Operation ENCANTO, in collaboration with IUCN Netherlands and other partners, is an ongoing long-term intelligence-gathering operation aimed at investigating environmental crime convergence causing deforestation and destruction of the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil and Colombia, particularly as it relates to land grabbing, cattle ranching, and illegal mining.

The operation’s goals are to enhance law enforcement’s capacity to understand, investigate, detect, and prevent environmental crime in the Amazon region, as well as its connection to larger organized crime networks that span the globe. We aim to reduce criminal groups’ ability to profit from the wholesale destruction of the Amazon Rainforest.

As the operation is ongoing, our ability to provide updates or share more information is limited due to security concerns.

The deforestation of the Amazon is not simply a conservation issue. This phenomenon is driven by a complex convergence of criminal activities. These criminal activities include illegal logging, illegal cattle ranching, illicitly harvested timber, drug trafficking, money laundering, wildlife trafficking, incursion into protected areas, mining, and land appropriations. Ultimately, environmental crime and its convergence with other serious crimes underlie and perpetuate the destruction of the Amazon’s biodiversity, ecosystems, and species, as well as the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

This complex project builds upon ELI’s years of working in the field, especially its operations and services in Latin America over the past eight years. Our work in Latin America has greatly advanced a deeper understanding of environmental crimes and converging criminal activities in this region. Through these operations, ELI has collected, analyzed, and disseminated large amounts of data and first-hand information related to environmental crimes in the region.