Amazon Summit: United against organized crime

Last week’s summit in Belém brought – apart from the founding of an international anti-deforestation alliance – progress about which little has been reported so far: In their final declaration, the eight Amazon states agreed to take joint action against organized crime across national borders in the future. The illegal activities of the mafia are a major driver of environmental destruction in the Amazon, but the issue has played virtually no role in the international forest conservation debate. Experts now see the fact that the Amazon Summit dealt with the issue at all as progress.