The Criminal Underside of the Green Transition: How Critical Minerals Could Turn the Amazon into a Strategic Asset, or a Criminalized Supply Chain Frontier

Image: IBAMA (2026)

This report argues that a ‘narco-mineral complex’ is emerging in parts of the Amazon Basin, linking illegal mining, criminal governance, corrupt administration and apparently legal trade. Most exploration for critical minerals remains legal, and criminal groups are still less embedded in critical minerals than in illegal gold. Yet rising prices and the region’s mature illicit infrastructure are creating new vulnerabilities. Drawing on cases from Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela, it shows how illicit ore can be made to appear legal. The central paradox is that the race to power a clean-energy future could deepen deforestation, mercury contamination, Indigenous dispossession and organized crime in one of the world’s most important climate and biodiversity systems.