Actions for Promoting Transparent Natural Resource Governance

The TGNR project identifies a symbiotic relationship between corruption and organized crime that drives illegal gold mining, timber trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and land grabbing in Colombia. These activities undermine national security, cause significant environmental degradation, and result in economic losses through tax evasion and money laundering. The report recommends legal reforms, institutional strengthening, improved information systems, and international cooperation to mitigate these drivers and protect environmental leaders.

• Corruption and organized crime operate in a symbiotic relationship where each facilitates the other. Corruption allows criminal actors to influence decisions and access power through bribes or favoritism, while organized crime provides corrupt political and economic actors with illegal services such as extortion, threats, and assassinations to avoid state surveillance.
• The project prioritizes four primary drivers of deforestation and biodiversity loss: illegal gold mining (covering extraction, processing, commercialization, and exportation), timber trafficking (harvesting, transportation, and primary processing), wildlife trafficking (hunting, transportation, processing, and commercialization), and land grabbing (illegal access to protected lands).
• Illegal natural resource exploitation poses a threat to Colombian national security because these activities generate high revenues comparable to drug trafficking, which are used to fund organized armed groups (GAO and GAOR) and weaken state institutions through corruption.
• The economic impact of these drivers includes lost state revenue from taxes, tariffs, and royalties, as well as the destabilization of the legal economy through money laundering via "criminal dumping," where illegal funds are used to import goods sold below market price.
• Environmental crimes are linked to severe social and human welfare impacts, including the murder of environmental leaders, forced displacement, human trafficking and child prostitution (specifically in the Triple Border area of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil), forced labor, and health risks such as mercury use in gold mining and zoonotic diseases from wildlife trafficking.
• To counteract these drivers, the report recommends specific legal modifications, such as amending Article 46 of Law 1952 of 2019, updating Title XI of the Criminal Code, and amending Article 323 of the Criminal Code to classify environmental crimes as source activities for money laundering.
• The report advocates for strengthening information systems and technological tools to reduce the discretionary power of officials and prevent the laundering of illegal products by linking systems that monitor gold, timber, wildlife, and land access processes.

APA

Barreto, L., & Rautkari, M. (2021). Actions for Promoting Transparent Natural Resource Governance. WWF International. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/378/iocwi5ppl_Executive_Summary_TGNR_FINAL.pdf

Chicago

Barreto, Luis, and Mauri Rautkari. Actions for Promoting Transparent Natural Resource Governance. WWF International, 2021. https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/378/iocwi5ppl_Executive_Summary_TGNR_FINAL.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Barreto |first1=Luis |last2=Rautkari |first2=Mauri |title=Actions for Promoting Transparent Natural Resource Governance |publisher=WWF International |date=7 August 2021 |url=https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/378/iocwi5ppl_Executive_Summary_TGNR_FINAL.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{barreto2021actions, author = {Barreto, Luis and Rautkari, Mauri}, title = {{Actions for Promoting Transparent Natural Resource Governance}}, institution = {WWF International}, year = {2021}, month = aug, url = {https://www.worldwildlife.org/documents/378/iocwi5ppl_Executive_Summary_TGNR_FINAL.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }