[RAIN FOREST NOISES]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ROBERT MUGGAH: The reality right now
is the Amazon is under threat.
It's being plundered from all sides
because the Amazon is an ecosystem
of extraordinary riches--
of timber, of gold, of coltan, of animals and livestock.
And right now, there is a gold rush, a scramble,
a plundering underway of all of its vast resources.
ROBERT MUGGAH: Under the current administration
all bets are off.
There is an opening up of deregulations.
There is an incentivization of land grabbing.
There is an easing of the penalties associated
with those who may be abusing existing legislation.
Our focus has been very much on trying
to set thresholds and limits around deforestation
without understanding the illegality
and the political economy that's driving that business
to begin with.
Around 80% deforestation in the Amazon is illegal.
Land grabbers occupy the land for cattle farming, soy,
and gold.
They might be financed by corrupt politician,
a local rancher, drug cartels, or militia.
And they often clear the land like setting fire
to the forest.
RICARDO SALLES: The fact is that the laws and regulations that
were enacted and used for the past, let's say 10, 20 years,
were so restrictive to the Amazon
that it has restricted development to those areas.
And, that in that sense, people go to the other--
to the 100% to the other side.
They go to the illegal activities--
to the criminal activities because they
don't have any other space to do something under the law
according to the regulation.
RICARDO SALLES: You cannot punish 20 million people.
You cannot push punish everybody.
We need to give them some sort of alternative.
What you have to give them is a reasonable path of work,
otherwise they go to the criminal side.
ROBERT MUGGAH: What we have right now
is a combination of players in this criminal ecosystem
in the Amazon.
A key issue is that they have a high level of impunity
because law enforcement is weak AND environmental fines are
seldom collected.
To that you can add collusion and corruption
among members of the police, enforcement
agencies, and the courts.
Corrupt officers can receive kickbacks
for looking the other way, or maybe more deeply involved,
even driving people off the land themselves
or running their own militias.
Once occupied, land titles for public land
can be illegally bought or forged,
and occupiers might expect to benefit from amnesties
like they did in 2004 and 2011.
As we've seen this gold rush and this timber rush
and the allure of the profits that the Amazon can yield
emerge, you've seen a massive migration of populations
from across the country.
And so many cities have ballooned in size
in the space of just a generation.
You get all sorts of forms of concentrated disadvantage
and poverty and inequality and that tends
to be a breeding pot for crime.
So it's not just the organised crime
groups that are manipulating and working in concert politicians
to drive this business, but it's also the ambient crime
that accompanies it.
And today many of the interior cities across the Amazon
are some of the most violent in the world.
ROBERT MUGGAH: Over the last two decades though,
there was a generally widespread improvement
in the overall stewardship of the Amazon.
There was introduction of several protections.
There is an expansion of the number of reserves.
There was legal regulations to safeguard
the rights of indigenous.
And what we saw was actually a decline in deforestation,
increasing management of some aspects of the mining
industries, and more corporate social responsibility
for many companies that were involved in these activities.
But the reality is right now, that without leadership,
without strong vision from the top trying
to set a conservation sustainable policy
for the Amazon, but instead the opposite, the opening up
to pillaging and plundering, we're
going to see the situation get much worse.