Strategies to combat environmental crimes and associated money laundering

We are living through an unprecedented climate crisis that poses an imminent risk to biodiversity and to future generations of our planet. The crisis is driven by the destruction of forests, which play a crucial role in absorbing CO₂, but which now emit more carbon than they absorb in some regions. The Amazon, the largest tropical forest on the planet, is at risk of reaching a tipping point due to accelerated deforestation driven by selective logging, fires linked to agricultural expansion, and understory exploitation. Infrastructure projects such as roads and waterways, as well as illegal logging, drug cultivation, and illegal mining, also contribute significantly. Increasingly present in the lucrative and predatory exploitation of markets for products of environmental or rural origin, environmental crime is estimated to generate between USD 110 billion and USD 281 billion per year through practices that introduce illegally obtained natural resources into the formal economy — a process known as “environmental asset laundering.” This context highlights the need to strengthen techniques for preventing, detecting, and investigating environmental asset laundering and its associated financial flows. Reinforcing mechanisms such as risk alerts, strategic data use, and interoperability between information systems — in addition to closing regulatory gaps and addressing institutional weaknesses — are also essential steps. This collection of articles presents initiatives that have already been implemented and have shown promising results. They were presented at the Third Regional Meeting, “Strategies to Address Environmental Asset Laundering and Associated Financial Flows,” organized by the Igarapé Institute with support from the Latin American Financial Action Task Force (Gafilat) in November 2024 in São Paulo. The event aimed to foster the exchange of experiences and inspire the adoption of good practices, offering relevant insights for the design of public policies.