The global clean energy transition, increased defense budgets and technological advancement, has created unprecedented demand for rare earth elements and critical minerals essential for electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and defense systems. Yet the Amazon rainforest—home to significant deposits of these materials—is becoming a battleground where the resources needed for a sustainable future are extracted through operations controlled by armed groups, involving systematic human rights abuses and environmental devastation.

While Latin American governments struggle to map reserves and regulate extraction, criminal networks have infiltrated the sector. The ELN and Segunda Marquetalia (FARC dissidents)—designated Colombian terrorist organizations—alongside foreign prospectors and members of Venezuelan government agencies involved in the illegal mineral business, now control significant extraction operations in the Amazon. These groups evade enforcement and channel minerals into global supply chains through violence, effectively making supply chain stakeholders financiers of terrorism and abuse—regardless of whether they knew or not about the provenance of such materials