The Amazon accounts for more than half of all rural conflicts in Brazil today. Regions such as Amacro - which encompasses parts of Acre, Amazonas and Rondônia - are emerging as new hotspots of violence, where economic expansion advances hand in hand with land grabbing, deforestation and murder.

FURTHER READING: A RECKONING IN THE AMAZON

In international public debate, war and the environment are still largely treated as separate issues. On one side are armed conflicts, humanitarian crises and geopolitical disputes. On the other are deforestation, climate change and threats against environmental defenders. 

This separation, however, no longer reflects reality. In the Amazon, these dimensions overlap. Environmental destruction is not merely a consequence — it is part of an active process of territorial dispute, economic control and the exercise of power. 

Historical

Even though some territories are not officially at war, their inhabitants live under conditions more commonly associated with war. The Amazon stands as one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. 

In the region, violence is rarely isolated: it is structural. Land grabbing, deforestation, illegal mining, large-scale gold extraction, drug trafficking, illegal logging and money laundering do not operate in separate compartments. 

On the contrary, they function in coordination, as gears within the same system that transforms the forest into an economic asset and territory into an arena of dispute. In this context, the forest ceases to be merely an environmental heritage and becomes a strategic site.

Controlling land means controlling natural resources, logistical routes, production chains and local political power. Rivers become criminal corridors. Deforested areas are converted into irregular occupations. Territories weakened by the absence of the state become zones of institutional vulnerability.

The latest data from Brazil’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) help illustrate the scale of this scenario. 

In its most recent annual report, the organisation recorded more than 2,000 rural conflicts in Brazil — the second-highest figure in its historical series — with significant increases in practices such as criminal fires (up 113 per cent) and illegal deforestation (up 39 per cent). 

Conflicts

The Amazon concentrates the majority of these cases (1,180 out of 2,185 conflicts), consolidating its position as the centre of land-related violence in the country.

This scenario is not abstract. It is embodied in people, territories, and histories. It was in the Amazon that Chico Mendes was murdered for defending the forest and the peoples who live within it. His death was not an isolated episode — it was part of a process that remains ongoing.

It was this war that killed Chico Mendes. And it is this same war that continues killing today. 

Decades later, leaders continue to be threatened, criminalised and murdered for protecting their territories. Indigenous peoples, quilombola communities, riverine populations, extractivists and other traditional communities are frequently on the frontlines of protection. 

These groups raise awareness about  invasions, monitor deforestation, preserve sustainable ways of life and maintain real barriers against predatory expansion. For this reason, they become targets of threats, intimidation, criminalisation and lethal violence.

The increase in violence in the Amacro region dramatically illustrates the continuity of this dispute. The region represents one of the new frontiers of economic expansion in the Amazon, where the advance of agribusiness and irregular occupation is accompanied by land conflicts, violence and killings. Only in 2023, eight murders linked to these disputes were recorded. 

Multiplier

These are not exceptions — they are signs of a pattern accompanying the disorderly advance over the forest.

Acre, the state where Chico Mendes lived and died, has once again become prominent, ranking among the ten Brazilian states with the highest number of land conflicts. In 2024, 59 land-related conflicts were recorded, involving evictions, destruction of homes, threats and attacks against communities. The violence has not disappeared. It has reorganised itself.

When a community leader is murdered, public reaction often treats the case as an isolated incident. It is not. In many contexts, such killings represent the elimination of an “obstacle” to illegal or abusive economic expansion. The murder of environmental defenders must also be understood as a mechanism of territorial control.

The climate crisis intensifies this process. Water scarcity, pressure on land, competition for strategic minerals, the expansion of agricultural frontiers and the growing value of natural assets increase local and regional disputes. 

Climate is no longer merely a backdrop: it has become a multiplier of tensions. To speak about climate policy, therefore, is also to speak about public security, democratic governance and conflict prevention.

Protection

Even so, institutional responses remain fragmented. Environmental crimes are frequently treated as administrative infractions or minor offences. Human rights violations follow separate institutional pathways. Corruption, money laundering and organised crime are handled in isolated arenas. The result is predictable: they face issues that are inherently interconnected through compartmentalised responses.

There is also a serious accountability gap. In many cases, the law reaches the local operator: the invader, the intermediary, the direct perpetrator. But it rarely reaches the financiers, economic beneficiaries, global supply chains and corporate structures profiting from destruction. Those held accountable are the visible edge of the problem; the economic core remains protected.

This failure is not only Brazilian. It is global. International markets consume commodities linked to deforestation. Investors finance activities with high socio-environmental risk. 

Companies outsource impacts throughout supply chains. Financial institutions operate far from the territories where the damage materialises. Meanwhile, local communities bear the human, cultural, social and ecological costs.

For this reason, international law and national legal systems must advance on three paths.

The first is recognising environmental defenders as central agents of climate protection and territorial democracy. This requires real protection mechanisms, swift investigation of threats as the state prioritizes violence prevention. Posthumous tributes and statements of condemnation are not enough.

Biodiversity

The second is strengthening forensic capacity and international cooperation. Satellite monitoring, supply chain traceability, financial forensics, territorial intelligence and transnational cooperation are now indispensable tools. Without robust evidence, impunity will remain the cheapest fuel for destruction.

The third is expanding economic accountability. This includes corporate due diligence obligations, supply chain transparency, control of financial flows and effective sanctions against those benefiting from socio-environmental violations. 

The growing international debate around ecocide — though still under development — reflects an increasing understanding that massive environmental harm cannot remain without proportionate response.

In Brazil’s case, the Amazon should occupy a central place in any serious strategy for development, security and international positioning. Not only because of its biodiversity, but because it concentrates on some of the most complex challenges of the 21st century: climate, sovereignty, organised crime, inequality, territorial and socio-environmental rights, and institutional governance.

Destruction

Persisting in the idea that this is merely an “environmental agenda” is a strategic mistake. The Amazon is also an economic agenda, a democratic agenda and a security agenda.

Brazil possesses the technical capacity, institutions and civil society capable of leading innovative responses. What is often lacking is the willingness to abandon sectoral thinking and recognise the systemic dimension of the problem.

The war the world imagines is the one appearing in headlines accompanied by tanks, militarised borders and formal declarations. The war unfolding across parts of the Amazon is silent, diffuse and persistent. It manifests itself through chainsaws, dredging machines, clandestine airstrips, unreported threats and bodies fallen far from the cameras.

It was this war that killed Chico Mendes. And it is this same war that continues killing today. It may not receive the same name. But it produces fear, invasion, death and territorial destruction. And ignoring it is a political choice far too costly for Brazil and for the world.

These Authors

Angela Mendes is a socio-environmental activist and environmental management specialist. She currently serves as executive president of the Chico Mendes Committee, a movement created to preserve and disseminate the memory and ideals of rubber tapper leader Chico Mendes, who was assassinated in 1988 while fighting for the conservation of the Amazon and the world’s tropical forests. The Chico Mendes Committee is also part of Conexão Cipó, a network formed by ten civil society organisations from Acre working to defend socio-environmental rights.

Pricila Cardoso de Aquino is a PhD candidate in socio-environmental law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR) and holds a master’s degree in environment and development from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). She is climate and Latin America coordinator at the Environmental Defender Law Center (EDLC), which is part of Conexão Cipó, a network formed by ten civil society organisations from Acre working to defend socio-environmental rights.