“The Amazon doesn’t understand political and administrative boundaries.”
The transnational nature of organised crime calls for a coordinated, intergovernmental response, that transcends jurisdictional differences and political-administrative boundaries. Who are the existing regional bodies and mechanisms responsible for protection against environmental crimes? What impact can they have in optimising collaboration? How and where to share the burden? This session aimed to answer those questions.
The nature of environmental crimes is very different than common crimes. The former depend on specific regulations, and in some cases, involve activities that are not necessarily illegal. Environmental crimes take advantage of the linkages between formal, informal and illegal markets. They depend on other facilitating crimes, such as corruption or money laundering. This calls for a response that integrates the power of civil society organisations across different countries in the region, administrative sanctions, and criminal sanctions. Also, the regional response must work to change market incentives, for example, promoting formalisation.
Networks such as the Red Jaguar, have understood the need to generate a multidisciplinary dynamic to respond to such a complex problem as environmental crime. This allows for a constant flow of information among actors, which are, in many cases, based on informal connections. This speeds up the rate of information exchange and can overcome bureaucratic barriers. The most important element of this transaction is being able to build trust among those involved.
Other mechanisms of cooperation that exist are the Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica (OTCA), Comunidad Andina de Naciones, or Parlamento Andino, which can serve as a space to homogenise the legal framework among countries in terms of environmental crimes. It is critical to understand that even though the legal frameworks might not be identical among countries, they do have to be compatible, in order to apply double incrimination, for example. This is crucial to prevent the “globe effect” in which pressure is made on organised crime groups in one country, with a certain legal framework, and the OCG migrates to another country with a laxer legal framework.
Information and capacity-building are critical to reduce asymmetries among countries. We cannot expect for regional bodies to resolve all of the security related problems in the region, or that they will be able to coordinate all of the police forces. A specific role for regional bodies is to promote the creation of operational documents that can be tailored to each country context at the local level. For this it is important to differentiate between different types of environmental crimes and different levels of progress among countries.
Special attention must be paid to the development of key projects with regional consequences, such as the Port of Chancay in Peru, or other BRI projects. It is crucial to understand how they will come alongside other complementary development policies that may undermine territories. There are signs that governments are promoting “sustainable” agriculture in the Amazon in order to increase supply of certain goods to China via Chancay. However, evidence is clear on the negative impacts these types of practices have on the environment. Another related threat is the future trans Amazonian highway to be built after Chancay. This will allow OCGs to move production of illegal or controlled goods from the Amazon to the port of Santos in Brazil in 4-5 days. For this, an increase in vigilance from civil society is required (through, for example, public spending observatories), indigenous communities, and in the use of technology (such as drones).