Rates of deforestation decreased significantly during the last year in Colombia and Brazil, two Amazonian nations that have historically been among the 10 countries with the highest forest loss in the world.
Preliminary figures indicate that deforestation in Colombia between January and September decreased 70% compared to the same period in 2022, according to data presented by Susana Muhamad, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development. In Brazil, deforestation decreased 61% in the first 10 months of 2023 compared to the same period last year, according to data from the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia- Imazon), a climate justice organization.
The protection of the Amazon rainforest was a central topic at multilateral meetings in 2023. In August, leaders from countries that house part of the Amazon — Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela — met for the first time. At this Amazonian summit, representatives from each country pledged to redouble their efforts to protect the rainforest.
Between the decrease in forest loss in Colombia and Brazil and the Amazonian summit, this year represented a small victory in the battle against deforestation in the region. But this success comes amid a worrying regional panorama in which criminal groups are putting down roots in the Amazon and expanding their participation in environmental crimes.
What is Behind the Decrease in Forest Loss in Colombia?
Two factors led to Colombia’s reduced deforestation rates: a change in government policies and the rise of a sort of environmental criminal governance.
Protecting the Amazon is a pillar of President Gustavo Petro’s agenda. Since he took office in August 2022, he has managed to reverse the trend of rising deforestation seen in the first few months of that year. By the end of 2022, according to data from the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies (Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales – Ideam), 123,517 hectares were lost, 29% less than the 174,103 in 2021.
The decrease in deforestation rates that began with his presidency has continued throughout 2023. In just the first four months of this year, deforestation decreased 76% compared to the same period in 2022. Meanwhile, between April and June, Colombia’s Amazon region lost about 850 hectares of forest cover, 66% less than during that time last year.
“This is a promising start, but we have to stay grounded. The change in strategy has been a success, but now the challenge is to keep it going next year,” said Muhamad while presenting the figures.
The decrease in forest loss is, in part, the result of the government’s conservation and community forestry programs, which promote the sustainable use of forest resources.
It is also the result of President Petro centering the environment in his “Total Peace” plan, through which his administration is pursuing peace talks with more than 20 armed groups in the country. This focus on the environment sets a new precedent. In the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC), the forest was treated more as a beneficiary, rather than a central pillar of the agreement.
Before the peace agreement, the FARC had long acted as de facto guardians of much of the Amazon, which protected the group against attacks by armed forces. The FARC, which at the time was the largest armed group in the country, was more interested in using the forest to ensure its survival than capitalizing on its natural resources as another source of revenue.
However, after much of the group demobilized in 2016, deforestation ramped up, rising 23% in 2017. In the following years, illegal logging by criminal groups and corrupt actors rose.
Then, in 2022, in anticipation of Petro’s victory, the most powerful ex-FARC mafia group, the Central General Staff (Estado Mayor Central – EMC), one of several dissident factions that did not demobilize with the rebel group after peace negotiations, began protecting the forest in their territories in the northwestern arc of the Amazon. These areas in the departments of Meta, Guaviare, and Caquetá are some of the most highly deforested areas of Colombia.
“Before Petro became president, [the EMC] created a new guide, a new set of rules. They went from being very flexible about logging to saying it had to stop,” Juanita Vélez, a Colombian armed conflict and deforestation expert, told InSight Crime.
With Petro in power, the EMC doubled down on their logging ban, maintaining it throughout 2023. Underlying this protective order is the group’s interest in using it as a point in their favor during peace negotiations with the government.
Curbing the Drivers of Deforestation in Brazil
Like Petro, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has made protecting the environment and fighting deforestation one of the pillars of his agenda. Lula’s return to power in 2023 has provided some respite to the Brazilian Amazon, which suffered record levels of destruction under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
In Bolsonaro’s four years as president, Brazil lost an area of forest larger than the size of Belgium. This level of destruction caused parts of the Amazon to shift from being carbon sinks to carbon emitters.
