“The Price of Progress: The Dark Side of Critical Minerals in the Amazon” is a cross-border investigative series with six feature articles that exposes how the global race for critical minerals—driven by the energy transition, defense industries, and technological competition—is transforming the world’s largest rainforest into a new frontier of illicit extraction, violence, and geopolitical dispute.
Through extensive field reporting, supply-chain analysis, satellite imagery, and dozens of interviews with Indigenous leaders, miners, armed actors, state officials, and industry sources, the investigation traces critical minerals such as coltan, rare earth elements, and tin from remote extraction sites in Colombia and Venezuela to international markets, particularly China.
The series reveals how armed groups, corrupt state actors, criminal networks, and corporate intermediaries exploit legal loopholes, weak enforcement, and Indigenous territories to extract and traffic minerals through porous supply chains and ports in Colombia and Venezuela (having China as its main destination) while communities face displacement, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses.
An interactive map also allows users to explore the locations of known reserves of each critical mineral (and also gold) and overlay this information with conservation areas, Indigenous territories, and even the presence of armed groups—a tool that provides in-depth information on the potential impact of mining these minerals.
Launched in November, the investigation proved highly timely for understanding the geopolitical escalation that unfolded in January, when the United States removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and signaled direct intervention in the country. The series provides critical context on how strategic minerals, criminal economies, and geopolitical competition intersect in the Amazon, helping explain the structural stakes behind international interest in Venezuelan territory and resources.
Also, by connecting remote Amazonian territories with global consumers and geopolitical strategies, the investigation uncovers the paradox of a “clean energy transition” built on violence, criminal economies, and environmental devastation in one of the world’s most critical ecosystems.
