Illicit Trade in Natural Resources

Illicit mining in Nigeria

Taiwo Lawrence Adeyemi

Illegal mining activities cost Nigeria $9 billion annually. Across the country, weak governance and law enforcement have created opportunities for terrorist groups to establish control over territory and carry out illegal mining operations. By exploiting natural resources, they establish safe havens, training camps, and logistical networks to support their operations. Illegal mining is linked to banditry, money laundering, bribery and corruption, illicit financial flows, and human and weapons trafficking. Reports that illegal Chinese miners operating in parts of the country pay bandits to guard their sites show how terrible the situation is. Sadly, the government has failed to wield the big stick against the perpetrators of the heinous economic crime.

Craving Gold and Capturing Fish: The role of OCGs in illegal resource extraction in South America

Dr Simon Sneddon

This paper uses a combination of the CRAVED and CAPTURED models alongside law enforcement and other data to highlight the economic, social, and ecological costs of illegal resource extraction by organised crime. The primary focus of the paper is on illegal gold extraction in Brazil, and the poaching of Arapaima, a large freshwater fish, in Guyana. The paper concludes that the actions of Organised Crime Groups and other illegal actors undermine the social and ecological fabric of the societies in which they occur, and that the profits are used both to fund other OCG activities, and bolster ongoing control. 

Geographic relationship between deforestation, climate changes, conflicts, and violence in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Rafael Mazoni

During the last two decades, the violence in Brazil has started to spread to smaller cities and, more recently, to more remote areas. These areas have turned into a scenario of illicit markets – such as the transnational illegal drugs traffic, fish trafficking, and, especially in Minas Gerais state, illegal logging, and the illicit extraction of gold and other minerals. 

It appears to be a complex, circular relationship between climate change, deforestation, conflict, and crime in Minas Gerais, Brazil. This presentation aims to analyze these relationships in space, to better understand these interconnected issues, through an innovative geospatial and cartographic approach based on the bibliography on climate change and its application to security and defense.