By Jodie Wrigley

While scholarly debate continues about possible causal links between climate events and violent extremism, the evidence suggests that these events make communities more vulnerable to recruitment, provide fertile ground for anti-democracy sentiment, and erode trust in institutions and governments. It is recognised that many of these challenges play out in and leverage the on- and offline public sphere. Strategic communication, therefore, is an essential tool to utilise in this space to help prevent and counter violent extremism. This Policy Brief provides a starting point to explore further the potential nexus between climate events, violent extremism, and strategic communication. It explores a whole-of-society view of the potential strategic communication challenge and what actions practitioners could implement now to help address or minimise this existing or potential emerging threat . For the latest updated statistics on wildlife crime visit the World Animal Foundation website.

The Hague: The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - ICCT, 2024. 30p.

By Billy Kyte | Giulia Roncon

With the aim to support individuals in building resilient communities working to prevent, counter, and limit the damage of environmental crime, this handbook documents the challenges faced by defenders working in the environmental crime field and provides guidance to support their resilience.

The first section of the handbook analyzes definitional understandings of environmental crime and explores the impacts and harms it can perpetuate. The second section assesses the risks and challenges commonly faced by environmental defenders, including an assessment of their needs, and explores emergent regional issues that may play a part in such vulnerabilities. The final section presents a repository of best practices and tools that can help stakeholders to access available resources and to mitigate the potential risks they face.

The handbook draws from consultations involving nearly 100 prominent figures from civil society and media across Africa and Asia. Whilst findings are therefore geographically specific to some extent, our work confirms that the challenges experienced by environmental defenders in these regions were replicated globally as well. Although each country and regional context is different, the handbook outlines strategies that could be broadly implemented to support the community of stakeholders dedicated to tackling environmental crime worldwide.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). 2023.

By Insight Crime

This present study on Bolivia was led by InSight Crime. The findings and analysis are based on one year of open-source and fieldwork investigation in the cities of La Paz and Santa Cruz, and desk research, phone, and face-to-face interviews with environmental experts, government and security officials, members of local communities, academics, and others.1 The report provides a snapshot of the complex web of actors (state and non-state) and relationships fueling environmental crime in the Bolivian Amazon. Rather than just diagnosing the issue, the study aims to raise new dialogue and intervention opportunities regarding environmental crime in the region. This study addresses long-standing issues of securing land rights to traditional communities in the Amazon, many of which currently face new forms of land grabbing and land trafficking, notably by export companies extracting natural resources. It also includes ideas for reforming and strengthening structurally weak and corruption prone public institutions in the Bolivian Amazon, notably those related to land, environmental, and security issues. Finally, the report also sheds light on the transnational and cross-border dynamics of environmental crime in Bolivia in activities such as wildlife trafficking and illegal mercury trafficking for river-gold mining and illegal logging exports. The complexity of increasingly globalized supply chains initiating in or cutting through the Bolivian Amazon call for more and stronger regional and international cooperation to dismantle environmental crime and protect the forest and its people

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2024. 73p.

By ENACT

The illicit exploitation of mineral resources has long-term impacts on the environment, including formation of sinkholes, and contamination of the soil, groundwater and surface water. It also results in soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, health risks and even deaths. However, it is not regarded as environmental crime in Central Africa. This Policy Brief draws attention to the environmental harms caused by illegal mining in the region and explores how national and regional responses to the challenge can address the environmental fallouts.

Key points

• The environmental impacts of illegal mining in Central Africa negatively affect human and animal habitats, as well as the lives of indigenous communities.

• Illegal mining in the region is not regarded as an environmental crime.

• Various obstacles impede attempts to address illegal mining, including gaps in the criminalization of such mining and non-stringent penalties.

• Both state and non-state actors are involved in illegal mining, undermining state authority and regulatory capabilities.

• There are no regional mechanisms to counter illegal mining.

ENACT Africa, 2024. 12p.

By Orrin H. Pilkey , Norma J. Longo , William J. Neal , Nelson G. Rangel-Buitrago , & 2 more

In a time of accelerating sea level rise and increasingly intensifying storms, the world’s sandy beaches and dunes have never been more crucial to protecting coastal environments. Yet, in order to meet the demands of large-scale construction projects, sand mining is stripping beaches and dunes, destroying environments, and exploiting labor in the process. The authors of Vanishing Sands track the devastating impact of legal and illegal sand mining over the past twenty years, ranging from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to South America and the eastern United States. They show how sand mining has reached crisis levels: beach, dune, and river ecosystems are in danger of being lost forever, while organized crime groups use deadly force to protect their illegal mining operations. Calling for immediate and widespread resistance to sand mining, the authors demonstrate that its cessation is paramount for saving not only beaches, dunes, and associated environments but also lives and tourism economies everywhere.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023. 265p.

