Carving Up the Amazon
How questionable companies bought and cleared vast tracts of the Peruvian Amazon with government complicity
Palm oil and cocoa companies are driving deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon while committing illegalities with government complicity.
Peru’s Congress recently rushed to approve new legislation that legalized much of the unlawful deforestation by some of the companies featured in the report. As a result, tainted palm oil and cocoa produced by firms that operated for years with impunity may continue being traded to unwitting European and Peruvian consumers, setting a dangerous precedent risking more illegal Amazon clearance in the future.
EIA calls for the EU, U.K., U.S., Norway and Germany – all providing aid to conserve tropical forests and some of which expressed concern about how the new law would impact those efforts – to work with the Peruvian government to convince it to repeal the forest law modification, increase transparency in the land sector, hold accountable companies and state officials involved in illegality, comprehensively reform state institutions and promote laws that protect, rather than harm, the Amazon and the people that depend on it.
