Washington, DC, 11 March 2026 — Forest Trends’ newest report finds that illegal logging, mining, wildlife trafficking, and natural gas exploitation in the Mekong Region are financing transnational criminal networks that reach far beyond Southeast Asia.
Nature Crimes: The Convergence of Criminal Economies in the Mekong Region reveals how the illegal extraction and trade of natural resources, particularly in the “Golden Triangle” of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand’s borderlands, generate billions in hard currency that fund drug trafficking, cyber scam centers, human trafficking, and money laundering operations across Asia.
The convergence between nature crimes and broader criminal enterprise has dramatically accelerated since Myanmar’s 2021 military coup, as importing countries have reported more than US$30 billion in natural resource imports from Myanmar in those four years. China remains the dominant buyer, including for heavy rare-earth elements critical to renewable energy technologies and advanced weapons systems. In 2023 alone, rare-earth exports to China reached a reported US$1.5 billion, supplying the majority of global heavy rare-earth mineral demand.
The report finds that criminal groups repurpose timber routes, mining concessions, and Special Economic Zones (SEZs) into integrated hubs for digital fraud and financial crime. The same infrastructure that moves illicit jade and teak now supports cyber-scamming operations estimated to generate at least US$40 billion annually.
“Nature crimes are not isolated conservation issues,” said Kevin M. Woods, Forest Trends’ Senior Policy Analyst and the report’s lead author. “They are the financial foundation of broader criminal enterprises that undermine governance, distort global supply chains, and threaten regional security.”
The report calls for coordinated cross-border enforcement and sanctions, stronger oversight of resource supply chains, and recognition that environmental crime is a core international security issue.
Download the full report, Nature Crimes: The Convergence of Criminal Economies in the Mekong Region.
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Forest Trends works to conserve forests and other ecosystems through the creation and wide adoption of a broad range of environmental finance, markets, and other payment and incentive mechanisms.
Forest Trends’ Forest Policy, Trade, and Finance Initiative aims to promote policies which harness the power of market incentives for the legal, sustainable, and equitable trade in timber and other commodities harvested from forest landscapes.