illicit timber market.
Six years after investigators in Peru took down a massive timber trafficking operation that shipped millions of dollars’ worth of illegal hardwood, more than 90 people have been indicted and a US importer has been forced to pay restitution.
This has been a small victory in the battle against illegal logging in Peru’s Amazon, but one unlikely to be repeated in a climate of increasing impunity.
Key Resources
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Click here to access the Global Illegal Logging and Associated Trade (ILAT) Risk assessment tool and to download the Forest Trends User Guide describing the functionality of the ILAT Risk Data Tool.
Click here to access the Cattle Data Tool.
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