Markets and Forest: Regulatory Opportunities in the Amazon – Report 1: MINING

Regulating sectors that impact forests is essential to prevent, reduce, and combat environmental crimes in the Amazon. Illegality does not lie in natural resources themselves, but in how they are extracted, processed, transported, and traded. When markets for gold, timber, cattle, and land operate without effective regulation, illicit practices make their way into legitimate supply chains and often face little consequence. Strengthening the regulatory framework is a concrete way to address criminal activities driving forest loss.

 

This report draws on the study Markets and Forest (Instituto Igarapé, 2025), which analyzed how eight countries in the Amazon Basin—Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela—regulate these markets. Countries in the basin are not starting from scratch. In each, there are rules, registries, and practices that, with adjustments, resources, or better coordination, can strengthen regulation. Many of these tools are little known beyond their national contexts; others are recent and not yet documented. This report compiles these initiatives and presents them as regulatory opportunities, drawing on concrete experiences across the region.

 

This analysis does not assess the effectiveness of these tools or how they operate in practice, which would require dedicated field studies in each country. Its value lies in bringing together what exists but remains scattered, showing how different countries address similar challenges, and offering options that can be adapted, combined, or strengthened to fit each context. Rather than judging what works, it invites exploration of what is already available.

 

The report is organized into three parts: an overview of the timber sector in the Amazon, a set of regulatory opportunities illustrated by experiences from countries in the basin, and a final section synthesizing the patterns that emerge from this comparative review.

 

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Learn more about this topic in the Strengthening Anti-Money Laundering Systems Against Environmental Crime: Comparative Legal and Policy Frameworks in Amazonian Countries and in the Strategic Paper 64 Dynamics of the Ecosystem of Environmental Crimes in the Brazilian Legal Amazon