The new CIPÓ Strategic Report “Environmental crime and organized crime – Land conflicts and illegal logging in Western Pará“, written by Luísa Falcão and Renata Albuquerque Ribeiro, researchers at the CIPÓ, was launched on December 15, 2022 on a webinar. The report investigates the links between organized crime and environmental crime in the Brazilian Amazon, using the logging chain in western Pará as a case study. It focuses specifically on the municipality of Santarém and its surroundings, a region where it is possible to observe the connections between illegal logging and organized crime.
The land issue is central to understanding and confronting environmental and associated crimes in the municipalities of western Pará is the report’s main argument. Therefore, analyzing environmental crime in a compartmentalized way is not enough to unravel this complex chain of illicit activities, it is necessary to consider land conflicts and their impacts on the protagonists in the defense of the environment in the Amazon biome: the indigenous peoples, quilombolas, traditional and riverside dwellers.
Based on the analysis carried out from the bibliography and the interviews, a series of recommendations were elaborated to help stakeholders, whether state or not, in the formulation of solutions to combat and prevent environmental crimes and other associated illicit activities.
See the highlights:
- To create and/or strengthen public policies to protect (physical and social) and reduce the vulnerability of local populations affected by environmental crimes and harassment by logging companies, such as indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and extractive communities;
- To accelerate the demarcation process of indigenous and quilombolas lands, to reduce the risks of invasion of such territories by loggers and other actors acting illegally; in addition to guaranteeing the removal of territories in the presence of invaders;
- To accelerate and reduce bureaucracy in the land regularization process as a way to combat land grabbing. In addition to considering the land status as part of the Management Plan concession process, paying attention to the veracity of such plan;
- To ensure that the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR, in Portuguese) is not used as a land document, including through the swift conclusion of the CAR, validating and making it transparent and publicly accessible; in addition, suspend cadastres that overlap public lands;
- To create an inspection protocol for the Management Plans (Plano de manejo Florestal, in Portuguese), to verify that the logging activities are following the rules and requirements outlined in the document. In addition to ensuring speed in the process of granting Community Management Plans, to make it difficult for external actors and companies to co-opt communities.
