Amazon Watch

Amazon and civil society mobilization Just Showed the World How to Win at the U.N. A vote in Vienna and an election in Brazil were both decided by organized citizens who had been expected to lose. On Friday, October 23, after a week of closed-door bargaining and open resistance from some of the world's most powerful governments, the parties to the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organized Crime voted to begin negotiating a new protocol on crimes that affect the environment. The result was 83 in favor, 12 against and 27 abstentions, or 87.37 percent of votes cast, far above the two-thirds majority required. The new instrument would target the trafficking of wildlife and timber, illegal mining, the trafficking of minerals and precious metals, and waste trafficking. It would become the fourth protocol to the Palermo Convention, alongside those on human trafficking, migrant smuggling and firearms. Its purpose is to close a legal gap. In many countries environmental offenses are not classified as “serious crimes,” so prosecutors cannot use the convention's provisions on extradition, mutual legal assistance and asset confiscation against those who profit from them. In the Amazon, gold, critical minerals, timber and cash cross borders where definitions and penalties do not match. Brazil had been working toward this vote for two years. In 2024, it tabled a resolution with France and Peru at the previous conference of the parties, creating an expert group to examine the gaps in international law. In May 2025, a Brazilian resolution adopted by the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention recognized illegal mining and wildlife trafficking as environmental crimes of the utmost gravity. In November 2025, in Rio de Janeiro, Environment Minister Marina Silva launched the Coalition for Multilateral Action against Crimes that Affect the Environment, with the explicit goal of a binding framework under the Palermo Convention. Months later, the coalition grew to 16 countries and 10 civil society organizations, including the @GI_TOC, the @TheWCS, the @EIA_News, @igarape_org, and @AmazonUworld. Governments and nongovernmental organizations rarely share a coalition in U.N. crime negotiations, which have long been the territory of justice ministries and police agencies. Brazil built that alliance into its strategy, relying on the organizations for field evidence and contacts while its diplomats worked to secure the votes. Much of the argument was made outside the negotiating rooms, by people who had traveled from the places where these crimes happen. The conference drew more than 2,100 participants from 142 countries and representatives of 320 nongovernmental organizations. At its center was a delegation of Indigenous leaders from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, coordinated by @amazonwatch. They addressed the plenary, met diplomatic missions and pressed governments to treat Indigenous territorial governance as a pillar of global security. The delegation included Patricia Gualinga of Ecuador, a member of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; Galois Flores of Peru's Wampis Nation; and Francisco Da Silva Piyako, from Brazil's Juruá region. Brayan Mojanasinsoy, an Inga leader from Colombia, put it plainly: “Without us, Indigenous peoples, there is no security in the Amazon.” Amazon Underworld, the cross-border alliance of investigative journalists founded and co-directed by @BramEbus, attended a UNTOC Conference of the Parties for the first time. In its plenary intervention, it presented findings that in Colombia and Peru the illicit minerals trade now generates more revenue than cocaine trafficking, and that weak traceability lets illegal gold and critical minerals reach international buyers through ports, free trade zones and foreign refineries. The organization took the same evidence to three side events with partners including Amazon Watch, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, Brazil, Peru, the United Kingdom and UNODC, and published a report on gold, critical minerals and organized crime in Colombia and Venezuela. @MCabreraLeal, Colombia's former vice minister of environment, who works with Amazon Underworld as a consultant on mineral supply chains and the UNTOC process, said its investigations into the Amazon's minerals trade served as input to the discussions. Before the vote, @PasqualatoAlice of the Wildlife Conservation Society read a statement on behalf of 19 organizations urging states to open negotiations. After it, she called the result “a landmark moment in the global fight against environmental crime.” Brazil's delegation called the decision historic and thanked civil society for pressing the issue. About a dozen governments opposed the process from the start, and the outcome remained uncertain until the votes appeared on the screen. The United States tabled three amendments that would likely have delayed the negotiations and complicated their funding. At Brazil's request, each was voted down. The United States, Argentina, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela were among the 12 countries that then voted against the resolution itself. Brazil kept its co-sponsors on board: Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Uruguay, along with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritania and São Tomé and Príncipe. Mr. Cabrera, who was in the room, credited Itamaraty, Brazil's foreign ministry, with an outstanding diplomatic effort. Two days later, on Sunday, October 25, President @LulaOficial Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva did something no Brazilian candidate had managed since the return of direct elections in 1989. He lost the first round and won the runoff, and there, too, the outcome depended on mobilization. Three weeks earlier, Lula had trailed Senator @FlavioBolsonaro by 2.2 million votes. On October 25 he won with 51.79 percent, a margin of more than 4.4 million, after adding more than 10 million votes between rounds. Abstention fell from 21.08 percent to about 19.2 percent, which brought nearly three million more Brazilians to the polls. The Amazon voted differently. In the first round, Flávio Bolsonaro carried Brazil's North region, and none of the nine states of the Legal Amazon elected a governor from Lula's Workers' Party. Across Latin America, conservatives had won seven presidential elections in a row over the previous 18 months, in countries including Chile, Honduras and Bolivia, and Lula's victory ended that run. Analysts point to his campaign's economic proposals and to his strength in the Northeast, where he carried all nine states. They also describe an unusual degree of mobilization after the first round. Social movements, unions and student groups held rallies in dozens of cities, and young Brazilians organized online without waiting for the party. The race was bitterly contested, and Bolsonaro has rejected the result. Diplomacy in Vienna and an election in Brazil follow different rules. In both cases, though, the result came from institutions working alongside organized citizens in contests that were far from decided. Civil society's influence shows in the text of the Vienna resolution. For the first time, it explicitly recognizes the role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in fighting environmental crime and related corruption. That recognition does not, by itself, give Indigenous representatives a role in the negotiations. The resolution creates no mechanism to guarantee their participation. An ad hoc committee will hold four sessions, aiming to present a draft protocol to the next Conference of the Parties, in 2028. Much of the work is still ahead. Environmental crime runs through gold refineries, commodity markets and financial systems far from the Amazon, and a treaty written without the people who face these networks every day is likely to miss how they operate. Over the next two years, Amazon Underworld will push for illegal mining and mineral trafficking to stay within the protocol's scope, and for traceability obligations that extend to refineries, free trade zones and consumer markets. It will keep bringing evidence from the field to the negotiations, working with the Indigenous organizations and partners it met in Vienna. Vienna showed that countries of the Global South can set the agenda when they act together and give civil society a real role. The negotiations ahead will test whether that arrangement holds until a treaty is signed. By Julia de Moraes Almeida, advocacy consultant for Amazon Underworld.