Drug trade, land grabs threaten Amazon communities on climate front lines

The community of Shintuya on the banks of the Alto Madre de Dios River in Peru has long struggled with deforestation Paula Dupraz-Dobias

Against the backdrop of COP30 – the first United Nations climate conference held in the Amazon – Indigenous communities whose rainforest preservation efforts are key to climate solutions are facing new, violent threats as a UN carbon offset scheme struggles to take hold.

In the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, Peru’s first co-managed Indigenous area, the most immediate threat to the Amazon isn’t global warming, but drug trafficking. Few in this community of 220 speak openly about the struggles they face trying to prevent valuable rainforest from being cleared, despite the early introduction of a UN carbon offset programme in the area more than a decade ago.

“We are afraid to articulate anything publicly against the illegal things that are happening around here, because we are threatened,” says Silvia*, a member of the Harakmbut Indigenous community who requested anonymity. She speaks in whispers about crews clearing forests for coca production allegedly arriving from the central Peruvian drug trafficking hub known as Vraem, and the criminality and violence that has followed. Peru is the world’s second-largest producer of cocaine, made from coca leaves, after Colombia.

Earlier in the day, a small Bolivian-registered plane passed over the community – the latest in a series of informal flights that residents believe are tied to drug trafficking. They say traffickers have carved multiple clandestine landing strips out of the jungle.

Last year, two forest guardians from ethnic communities that are part of the reserve were shot after receiving death threats from hitmen, as exposed in a recent reportExternal link. They were part of 27 Indigenous leaders killed in drug or land conflicts in the region since 2020.

“It’s very dangerous now to walk around alone. You can only move about in groups of twos or threes to be safe,” says Silvia*. She, like others, worries about crossing paths with illegal settlers when hunting or seeking supplies in the forest. 

Illegal activities dominate

This was never the idea when, in the early 2010s, the UN launched REDD+, a programme aimed at providing funding to curb deforestation in developing countries. It was also a precursor to the carbon offset mechanisms on which Switzerland has relied heavily on to meet its carbon goals and which other countries are also adopting. But REDD+ in this part of the Amazon has often become mired in bureaucracy and has so far failed to provide sustainable incomes to people in the area, with land falling instead to the drug trade.

Read more: How REDD+ developed and impacted carbon offset markets

Many Indigenous communities were skeptical of the plan from the outset, which promised developing countries like Peru compensation to preserve forests through financial and technical assistance. But amid a long history of mistrust between the government and Indigenous groups, communities suspected that the deals could lead to entrepreneurial land-grabs and restrictions on access to their territories.

Shintuya is surrounded by dense forest that has increasingly been used as cover for the drug trade Paula Dupraz-Dobias

Today, in other parts of the Amarakaeri reserve, illegal gold mining, road construction and unlawful logging have led instead to deforestation, and drug-trafficking activity has intensified. According to a 2024 studyExternal link by an Amazon monitoring group, nearly 20,000 hectares of forest – roughly twice the size of Paris – were lost to illegal activities this century.

Read more: Why Switzerland struggles with dirty goldExternal link

Forest preservation and finance were central themes in climate policy discussed at COP30 in Belém, Brazil. But inhabitants here say they receive little recognition and almost no financial support for their efforts to maintain one of the world’s most crucial areas for managing carbon emissions.

Doubts over carbon credit schemes

In 2002, following an 18-year struggle by local communities seeking recognition of their ancestral lands and greater governance, the Peruvian government established the Amarakaeri reserve, a protected area including more than 400,000 hectares and 10 Indigenous groups. When the UN launched REDD+ less than a decade later, Amarakaeri was one of the first places it looked to curb deforestation by working with national partners and communities to maintain forests. But they immediately faced pushback.

A family from Shintuya unloads bananas at the port. Every Wednesday, a truck arrives to buy the community’s banana production. Sebastian Castaneda

“Amazonian Indigenous peoples and above all Indigenous organisations said that they were not going to accept REDD+ and wouldn’t be part of the sale of REDD+ carbon credits,” says Walter Quertehuari Dariquebe, president of the reserve’s indigenous co-managers (ECA), which partners with the Peruvian national parks agency. He says locals refused to accept the programme because of a lack of confidence in the international conservation system and in the duty of the government to protect them. 