During his presidency, Bolsonaro promised to develop the Amazon and exploit its natural resources. This extractive agenda laid the foundation for expanding agricultural projects, land trafficking, and illegal logging and mining in the Amazon, all of which have been motors of the rampant deforestation in Brazil.
Bolsonaro also cut personnel and funds from the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources (Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis – Ibama), the country’s agency in charge of fighting environmental crimes. The decision severely reduced environmental oversight.
But since Lula took office in January 2023, he has worked to reverse his predecessor’s controversial policies and curb deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. And he has succeeded.
Between January and October 2023, 380,600 hectares were cut down, a 61% decrease compared to the same period in 2022. According to Imazon, this was the smallest area of forest loss since 2018.
One of the first steps that Lula took in his fight to curb deforestation in Brazil was to rebuild Ibama and give the organization its claws back, empowering it to launch initiatives to protect the forest.
“When the government changed hands, it provided a framework for changing this situation,” said Melina Risso, research director at the Igarapé Institute, an independent think tank located in Brazil that focuses on development, security, and climate issues.
“He came in aiming to slow the destruction in the Amazon. He has imposed fines and seized areas with rampant illegal activity,” she added.
In January, Ibama began a series of operations in the northern states of Pará, Roraima, and Acre to issue fines for illegal logging and deter loggers from cutting trees in new areas.
Amazon Protection Pact Falls Short on Tackling Organized Crime
With the help of the federal police, Ibama agents have also expelled garimpeiros, or people participating in illegal mining, that operate in the Indigenous Yanomami territory on the Brazil-Venezuela border.
Lula has also taken steps to roll back Bolsonaro’s flexible firearms rules that allowed powerful criminal groups to grow stronger during his term.
A Long Road Ahead
There is no question that the decline in deforestation in the Colombian and Brazilian Amazon this year was a small victory in the midst of the current climate crisis. But to truly flatten the curve of deforestation in the Amazon, many challenges remain.
The powerful criminal networks that are deeply rooted throughout the Amazon basin represent one such challenge, as they increasingly pursue environmental crimes as a lucrative income source.
For example, the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC), one of Brazil’s most prominent criminal groups, which dominates drug trafficking in the country, extended its tentacles throughout the Brazilian Amazon’s mining zones in 2023. In the state of Roraima and Yanomami territory, the PCC has provided weapons and heavy machinery to garimpeiros, offered security services to mines, and even helped extract gold from the Amazon.
In other countries in the region, like Peru, drug trafficking networks expanded their influence in the Amazon during 2023, cutting down trees to build clandestine runways and sow coca fields, the raw ingredient used to make cocaine. Environmental and Indigenous leaders who opposed drug traffickers’ incursions into the Amazon have become targets of threats, attacks, and even assassination.
In Colombia, the presence of criminal groups in the Amazon and the EMC’s central role in controlling deforestation rates has left the sustainability of forest protection hanging by a thread.
Another challenge to reducing deforestation in the long run is the need for regional cooperation and sustained political will.
“We have to think about the Amazon from a regional perspective, if not, the effects will be global,” said Risso, from the Igarapé Institute.
The need for such regional cooperation became evident this year when, after Brazil expelled informal miners from Yanomami land, many garimpeiros crossed into Venezuela and Guyana to continue mining. In December, they returned to Yanomami territory and resumed their operations there.
But cooperation between Amazonian countries has so far been limited.
Although Amazonian governments approved a declaration to protect the rainforest during the Amazon summit in August, it does not outline concrete strategies to tackle deforestation.
In fact, the majority of Amazonian countries are far from reducing deforestation in their territories, whether because taking a strong stance is not a top political priority or it goes against their interests.
In Venezuela, for example, gold mining continues to be one of the main revenue sources for Nicolás Maduro’s government. In Peru, ongoing political instability has pushed addressing environmental crime to the bottom of the government’s list of priorities. While in Bolivia, lax regulations on importing mercury, which is used to separate gold from sediment, has increased contraband flows of this toxic metal throughout the Amazon region.