Cocaine-Fueled Narco Laundering Is Accelerating Deforestation, UN Warns
- Traffickers are increasingly turning to logging, gold mining
- Main Amazon countries grow and manufacture nearly all cocaine
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Drug trafficking proceeds increasingly are getting laundered into illegal logging, ranching and gold mining in the Amazon in a development that is accelerating deforestation of the rain forest, according to a United Nations report.
Drug trafficking groups in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are diversifying into these environmental crimes, and are leveraging their existing supply chains to transport timber, gold and even wildlife from the Amazon, according to the findings of the World Drug Report 2023.