Brazilian officials have long fought claims they are not doing enough to combat the deforestation of the Amazon. The reality is they have let crime fester in the precious rainforest, making any efforts to preserve it even more difficult, analysts and environmentalists say.

The murders this month of Dom Phillips, a British journalist and Financial Times contributor, and Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian indigenous peoples expert, in the remote Javari valley near the border with Peru have shed light on this increasing problem. Police have arrested four men — suspected illegal fishermen — and are probing whether a larger crime syndicate is behind the killings.

Brazil leads the world in the number of murders linked to land rights and environmental issues, with most of them occurring in the Amazon, an area almost the size of the continental US. Between 2012 and 2020, 317 such killings were reported in Brazil, according to Global Witness.