The World Drug Report 2023 warned against drug cultivation in the Amazon rainforest, which is the main threat to the largest forest on the planet, which can have devastating effects on the region and the world, in addition to illegal gold mining , according to the newspaper Espanyol.
The head of Brazil’s anti-narcotics agency, Marta Machado, acknowledged that the rapid progress of cartels in the Amazon rainforest had led to a “very difficult situation that needed to be resolved urgently in the region.”
According to the report, drug cultivation leads to illegal logging, mining and wildlife trafficking, but also to human crimes against indigenous people, such as murder, sexual violence, labor exploitation, forced displacement and mercury poisoning, such as result of illegal gold mining.
Drug trafficking in the three border areas, where Brazil, Colombia and Peru meet, “is probably one of the most intense gatherings of criminal organizations on the planet,” the report noted.
In Brazil, where approximately 60% of the forest area is located, between 2019 and 2023, Jair Bolsonaro’s state was fatal for the Amazon and during those four years, the extreme right tried to strengthen the mining sector through its politics pro-mineral and, at the end of his mandate, Deforestation in Brazil accounted for 43% of the global loss of forest cover in tropical primary forests Global Forest”, when it was a quarter in 2015, according to the World Forest Report.
In January 2023, President Lula da Silva’s accession to power brought hope to reverse the devastation of the last four years, putting an end to illegal deforestation in the Amazon region, before 2030, between January and May, and the destruction of The land fell 31% compared to last year, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, INPE.
