This book brings together an extraordinary set of specialists who are tackling the extraordinarily complex threats to the Amazon Basin, the home to a full half of the worldâs remaining tropical forests and well over half of its plants and animal species. If the Amazon was a nation, it would be the worldâs 9th biggest. With five of just 17 countries worldwide considered âmega-diverse,â it produces more than 20% of the planetâs oxygen and stores some 120 billion tons of carbon each yearâover 17 times the amount the entire US spews out. But the Amazon has also been a perennial treasure trove. From the search for El Dorado in the 1500s to the rubber barons of the 1800s to the ranchers of the 1900s, the Amazon has been coveted as a source of boundless riches and subject to an endless bloodletting of exploitation.
Only recently has the balance between pillage and protection finally shifted. Building on global environmental movements and programs like the 2005 United Nations-affiliated program Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), people throughout the Amazon assiduously and courageously forged innovative initiatives of legal enforcement and sustainable developmentâmany of which this bookâs contributors helped pioneerâthat have become models of conservation worldwide. They range from local programs like green municipalities and community policing to larger schemes of certified timber and protected areas. And they are all boosted by technological leaps like satellite monitoring, which provides data that is skillfully used in policy and public campaigns by organizations like the Amazonian Network of Geo referenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG), which includes many of this bookâs authors. As a result of all these efforts, deforestation in the Amazon began to decline for the first time since rates started being tracked. In 2004 alone, an estimated 2.8 m hectares (10,700 square miles) of the rainforest were razedâan area larger than the state of Massachusetts. But in 2010, that rate dropped by over 66% to about 750,000 hectares (3000 square miles). Deforestation fell in nearly every country; in Colombia and Peru, the annual rate from 2010 to 2013 was half of the rates of the 2005â2010 period.
But ecocide is always one step ahead. While deforestation hit an all-time low in 2011, it is poised to rebound. In Brazil, it rose 28% in 2012 and 2013; nearly two million acres were cut down in that country from August 2015 to July 2016, a sharp jump from the 1.5 million recorded between August 2014 and July 2015. In Venezuela, the rate of 2010â2013 was double the rate of 2005â2010. And in every one of the Basinâs countries, the amount of territory designated as concessions for corporate extraction of hydrocarbons and minerals, or which is being inundated by small-time miners, is at a record high. So too is the amount of land being cultivated with unsustainable exports crops like palm oil and cacao. The myth of the Amazonâs untapped wealth remains as seductive and destructive as it is ultimately elusive. Rather than being emulated, protected areas have become besieged. Rather than being subsidized, sustainable economies have been displaced. Rather than being coveted as greenhouse gas absorbers, 36â57% of the regionâs 15,000 tree species are under threat of extinction. The impressive but shaky edifices of legal protection are easily toppled by the governments that built them or eroded by countless acts of fortune-seeker desecration underneath them. So even as Latin Americaâs environmental laws become clearer and more comprehensive, they are also becoming increasingly incapable of halting deforestation, mining, incursions into protected areas, illegal road building, land appropriations, and other ruinous practices.
This book helps explain why they struggle to halt this onslaught. In its wealth of policy analysis and case studies, it describes a region caught in the pincers of fusion and fragmentation. From one side is a regional move toward extraction of oil and minerals for a ravenous global economy. This race has erased ideological boundaries, bringing in regimes spanning the political spectrum, from the neoliberal right to the socialist leftâas amply discussed in the chapters on Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, which are led by the regionâs most prominent leftists. The commodities boom is simply too tempting; the paradox of plenty too conveniently ignored. Even decades of sustainable development policyâfrom rubber tapping and medicines to eco-tourismâare still no match for grandiose mass extraction. There is also a consolidation of organized crime, whose power burns with the perpetual fuel of high prices, corrupt officials, and opportunities for collaboration. From the other side comes fragmentation. The establishment of new enforcement agencies is a key advance, but counter-productive if they lack support or are corrupt. As discussed in several chapters, in addition, Latin Americaâs unprecedented decentralization has expanded governance but also multiplied the agencies unprepared to resist fraud and coordinate with each other. The criminal justice system too is frayed, with weak linksâsuch as a lack of prosecutors with environmental trainingâthat do not just slow down an already sluggish investigatory process, but often derail it. Protected areas and indigenous peoples are also under siege by a swarm of small-scale miners and large-scale fortune-seekers. This book describes how these threats emerge and how they can be contained and possibly reversed.
