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

Three Key Questions ♦ How are the activities of law enforcement agencies impacted by climate change and what are the implications of this for future practice? ♦ What capacities and organisational attributes are required by law enforcement agencies in responding to the challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation? ♦ What improvements can be made to law enforcement responses to the challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation? Legal and Professional Contexts ♦ Crimes that affect the environment are increasingly being prioritised by the United Nations and other international bodies, as well as regional and domestic authorities. ♦ A paradigm shift is occurring due to changing circumstances that is reshaping contemporary responses to the law enforcement mission and mandate. This has ramifications for how law enforcement work is carried out, the resources needed to do so, and the collaborations required across agencies and between community and government. Crimes that Affect the Environment and Climate Change ♦ Crimes that Affect the Environment Contributing to Climate Change Deforestation – diminishment of carbon sinks, adding to carbon emissions; Illegal mining – air pollution; polluting freshwater systems, Wildlife trafficking – loss of certain species and individuals may undermine the functioning of ecosystems exacerbating conditions leading to climate change; Land grabs and changing land uses – lost carbon stock and sequestration, adding to carbon emissions. ♦ Climate Change Affecting Existing Categories of Crime Water crimes – resource scarcity and water theft; Clandestine migration – climate refugees; Illegal mining – rare earth minerals for new renewable energy systems; Social conflict – aggression and violence over scarce resources, social strains arising from biophysical changes, changes in routine activities depending on weather. ♦ Cross-Over Crimes Associated with Crimes that Affect the Environment and Climate Change Homicide – killing of park rangers, environmental activists, local residents; Organised crime groups and networks – fraudulent green investments, low-price food on-sales; Corruption – direct (criminal such as document fraud) and moral (unethical policies and practices that foster carbon emission pollution); Disaster-related fraud – building practices, insurance claims, victim scams and identity theft. Climate Change Risks and Disasters ♦ The planet is heating up at an unprecedented rate and this is accelerating. The effects of this are manifest in high impact and extreme weather events and increases in all manner of risks and harms. This is global in nature. ♦ The notion of harmscape captures the idea of intersecting and interacting harms. Climate change impacts and risks are becoming increasingly complex and more difficult to manage. ♦ The intersectional dimensions of responding to climate disruption include three main features: climate related crimes (e.g., water theft); climate-related events (e.g., wildfires); and climate-related problems (e.g., prolonged homelessness), all of which are interconnected. Capacities and Capabilities of Law Enforcement Agencies ♦ While there may be rising interest and need for greater law enforcement intervention arising from climate-related events and trends, at present there is generally insufficient capacity to meet the challenges of either crime fighting or disaster and emergency management. ♦ A change in and pluralisation of police roles is occurring, in which greater attention is being devoted to matters such as climate change mitigation, reduction of climate-related crime or first responder work on the frontline of environmental disasters. ♦ There are a multitude of stakeholders and agencies with which law enforcement must engage and collaborate with, with numerous tensions and opportunities evident at the grassroots level with regard to state-community relations. A New Paradigm for Global Law Enforcement ♦ A robust response to climate-related crime and disaster events hinges to a large extent on the strength and resilience provided by the community and NGO sectors working in conjunction with state authorities. ♦ A wide range of equipment and technologies are required in the fight against climate-related crimes and in responding to disasters and emergencies. These need to be shared out at the global scale. ♦ Information management systems are crucial to both combating climate-related crimes as well as predicting and responding to climate-related disasters and their short- and long-term social and environmental consequences. ♦ It is vital that multi-agency and multi-disciplinary teams and forums be provided that bring together in a coordinated manner the knowledge, expertise and experience of a wide range of practitioners. ♦ A range of strategic actions are required for effective environment and climate-related global law enforcement. The emphasis must be on preparedness and rapid mobilisation of human and technical resources.

Vienna: UNODC, 2024. 70p.

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.

By Monique C. Sosnowski msosnowski@jjay.cuny.edu, Judith S. Weis, and Gohar A. Petrossian

Imported to adorn tanks of marine aquarium hobbyists, the trade in live corals poses a significant risk to species that concurrently face threats from rising global temperatures, pollution, and destructive fishing practices. To better understand the live coral trade, we employed a crime script framework to analyze the process by which corals are harvested in two of the world’s major exporting countries—Indonesia and Fiji. We demonstrate that coral harvesting and export are complex activities that require a specific set of skills and tools. As such, various intervention strategies are proposed to address illegal coral harvesting at different stages of the crime script.

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice · March 2020, 20p.

