IDL statement rejecting Constitutional Tribunal ruling endorsing Peru’s ‘anti-forest law’

Peruvian human rights organisation the Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL) published the following statement on 26 March 2025 in response to the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling on an unconstitutionality lawsuit against amendments to Peru’s forestry law.

IDL Statement

We reject the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal that endorses the ‘anti-forest law’ and legalises deforestation in the Amazon

Today, 26 March 2025, the Constitutional Tribunal published the sentence in the unconstitutionality process against Law 31973, known as the ‘anti-forest law’, presented by the National Association of Sociologists, the Regional Government of San Martin and the Lambayeque Bar Association. In response to this ruling, IDL states the following:

1. WE ALERT the public that the lawsuit against Law 31973 was filed because it legalises deforestation in the Amazon; that is, it gives the green light to agricultural and agro-industrial projects in areas that have previously been illegally deforested. Until December 2023, land classification and land use change authorisation were required for these activities to be authorised. However, the law introduced a final complementary provision that "suspended" the obligation to carry out the land classification process, despite it being an essential requirement to know whether we are in forests or not, as a consequence allowing any owner or holder of land that has been illegally deforested to "regularise" their situation, including lands with forest and protection aptitude, the best conserved forests in the Amazon.

2. WE REJECT that the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal has validated this final complementary provision. With the suspension of the process of land classification and the suspension of the prohibition of change of use, the deforestation that has occurred in the Amazon during the last decades is being constitutionalised, produced in many cases by processes of accumulation and the illegal trafficking of lands that favour a few large landowners, particularly in sectors such as oil palm, who have been profiting from the deforestation of thousands of hectares of Amazonian forests. This is the most important modification that the law incorporates and has gone unpunished.

3. WE CONSIDER insufficient the provisions of the Constitutional Tribunal to avoid the perverse effects of the law: the need to guarantee the minimum reserve of forest cover, which represents 30% of the total deforested land, and the impossibility for the law to be used to exempt from liability individuals and companies involved in environmental infractions or crimes and organised crime. Both of these were already contemplated in Law 31973. We therefore demand that the Constitutional Tribunal promptly clarify the scope of this ruling, specifying the safeguards it offers to the forests of the Amazon.

4. WE ALERT that, in a context in which 150,000 hectares of Amazonian forest are illegally deforested every year in our country, the changes introduced by Law 31973, now validated by the Constitutional Court, further weaken our precarious environmental institutions. On this point, it is also alarming that the Constitutional Court has made no effort to justify the "exceptional" treatment with which deforestation is legalised, without analysing whether it really benefits small rural producers or the large deforesting companies, which have transnational capital in the Amazon.

5. WE WELCOME that, at the same time, the sentence re-establishes the obligation of forest zoning (which defines those territories where the exploitation of forest resources may take place) as a condition for the delivery of enabling titles, but we recall that only some Regional Governments have advanced their zoning process, so there is a pending task for national and regional forestry authorities.

6. WE WARN that it is serious and inconsistent that the judgement recognises that the promulgation of Law 31973 violates the right to consultation of Indigenous peoples by not having been consulted with them despite directly affecting them and, on the other hand, in its final mandates, it does not order the Congress to carry out a consultation process on the law. This point should also be clarified as soon as possible to the satisfaction of the citizens and, in particular, the Amazonian Indigenous movement that is fighting for the protection of nature.