By Jacob Phelps, Steven Broad, Jennifer Mailley 

  KEY TAKEAWAYS 1. Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) persists in contravention of laws specifically aimed to address negative impacts of over‐exploitation of nature, one of the most critical threats to the world’s biodiversity. 2. By reducing and otherwise negatively impacting populations of wildlife species, IWT undermines the functioning of ecosystems, with significant potential to harm related natural processes – including those affecting climate.    3. The causal chains that demonstrate and explain these links are diverse, complex, and little researched and they are important to long‐term climate stability and mitigation of climate change impacts.    4. Some key pathways linking IWT, ecosystems and climate:

IWT is both a reflection of weak environmental governance, and an exacerbating factor to it. It is often associated with ineffective regulation, 6. Given the importance of climate stability and the long‐term persistence of carbon stocks, adopting broader time horizons and a more holistic view that considers biodiversity is important to climate mitigation and stability. Adopting this type of longer, broader view that recognizes the centrality of biodiversity to many ecosystem processes highlights the clear need for improved governance of wildlife resources and recognizes the need for strong justice system responses to environmental crimes.   7. It is critical to keep in mind that this relationship works in both directions. As climate change impacts take shape, natural resource conflicts will worsen as people and wild species adapt to evolving living conditions. It is very likely that this will lead to new incentives for and patterns of illegal wildlife trade, and in turn new interventions to contain the resulting environmental harm. 8. The links between IWT, biodiversity and climate are still under researched and not well understood. This Research Brief is the first effort to frame these linkages, which are important to understand how policies aimed at addressing IWT, biodiversity and climate can be better integrated.   

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Drime. 2022. 20p.

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Crimes that affect the environment are among the most profitable and fastest growing types of international criminal activity. In resolution 10/6, adopted in 2020, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime expressed its alarm at research indicating that crimes that affect the environment had become some of the most lucrative transnational criminal activities and were often closely interlinked with different forms of crime and corruption, and that money-laundering and the illicit financial flows derived from them may contribute to the financing of other transnational organized crimes and terrorism. It affirmed that the Organized Crime Convention constitutes an effective tool and an essential part of the legal framework for preventing and combating transnational organized crimes that affect the environment and for strengthening international cooperation in this regard and requested the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, subject to the availability of extrabudgetary resources, and within its mandate, to provide technical assistance and capacity-building to State parties, upon request, for the purposes of supporting their efforts to effectively implement the Convention in preventing and combating transnational organized crimes that affect the environment. In 2019, the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, in its resolution 8/12, noted with concern the role that corruption can play in crimes that have an impact on the environment and expressed concern that money-laundering may be used to disguise and/or conceal the sources of illegally generated proceeds, as well as to facilitate crimes that have an impact on the environment. In 2021, the Fourteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice adopted the Kyoto Declaration on Advancing Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice and the Rule of Law: Towards the Achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in which it reiterated the United Nations commitment to adopt effective measures to prevent and combat crimes that affect the environment, including, among other crimes, illicit trafficking in hazardous and other wastes, by making the best possible use of relevant international instruments and by strengthening legislation, international cooperation, capacity building, criminal justice responses and law enforcement efforts aimed at, inter alia, dealing with transnational organized crime, corruption and money-laundering linked to such crimes, and illicit financial flows derived from such crimes, while acknowledging the need to deprive criminals of proceeds of crime.2 In the same year, the General Assembly, in its resolution 76/185, urged Member States to take these same measures. 

Vienna: UNODC, 2022. 133p.