The Amazon at Risk: Student’s research highlights need for regional strategy

The world’s largest rainforest has become a hotspot for organized crime. Home to 10% of the world’s known species, 20% of its fresh water and over 2 million Indigenous people, the Amazon is also plagued by illegal gold mining, logging, land grabbing and drug trafficking.

“These transnational crimes are accelerating deforestation, violence and humanitarian crises,” shared Antonella Di Ciano, a second-year Duke Master of International Development Policy (MIDP) fellow.

Spanning eight countries and one overseas territory – Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana – the rainforest transcends borders, functioning as a single interconnected biome.

“These criminal networks exploit jurisdictional gaps and weak governance, operating across borders with far more coordination than the governments tasked with stopping them,” Di Ciano explained.

“One of the most alarming examples of this reality is Venezuela’s Arco Minero del Orinoco, a government-established mining zone that has become a hotspot of environmental destruction and organized crime,” she added. “In February 2025, members of the Ye’kwana Indigenous community tried to expel illegal miners from their territory and, in retaliation, had their homes burned to the ground. These violent attacks went almost entirely unreported."

"This was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of ecocide and invisibilized suffering.”

Bridging borders with data to combat ecocide

Born and raised in Venezuela with ancestral roots in the Pemón community of the Amazon, Di Ciano grew up listening to her grandmother’s stories “of a forest that breathes, that gives and takes, that teaches us how to live with respect for the Earth.”

“But those stories are now memories of a place that is rapidly disappearing,” Di Ciano said.

For her MIDP Master’s Project, Di Ciano is researching how regional coordination among Amazonian countries can be strengthened to effectively address environmental crimes that transcend borders.  

Under the mentorship of Lecturing Fellow Kerilyn Schewel, Di Ciano is developing a practical, data-driven tool to help governments, civil society organizations and institutions, like the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), visualize the interconnectedness of illicit activities in the rainforest. By bridging data, geography and political systems, she hopes to equip regional actors like ACTO and local defenders with tools to act more swiftly, strategically and collaboratively to protect the Amazon.

Her project involves developing a digital platform that integrates satellite imagery, investigative journalism and geospatial mapping in real time. Drawing from both official and unofficial data sources – including NASA’s satellite monitoring, civil society organizations and regional networks like Red Amazónica de Información Socioambiental Georreferenciada (RAISG), she aims to highlight patterns of environmental crime that are overlooked or underreported in national datasets.

“Most research on environmental crime is compartmentalized, divided by academic disciplines, types of crime or national jurisdictions,” she said. “This project cuts across those boundaries. By integrating data across borders and focusing on both institutional gaps and grassroots realities, it creates a fuller picture of the Amazon’s challenges.”

Her work also highlights the value of combining Indigenous knowledge with modern tools like satellite technology. “These insights could open doors for international cooperation, funding and advocacy – showing that even in contexts of state fragility, like Venezuela, there are pathways for protecting the forest through inclusive, cross-border approaches showing how local Indigenous knowledge and cutting-edge technology can work together to stop ecocide.”

Using a human lens to share research

In addition to presenting her work to an audience of peers, faculty and staff during the MIDP Master’s Project showcase, Di Ciano was one of a dozen Duke and Durham community members selected to speak at TEDxDuke 2025: Eye of the Beholder. The annual student-run event, held on Duke’s campus, follows the TED format and mission of sharing research to inspire conversations within the local community.

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She noted the event gave her a platform to share her research through a human lens. “TEDx allowed me to speak from the heart, to tell the story of my grandmother, the Pemón legacy in my family, and the heartbreak of watching the Amazon disappear.”

“I wanted people to see this issue not just as a distant environmental crisis, but as a human one,” she said. “TEDx gave me the space to connect policy and personal experience, data and emotion, in a way that truly reflects who I am and why this work matters so much to me.”

Di Ciano, who graduates this May, hopes her presentation inspired urgency and agency.

“The Amazon is dangerously close to its tipping point, and 2025 may be a decisive year,” she said. “But we’re not powerless. Whether it’s by supporting ethical supply chains, raising awareness or pressuring governments to coordinate, there are actions we can all take.”

For Di Ciano, this project has been a way for her to fight back: “It’s not just about studying the Amazon. It’s about protecting the land of our ancestors and supporting the people who are still defending it, often at great personal risk.”