Global attention to the environmental challenges facing the Amazon has increased ahead of the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), which will take place in Belém, the capital of Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon, in November 2025.

This moment offers a rare opportunity to position the voices of the Amazon’s environmental defenders at the centre of policy discussions around the intersecting environmental and human security crises facing what is one of the most critical biomes for global conversation efforts.

As front-line defenders of the rainforest, Indigenous, quilombola (maroon) and riverine leaders have a deep understanding of the illicit economies, capacity shortfalls and extractive pressures affecting the Amazon. Their insights are essential to building more legitimate and effective responses to environmental crime.

This policy brief is the outcome of a two-day ECO-SOLVE community dialogue organized by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). Bringing together leaders from across the Brazilian states of Pará and Acre, the dialogue prioritized lived experience over elite narratives and grounded expertise over technical abstraction. The result is a set of community-informed findings and policy recommendations aimed at shifting how governments, donors and multilateral actors engage with the Amazon region.

One of the clearest messages to emerge from the dialogue is that efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest are systematically hindered by relationships with state authorities. Participants described widespread police violence and systemic impunity for environmental violations.

They also pointed to how private sector actors, particularly agribusiness and infrastructure developers, exploit legal loopholes and weak consultation processes to expand into Indigenous and traditional territories. Far from isolated issues, these patterns reflect a broader political economy in which cycles of violence and community exploitation empower environmental criminals to expand across the Amazon.

Yet the dialogue was not only a diagnosis of harm. Participants offered a powerful reframing of nature and territory – not as commodities, but as interconnected systems of life, knowledge and identity. They shared strategies that they are already implementing to counter environmental crime in the Amazon, including community policing and sustainable development initiatives.

These are not symbolic gestures, but are scalable models for prevention, resilience and justice that call out for international support. Participants called for deeper inclusion in policymaking spaces, including at COP30. They also proposed reforms to Brazil’s consultation laws, new federal interventions in areas overrun by environmental crime, and increased investment in community-led alternatives to environmentally harmful economic activities. Additionally, they emphasized the urgent need for harsher penalties for environmental violations and specialized training for law enforcement and prosecutors working in the Amazon.

In amplifying these demands, this brief supports a community-driven blueprint to rebalance power and restore justice in the world’s most vital rainforest.