Tackling crime at the heart of nature loss and protection

ECFT Blog Series | Issue #2 | December 2024

Environmental crime is a big (bad) deal

There is a huge and thriving nature-oriented business out there, but this is not good news. Despite the inherent uncertainty around crime-related figures, the economy of environmental crime is estimated to grow by 5-7% annually, generating up to $220 billion a year, nearly matching combined value of the Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) from all OECD countries in 2023.

Even excluding activities linked to illegal and hazardous waste management, the sum of illegal logging ($52–157 billion), illegal mining ($12–48 bn), IUU fishing ($15-36 bn) and illegal wildlife trade ($5–23 bn) makes environmental crime the third largest transnational criminal activity in the world, after counterfeiting and drug trafficking. With figures like these, it is clear that environmental crime is a profitable business for organised crime groups worldwide, but a bad one for citizens, businesses, governments and nature.

A complex network of enablers and drivers

There are several reasons that contribute to explain why environmental crime is becoming such a huge problem, but some key factors can be highlighted.

First, environmental crimes involve operations that are typically devised by sophisticated criminal networks, acting simultaneously across multiple jurisdictions and illicit sectors – from environmental crime to money laundering, drugs and people trafficking. A growing number of publications– including this recent report on land conversion and financial crimes– suggest that examples of such crime convergence are becoming increasingly common.

Second, environmental crimes and other predicate offences are often conducted with the support of sometimes unwitting enablers across different sectors of society: policy makers, lawyers, bankers, auditors, police officers and common citizens. This is underpinned by corruption, which facilitates environmental crimes, weakening institutions and law enforcement, and diverting resources intended for growth, development and conservation. Corruption erodes the effectiveness of environmental policies and institutions, creating a cycle of impunity that further encourages environmental crimes.

Third, contexts characterised by conflicts, instability and power vacuums in public authority are conducive to environmental crime. Criminal networks often take advantage of these situations to expand their activities across boundaries and supply chains. These are also the settings where environmental and human rights defenders, who often stand at the forefront of protecting biodiversity, face the most severe risks including violence and intimidation from organised crime groups involved in these illicit activities.

Cali: the perfect place to show how environmental crimes undermine GBF

At the end of October, world leaders gathered in Cali for COP16, seeking to show progress on 23 ambitious targets to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). This event offers an exceptional opportunity to connect the dots between crime, nature, and people, drawing attention to the inextricable link between addressing environmental crime and achieving global conservation goals.

A scientific article published in 2021, for instance, used the concept of ‘narco-degradation’ to describe how drug trafficking causes negative environmental impacts in Central American Protected Areas. But this is just one of several examples of how environmental crime is significantly undermining the Global Biodiversity Framework. Illegal activities such as pollution, trade and dumping of hazardous waste, illegal mining, wildlife trafficking, illegal logging and illegal fishing are depleting biodiversity at alarming rates, threatening habitats and species and counteracting conservation efforts.

Figures from the latest UNODC Wildlife Crime Report draw an unambiguous and grim picture of the link between biodiversity loss and illegal wildlife trafficking: between 2015 and 2021, over 140,000 illegal wildlife traffic seizures were officially recorded across 162 countries, affecting about 4,000 different species of plants and animals. Over 80% of the species affected are included in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The number of recorded seizures might seem astonishing perhaps, but it is just the tip of the iceberg, as it only accounts for the portion of illegal wildlife trade that is actually detected. In fact, it is estimated that this figure could correspond to just 1.4% of the global illegal wildlife trade.

Real-world examples tell us that there is more than conservation at stake

What else can we learn from other real-world examples? Well, take Guatemala for instance. The country has long struggled to curb illegal timber (particularly rosewood) and wildlife trade. This market has been captured by criminal organizations that have historically embedded corrupt actors across public and private institutions to enable their ill-gotten gains. But Guatemala is not alone. In Myanmar, criminal networks are capitalizing on insecurity, smuggling teak that reaches German marketplaces. Terrorist-linked groups in Cabo Delgado are raising revenue from the trade in illegal species in the security vacuum of Northern Mozambique. Mercenaries in the Central African Republic are cashing on fear and insecurity of local communities in exchange for illegal gold mining. For a breadth of real-world examples, the recently launched Environmental Crimes Financial Toolkit platform, developed by WWF and Themis, contains a curated repository which covers alone more than 160 case studies from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South-Eastern Asia.

What this all shows to us is that environmental crime is not only a conservation issue. It is hard to quantify the far-reaching consequences it has on human rights, economic and financial systems, and global security. It fuels conflicts, supports organized crime networks, and deprives communities of vital natural resources. Environmental crimes contribute also to climate change and environmental degradation, which in turn affect food security, water availability, and human health on a global scale.

Combatting environmental crime to make peace with nature

Addressing environmental crime is crucial not only for achieving the GBF's biodiversity targets but also for ensuring broader human and planetary well-being.

The Colombian government hosting COP16 has echoed the message from the United Nations General Assembly and the Secretary General Antonio Guterres, calling upon the global leadership to make “peace with nature”, recognising the crucial role that rethinking the economy, particularly through nature-positive ventures, can play in enhancing the sustainability of ecosystems and livelihoods. However, they have also explicitly recognised the challenges posed by existing – legal and illegal – extractive economies, which exacerbate conflicts and erodes progress.

Environmental crime is a prime example of the widespread damages created by the illegal extractive economy. While the underling operations behind different forms of environmental crime are typically covert (which might contribute to explain why this topic tend to be sidelined in the media and shadowed in high-level conversations), the detrimental consequences of environmental crime on people and nature are out in plain sight. Realigning with nature and fulfilling the GBF ambitions requires to acknowledge and address the pervasiveness of different crimes against nature: to make our peace with nature, we need to wage war against corruption and environmental crime.