Environmental Crime--the Globe’s Second Largest
Illegal Enterprise?

The earth is full of criminals, some of whom act alone, some of whom act in an organized fashion, teaming with villainous, nefarious characters. The drug trade looms as the largest illicit industry on earth with two groups of profiteers vying for second place: those who peddle arms and those who commit “environmental crimes.” The latter bunch, whose blood money nets in the tens of billions of dollars annually, were the subject of a conference hosted by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London: “International Environmental Crime: The Nature and Control of Environmental Black Markets.” Environmental criminals are degrading our environment and robbing us of natural resources.

The organizers of the workshop broadly described five main areas of environmental crime, which comprise the lion’s share of illegal activity: illegal wildlife trade, fishing, logging, trade in ozone-depleting substances, and hazardous wastes. Numerous treaties exist to control this illegal global commerce: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Convention on Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the Montreal Protocol and the Basel Convention, to name a few.

Environmental criminals are driven by the high profit/low risk nature of their scheming. Smugglers, traders, and their profiteering networks are becoming more and more sophisticated in their efforts to outdo the governments trying to rein them in. Debbie Banks of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) noted, “environmental criminals are better informed and prepared to outwit the authorities and any trade controls that are put in place. They know how to exploit loopholes in the laws and permit systems. Their knowledge of trade routes and transport systems means they can adapt quickly if enforcement authorities do catch up with them.”

Frances M. Ole Nkako, the Project Coordinator for the Kenya Wildlife Service’s Bushmeat Identification Project added that sophisticated crime networks are aided by government enforcement agencies lacking the political and financial backing to do their jobs well. Captain Gert van der Merwe of the South Africa Endangered Species Protection Unit concurred, adding that environmental crimes are not deemed as a priority for the police, that staff in many African countries are trained inadequately, and that the many governments in question are rife with corruption.

The wildlife trade is a well-known problem, especially to readers of the AWI Quarterly, whether it’s the trade in elephant ivory, rhino horn, tiger bone, bear gallbladders, whale meat, or live exotic birds for the pet industry. Increasingly, pirate fishing of species such as Patagonian toothfish, described on page 2 of this issue, is on the rise. Illegal logging takes its toll, destroying vital habitat for wild species. Captain van der Merwe notes, for instance, that the Cape Parrot in South Africa is critically endangered owing in part to “The destruction of indigenous yellow-wood forests which lead to high prices for the birds, and smuggling.” There are also serious problems with illegal international trade in ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons, as much as 20,000 tons of which EIA estimates were produced and traded from developing countries on the black market annually in the late 1990s.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the proliferation and expansion of environmental crimes. There are also clear strategies toward reducing this illegal activity. International trade should be monitored by appropriate global treaties with specific recommendations and support offered to individual countries. National governments should provide their agencies the financial backing and training to enforce these treaties. Furthermore, they must demonstrate the necessary political will to pass adequate legislation with penalties in place that give the judiciary a strong hand in deterring environmental crime. Consumers must be educated on the perils of wildlife crime and the need to abstain from purchasing wildlife and wild products, including illegal timber. When we purchase black market goods or products potentially acquired illegally, we, too, become accessories to environmental crime.