By Institute For Economics & Peace

From the document: "The Ecological Threat Report (ETR) is a comprehensive, data-driven analysis covering 3,594 sub-national areas across 221 countries and territories. It covers 99.99 per cent of the world's population and assesses threats relating to food insecurity, water risk, demographic pressures, and natural disasters. This report identifies countries that have the highest risk, both now and in the future, of suffering from major disasters due to the ecological threats they face, the lack of societal resilience, and other factors. These countries are also the most likely to suffer from conflict. The 2023 ETR aims to provide an impartial, data-driven foundation for the debate about ecological threats facing countries and sub-national areas and to inform the design of resilience-building policies and contingency plans."

Institute For Economics & Peace . 2023. 77p.

Genevieve Kotarska and Lauren Young

This paper explores the environmental and human security risks associated with critical mineral extraction, how rising demand for critical minerals in the context of the net zero transition will impact these risks, and what options exist for the UK to address these risks.

Critical minerals are broadly defined as minerals that are of vital importance for technology, the economy and national security and are also subject to serious risks relating to the security of their supply. This paper uses the term ‘critical minerals’ broadly, focusing on minerals considered to be of high criticality to the UK in particular. It recognises that this is not a fixed list, and that a country’s specific assessment will affect whether a mineral is considered critical.

A dramatically increased supply of these minerals will be vital for the net zero transition – both in the UK and internationally – and to meet the target to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, set at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Conference in 2015.

Yet the extraction of critical minerals poses various environmental and human security risks, many of which pose a threat to the net zero transition, in the UK and globally. This paper explores the environmental and human security risks associated with critical mineral extraction, how rising demand for critical minerals in the context of the net zero transition will impact these risks, and what options exist for the UK to address these risks. It identifies key environmental risks as including the potential for critical mineral extraction to contribute to deforestation, pollution, soil degradation, water scarcity and biodiversity loss. In relation to human security, key risks identified include the potential for critical mineral extraction to contribute to human rights abuses, labour exploitation, crime, conflict and corruption. Where mining takes place on or near Indigenous lands, both environmental and human security risks are found to disproportionately affect already-disenfranchised communities.

While a number of these risks are well established, there is a potential for burgeoning demand for critical minerals to accelerate potential harms. Such harms can occur in situations where rising demand pushes governments to remove or overlook relevant regulations; where new extractive operations open up in countries without mining histories, which lack the infrastructure or capacity to manage the associated risks; where harmful boom–bust cycles of extractive activity occur due to ongoing technological advances; and where a race to secure supplies of critical minerals exacerbates competition and geopolitical tensions.

If the mining sector fails to address these risks as demand booms, public opinion across source and supply countries might turn against the net zero transition as the harms are perceived to outweigh the benefits. It is crucial that the UK leverages its unique position as an international trade, financial and mining hub to help the international community mitigate the risks posed in this regard.

Based on the findings of this research, the authors suggest the following ways forward for consideration by the UK government, many of which are also applicable to other governments in the Global North:

• Use its role as a mining and financial hub to improve regulation, standards and transparency in relation to investment in critical minerals based on key environmental priorities, for example, through the application of the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures, Science-Based Targets for Nature, Global Reporting Initiative and other similar initiatives, thereby supporting integration of high-quality targeted frameworks into this burgeoning sub-sector. This will reward and enhance uptake of best practice by businesses and support regulation in producer countries globally.

• Develop an updated industrial strategy on critical mineral use specifically, to support the strategic acquisition and use of critical minerals and facilitate prioritisation across key industries should a shortage of critical minerals occur. This should be used alongside the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy to ensure that critical minerals are used strategically, particularly in the face of fluctuations in supply.

• Given the criticality of the net zero transition and the minerals it requires, review domestic policies to maximise recovery of critical minerals that are already in consumer supply chains, in the form of waste. This would broaden opportunities for critical mineral sourcing aside from extraction via new mines. This should include prioritising the upscaling of the UK’s recycling capacity to facilitate the reuse of critical minerals, mindful of the fact that while recycling alone cannot meet demand for critical minerals, estimates suggest that recycling could meet 10% of global demand, while bringing jobs to the UK in support of the ‘levelling up’ agenda.

• Work with manufacturers on extended producer responsibility, right to repair and design-to-recycle best practice to move towards a circular economy and ensure that critical minerals are reused and recycled wherever possible, thereby reducing demand. This will help to reduce wastage of critical minerals and decrease pressure on supply chains.

• Support improved consumer requirements for standards around the production of critical minerals. An example of this can be seen in the case of the 2023 EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products, which could be adapted for the critical mineral sector in the UK and more widely across the Global North.

• Support governments in source countries to develop the infrastructure and capability to manage mining-related risks. This could involve providing development assistance to build capacity to apply regulation and best practice, while supporting initiatives that mainstream biodiversity, conservation and social justice into regulation. Such regulation should improve the development and practice of the mining sector in producer countries, in collaboration with other actors working in this area, such as relevant aid agencies and multilateral development banks.

• Consider how to integrate innovative concepts and proposals that call for a paradigm shift in our approach to economic activity, human wellbeing and the natural world. This can be achieved through an approach which prioritises the pursuit of human and ecological wellbeing over material growth, and has the potential to help us better assess, understand and mitigate the environmental and social harms associated with the mining sector and other sectors dependent on natural resources

London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies -RUSI, 2023. 49p.