Enforcing environmental law in the Amazon

Abstract This article identifies the underlying obstacles to enforcement of laws against environmental crimes such as illegal logging, mining and ranching. With four departments (provinces) from Colombia as case studies, it assesses enforcement of the country's main environmental law, Law 2111, which is one of Latin America's strongest. The article has four sections. First is the introduction, followed by a methods section that lays out the methodology, case, sources and relevant literature. The second section is a mixed methods analysis that explains three inter‐connected obstacles to enforcement: state capacity, organized crime and economic activities. Those conditions are then used to analyse actual cases in the years that Law 2111 has been in effect. The final section is a policy‐centred discussion to show how the article's analysis can be replicated for enforcement in other countries and how it can be applied to scholarship. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.