The Advent of Environmental Enforcement: Ten Advances
Environmental destruction has become so difficult to curb in part because it is so wide-ranging. Even defining it is a challenge. In the simplest typology, most of it falls in two broad categories: illegal removalâof flora, fauna, minerals, and other natural resources; and illegal additionâof elements, from gold-mining mercury to construction waste. Controlling such a wide spectrum of actions requires an even wider set of enforcing tools to cover each one at each stage, from prevention to prosecution. Among them are regular water testing, protection of witnesses, physically stopping unauthorized transport, monitoring sawmills, deploying nature reserve guards, dismantling drug cartels, and promoting community policingâa tall order for countries still documenting the problem or willfully ignoring it. But ten advances, which helped bring down deforestation after 2004, are a foundation for future progress.
- 1.Constitutional and Penal Law: The countries of the Amazon are among the first not just to include the environment in their constitutions, the highest level of law, but give them full constitutional protection. Around the world, just 24 countries include the full range of environmental protections; of them, five are in the Amazon. 1 In 2008, Ecuador was the first country to constitutionally recognize natureâs rightsâon a level par with humans. Such protection has been bolstered with stronger law in the region. Brazilâs 1998 Environmental Crimes Act is regarded as one of âthe most modern and comprehensive legal texts focus on environmental crimeâ (Division of Environmental Law and Conventions 2012), while Venezuelaâs 2012 Environmental Penal Law gives the statewide leeway against environmental crime. Bolivia created a legal framework for Mother Earth, or Pachamama, while Ecuador added more specific environmental crimes (article 246) to its penal code in 2014.
- 2.Environmental Ministries: Cabinet-level environmental ministries give the environment political power and protection. Nearly every Latin American country has established such a ministry, some of which were separated out from larger ministries, in order to better provide regulations, funds, and policy development. As discussed in the scholarship on Latin America, institutional strength within the state is key to policy effectiveness, and a ministry is a keystone of that political and policy framework. Connected to and encouraged by these ministries have been new units formed to consolidate and direct enforcement efforts. One of the most prominent units was established by Peru, whose directors wrote this bookâs chapter with a detailed focus on how it methodically documents and fights environmental crime in its vast Amazon region.
- 3.Environmental Police: The police long have been empowered to enforce environmental law, but a poor record and the distinct nature of that task has spurred formation of special environment units within the security structure. The need for evidence and witnesses that only on-the-ground policing can attain, along with successes in other regions against animal trafficking and waste exports, have also encouraged this approach. In the global South, as Table 1.1 shows, Latin America pioneered this form of policing, with environmental police units in nearly half of its countries. Amid decentralization, provinces and municipalities are also forming local bodies. And as the chapter on Brazil shows, the need for policing is as great as its potential. Written by one of the countryâs top law enforcement officials, it describes how the federal police turns statistics into firepowerâusing combinations of electronic surveillance, satellite imagery, and institutional coordinations to swoop down red-handed on environmental crime.Table 1.1Primary environmental enforcement agencies in Latin America, by Country, 2015CountryPoliceCriminal Justice UnitsArgentinaUnidad Fiscal de InvestigaciĂłn enMaterial AmbientalBoliviaPolicĂa Forestal y de MedioAmbienteBrazilUnidad do PolicĂa FederalMinisterio PĂșblicoChileJefatura Nacional de DelitosContra Medioambiente yPatrimonio CulturalColombiaPolicĂa de Medio AmbienteUnidad Nacional de FiscalĂas de Delitos contra los Recursos Naturales y el Medio AmbienteCosta RicaFiscalĂa Adjunta Agrario AmbientalDominicanRepublicProcuradurĂa para la Defensa delMedio AmbienteEcuadorUnidad de ProtecciĂłn deAmbienteFiscales de Medio AmbienteEl SalvadorDivisiĂłn de Medio AmbienteUnidad de Medio Ambiente de laFiscalĂa GeneralGuatemalaUnidad Ambiental, Ministerio de SeguridadFiscalĂa de Delitos Contra el AmbienteHondurasFiscal Especial del Medio AmbienteMĂ©xicoFiscalĂa Especializada para laAtenciĂłn de Delitos AmbientalesNicaraguaFiscalĂa General de la RepĂșblicaPanamĂĄDivisiĂłn de Delitos Ambientales,DirecciĂłn de Investigaciones JudicialesParaguayUnidad Fiscal de Delitos AmbientalesPerĂșPolicĂa del Medio AmbienteFiscales Especiales del Medio AmbienteUruguayVenezuelaDirecciĂłn General de Medio Ambiente
- 4.Prosecutors: Since environmental law means little without bringing justice to violators, special new units within the Attorney Generalâs Office (MP: Ministerio PĂșblico) have been established in 13 Latin American countries. Many of them train prosecutors (fiscales) in environmental law and establish local offices around the country. The authorities and responsibilities given to these units vary widely. Prosecutors in some countries can promote public mobilization against environmental crime, for example, while other countries allow local branches to negotiate non-penal resolutions for violations. In all cases, though, t...