The world needs a new UN protocol to fight environmental crime

In Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous Territory and across other parts of the Amazon Basin, illegal gold mining has metastasized into a transnational criminal enterprise. What starts with illegal deforestation and mercury poisoning ends with laundered gold flowing into global supply chains. The trade finances organized crime, corrupt officials, and crosses borders via shell companies into Suriname, Guyana and Venezuela, before being sold on to refiners, jewelers and tech manufacturers around the world.