An illegal mining area at Tapajos Environmental Protection Area in the municipality of Itaituba, in the Amazon rainforest, on May 21.EVARISTO SA/AFP/Getty Images
Kerry Bowman is a bioethicist and environmentalist at the University of Toronto who is currently engaged in humanitarian and environmental work in eastern Congo and the Amazon.
For decades, the story of the Amazon’s destruction has been told through familiar images: chainsaws, cattle ranches, soy fields and advancing roads. Those threats remain profound. But they no longer capture the full picture.
A more dangerous transformation is under way. The Amazon is not only under environmental assault. It is increasingly under criminal control.
Having worked in conservation and global health in fragile ecological and political environments, and now on projects in the Amazon at the intersection of environment and human well-being, I see what is unfolding as one of the most serious and underrecognized crises I have encountered. This is no longer simply deforestation. It is the convergence of environmental destruction, organized crime and governance paralysis.
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Science warns that the Amazon may be approaching a tipping point.
Once deforestation, drought, fire and warming reinforce one another, large portions of rain forest could shift toward a drier, degraded, savannah-like state. Roughly 14 to 17 per cent of the Amazon has already been cleared, but that figure understates the danger.
Vast additional areas have been weakened by fire, drought, selective logging and fragmentation.
Across the basin, a sprawling illicit economy now thrives. Illegal gold mining, logging, land grabbing and the large-scale harvesting of wildlife, from manatees to turtles and their eggs, have fused with unregulated ranching, sustained by networks of extortion, corruption and money laundering.
This is no longer opportunism at the margins, but co-ordinated, transnational activity.
Criminal organizations long associated with narcotics trafficking have moved aggressively into environmental crime because the profits are high, enforcement is weak and illicit goods can often be laundered into legitimate markets.
Gold is especially attractive: valuable, portable and easy to fold into legal supply chains when oversight is lax. As gold prices surge, illegal mining finances further extraction, intimidation, corruption and territorial control.
The result is a vicious feedback loop: environmental degradation creates criminal opportunity, and criminal governance accelerates environmental destruction.
In some regions, these networks now function as de facto authorities.
They control access to land, rivers, labour and transport routes, substituting for the state where institutions are weak or absent. When Indigenous communities, environmental defenders or local leaders resist, violence often follows.
What appears from afar to be a conservation crisis is also a security crisis.
This matters because the Amazon is not merely a repository of biodiversity. It is one of the planet’s great stabilizing systems. Through moisture recycling and evapotranspiration, the forest helps generate rainfall and sustain agricultural systems far beyond its borders. Continued degradation threatens to disrupt these cycles, intensify drought and increase fire severity.
In some areas, the forest is already losing its capacity to function as a reliable carbon sink.
The consequences extend far beyond South America. A weakened Amazon means greater climate instability, more volatile food systems and more extreme weather in places far from the basin.
There is also an economic blindness in how the world discusses the Amazon. Criminalized forest economies do not simply destroy ecosystems; they distort markets, erode the rule of law, deter legitimate investment and suppress lawful enterprise. They undermine the conditions necessary for sustainable development.
That is especially tragic because the Amazon’s most promising future may lie in sustainable forestry, non-timber forest products, restoration initiatives, fisheries, carbon projects and forest-compatible agriculture. But none of this can flourish where criminal networks dominate. Sustainable economies require secure land tenure, transparent supply chains and functioning governance.
Some Amazonian governments have begun expanding satellite monitoring, strengthening enforcement and improving cross-border co-operation. These are necessary steps. But enforcement alone will not solve the problem. A durable response must confront land insecurity, corruption, weak institutions and the absence of viable livelihoods. It must recognize Indigenous land rights and invest in education, infrastructure and legitimate economic alternatives.
Foreign governments also have a responsibility. They must disrupt the international systems that sustain Amazonian criminality by targeting money-laundering, sanctioning complicit businesses, blocking imports of illegally sourced gold and timber, and ensuring their own markets and institutions are not quietly enabling criminal extraction.
The Amazon is often described as a global public good. It is. But it is also home to tens of millions of people whose futures are bound to the forest.
If we continue treating the Amazon solely as a conservation issue, we will misunderstand the scale of the threat. This is also a crisis of law, power and political will.
Ethically, it matters profoundly. To allow organized crime, corruption and global indifference to dismantle one of Earth’s most vital ecological systems is not merely a policy failure; it is a moral failure. We know what is at stake. If we fail to act while the warning signs are clear, history will judge that we saw the danger and chose complacency.