Partnering with the Nature Crime Alliance to Fight Environmental Crimes in the Amazon

October 24, 2023

We are proud to be a founding member of the recently-established Nature Crime Alliance (NCA), a global multi-sector initiative to fight environmental crimes across the globe, led by the World Resources Institute (WRI). Through this joint initiative, we will be working with NGOs and local governments to raise political awareness, implement financial commitment, and strengthen operational capacity to initiate solutions to nature crimes by bringing change and positive impacts to life. Other founding partners in this alliance include the government of Norway’s development agency (Norad), the Wildlife Justice Commission, the conservation news platform Mongabay, and more. 

Environmental and nature crimes can come in the form of logging, mining, wildlife trade, land conversion, crimes associated with fishing, and various illegal activities that pose a threat to the environment. These harmful activities pose a major threat to the world’s vital ecosystems, incredible biodiversity, diverse economies, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and the global climate. Without a concerted international effort to tackle nature crimes, these crimes have now become the largest financial driver of terrorism and other forms of conflict across the globe. The Nature Crime Alliance has emerged to fill this gap and amplify global efforts to fight back against nature crimes.

This alliance aligns well with Amazon Conservation’s long history of fighting environmental crimes in the Peruvian Amazon. From 2016-2020, we built a real-time satellite-based monitoring system that directly supported the Peruvian government in creating the National System of Control and Monitoring (Sistema Nacional) and improved the capacity of local forest users to monitor and protect their lands. This project was made possible thanks to the support from Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) through the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), which is currently funding the project “Technology Meets Policy: Real-time Monitoring and Action in the Amazon,” a five-year initiative aimed at reducing deforestation from illegal activities within the territories of the indigenous target groups in Ecuador and Peru while addressing gaps in deforestation prevention by linking technology and real-time monitoring with improved governance. 

To continue our efforts in combating illegal deforestation and improving governance, Amazon Conservation’s President John Beavers explains that “for us, the Nature Crime Alliance is such an important group to be part of, because to bring together the critical mass of organizations, resources, and the focus needed to be able to fight illegal deforestation at scale, whether it’s the Amazon or across the world, is a key piece to make conservation, sustainable development, and social justice work.”

To read the full statement on the Nature Crime Alliance’s objectives and approach, click here.