(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Against the backdrop of COP30 – the first United Nations climate conference held in the Amazon – Indigenous communities whose rainforest preservation efforts are key to climate solutions are facing new, violent threats as a UN carbon offset scheme struggles to take hold. This content was published on November 22, 2025 - 09:00 9 minutes

Paula Dupraz-Dobias is an award-winning Geneva-based journalist covering environment, business, international organizations, humanitarian crises and Latin America.

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in Shintuya, Madre de Dios, Peru

In the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, Peru's first co-managed Indigenous area, the most immediate threat to the Amazon isn't global warming, but drug trafficking. Few in this community of 220 speak openly about the struggles they face trying to prevent valuable rainforest from being cleared, despite the early introduction of a UN carbon offset programme in the area more than a decade ago.

“We are afraid to articulate anything publicly against the illegal things that are happening around here, because we are threatened,” says Silvia*, a member of the Harakmbut Indigenous community who requested anonymity. She speaks in whispers about crews clearing forests for coca production allegedly arriving from the central Peruvian drug trafficking hub known as Vraem, and the criminality and violence that has followed. Peru is the world's second-largest producer of cocaine, made from coca leaves, after Colombia.

Earlier in the day, a small Bolivian-registered plane passed over the community – the latest in a series of informal flights that residents believe are tied to drug trafficking. They say traffickers have carved multiple clandestine landing strips out of the jungle.

Last year, two forest guardians from ethnic communities that are part of the reserve were shot after receiving death threats from hitmen, as exposed in a recent reportExternal link. They were part of 27 Indigenous leaders killed in drug or land conflicts in the region since 2020.

“It's very dangerous now to walk around alone. You can only move about in groups of twos or threes to be safe,” says Silvia*. She, like others, worries about crossing paths with illegal settlers when hunting or seeking supplies in the forest.

Illegal activities dominate

This was never the idea when, in the early 2010s, the UN launched REDD+, a programme aimed at providing funding to curb deforestation in developing countries. It was also a precursor to the carbon offset mechanisms on which Switzerland has relied heavily on to meet its carbon goals and which other countries are also adopting. But REDD+ in this part of the Amazon has often become mired in bureaucracy and has so far failed to provide sustainable incomes to people in the area, with land falling instead to the drug trade.
Read more: How REDD+ developed and impacted carbon offset markets

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