Several Peruvian communities launched a pilot project – Indigenous Amazonian REDD+ (RIA) – as an alternative. It aimed to guard against abuse by corporate “carbon pirates” and implement responsible strategies to curb deforestation, while aligning with national climate targets.

Community leaders worked hard, Quertehuari explains, to convince Indigenous communities that forest conservation was a financial opportunity rather than a liability. The pilot project introduced incentive payments to conserve forests, though the compensation has remained limited at just PEN 10 (roughly $2.50) per hectare per year. Swissinfo was told that monthly incomes in the area, mostly from banana sales, crafts and tourism, range between PEN 400 to 900 (around $120 to $270).

Need for continuity

Earlier this month, Fernando Shinbo Vera, a community leader in the reserve’s community of Shintuya, waited to plant 25,000 cacao trees received as part of the reserve’s first project to include the sale of carbon credits under the revised REDD+ scheme.

The trees are meant to help families generate sustainable incomes while preserving forests. But Shimbo was still awaiting technical support to plant the saplings, and time was running out before the plants outgrew their small plastic bags. He says that when the community cleared areas for the plantation, it mistakenly breached zoning rules he maintains were never communicated to them by the government, which the Indigenous reserve co-manager denies. Land claims in the reserve buffer zone, where agriculture is allowed, remain unresolved.

“We need to be better trained to be able to move forward, as well as have continuity with the projects,” the 48-year-old leader says. 

Fernando Shinbo with his cacao plants. Sebastian Castaneda

Some blame the Peruvian national parks agency which co-manages the reserve for not adequately supporting project implementation. “There aren’t enough reserve watchmen, and the communal territorial guardians don’t have the tools to defend themselves [against drug traffickers and others who want access to the land],” one villager notes. A recent investigationExternal link found that a shortage of state funding limited the agency’s ability to protect natural ecosystems.

Other issues around calculating the land’s carbon value further complicated funding for the project from a foreign pension fund, which has since been withdrawn.

Too many risks

In 2018 the reserve was awarded Green List accreditation – with potential to attract financing – by the Geneva-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). But that accreditation lapsed over a year ago, and Cristina López Wong of IUCN in Peru says rising deforestation may pose a problem for recertification.

“The state has the duty to ensure that conditions exist for an effective management of protected areas and in buffer zones for forests,” she said.

A pickup truck drives along the road through Shintuya at night. According to locals, trucks and motorcycles travel along the road at night because there are clandestine airstrips near Shintuya used by drug traffickers. Sebastian Castaneda

In Shintuya, residents fear that without further support, their dangerous situation may only get worse. Lacking gainful employment opportunities, some people have been drawn into the drug trade.

Gabriel Labbate is the climate mitigation unit head at UN-REDD at the UN Environment Programme. Together with other UN agencies, he works directly with countries where forests are located to provide them the technical and financial means to avoid deforestation. He acknowledges that frontier regions such as Amarakaeri and other reserves are “really dangerous places and can be very violent” for communities. But he stresses that UN-REDD – even with its limited international funding – remains crucial for “empowering Indigenous people as the guarantors of forest protection and ensuring they are not overrun by illegal activities.”

On the ground, few residents trust state’s commitment to helping them protect their forests and accuse authorities of enabling illicit activities.

A checkpoint in the Shintuya region where officials look for signs of illegal activities Sebastian Castaneda

At a coca-control checkpoint on the main road to Cusco — located beyond clearly visible coca fields — Swissinfo observed cursory vehicle inspections, which became slightly more thorough only after being asked to show press accreditation. 

“They never find drugs, though they should,” says a Harakmbut resident as he unloads bananas grown with support from a forest-preservation project, bound for sale in Cusco at PEN 10–18 ($2.50–5) per 25-kilogram stalk. “They say they’re not prepared.”

*Name changed to protect anonymity

Edited by Gabe Bullard and Veronica DeVore/sb