By The Environmental Investigation Agency UK (EIA UK).

In 2021, EIA’s report Off the Hook – The need for transparency and accountability in tackling wildlife crime advocated for better access to information and justice, stronger anti-corruption measures, increased international collaboration and more frequent evaluations of key indicators to improve transparency and criminal justice in the fight against wildlife crime.

Since then, EIA has continued to campaign for stronger responses to wildlife crime. Our research from 2024 highlights that significant concerns remain regarding transparency, information sharing and criminal justice in the global fight against wildlife crime.

This report is part of EIA’s regular assessment and focuses on four themes, which build upon the findings of the previous report.

London: by the Environmental Investigation Agency UK (EIA UK). 2024.. 22p

By The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK)

The global plastic waste trade is an environmental disaster hiding in plain sight, fuelling organised crime, working conditions that amount to human rights violations and devastation to human health and the environment.

The Environmental Investigation Agency’s (EIA’s) second instalment of our two-part Dirty Deals report pulls back the curtain on a system where misdeclared plastic waste, murky supply chains and shadowy brokers thrive, enabling millions of tonnes of waste to be dumped in countries unequipped to handle such huge volumes.

Despite the Basel Convention, which regulates the transboundary movement of hazardous and other wastes, including plastic waste, these illicit operations exploit loopholes and weak enforcement, creating a facade of ‘recycling’ while wreaking havoc on the local communities on which the Global North dumps its waste.

London: Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK), 2024. 28p.

By The Environmental Investigation Agency UK (EIA)

Five years after EIA first revealed a widespread European illegal trade in hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) climate super pollutant gases, a new investigation has revealed that significant levels of trafficking persist, despite the worsening climate emergency.

Commonly used in refrigeration and air-conditioning, HFCs are being phased out under the European Union (EU) F-gas Regulation. Driven by high profits and weak law enforcement, organised criminals are closely associated with this illicit trade.

EIA’s previous investigation, 2021’s Europe’s Most Chilling Crime, highlighted Romania as a key entry point for illegal HFCs arriving in the EU. In our latest investigation, we uncovered evidence of traders routing illegal HFCs (sourced primarily in Türkiye and China) from Europe’s edge – Bulgaria – across the continent to the likes of Greece, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

The investigation demonstrated that traders are becoming more sophisticated and adapting their tactics to elude detection, for example by avoiding banned disposable cylinders and disguising HFCs as less regulated hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) refrigerant alternatives.

London: by the Environmental Investigation Agency UK (EIA), 2024. 34p.

By The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK)

Your old wheelie bin might be funding organised crime and fuelling environmental injustice and human rights violations around the globe.

In the shadows of the global economy, an ominous trade flourishes. The latest investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) uncovers shocking evidence of how bad actors exploit regulatory weaknesses, legal loopholes and outdated practices in the global plastic waste trade, fuelling a thriving illegal market. This trade, characterised by its complexity and global reach, involves a multitude of actors, regulatory codes, transportation methods and market dynamics that create an ideal environment for illicit activities.

In the first of this two-part report, we reveal the latest scam: exploiting the UK‘s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for packaging recycling with discarded wheelie bins. Despite the efforts of law enforcement agencies to track and dismantle illegal operations, the ongoing consequences of illegal trade inflicts devastating harm to human health and the environment.

London: The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK) , 2024. 28p.

By The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK)

The long-standing illegal trade in substances controlled under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

As Parties to the Montreal Protocol meet in Bangkok for the 45th Open Ended Working Group, they will also attend a workshop on strengthening the effective implementation and enforcement of the Montreal Protocol.

EIA has produced this briefing describing the long history of the illegal trade of controlled substances under the Montreal Protocol, including CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs.

It examines efforts by the Parties to the Montreal Protocol to combat such trade, with consideration of potential next steps to meet the continued and growing challenge of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) and HFC climate crime. EIA has been investigating and documenting the illegal trade in ODS since the mid-1990s, providing unprecedented insights into the dynamics of this multi-million dollar environmental crime, including the shifting smuggling routes and methods used to evade detection.

London: The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK) , 2023. 16p.

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 Francesca Soliman

In this paper I examine authorities’ management of migrant boats on the island of Lampedusa, Italy, as an example of environmental border harm. A danger to trawlers, sunken wrecks are also hazardous to the environment, with pollutants such as oil and fuel seeping into the sea. Migrant boats that reach the island, whether independently or towed by rescuers, are left to accumulate in the harbour and eventually break up, scattering debris in bad weather. When boats are uplifted onto land, they are amassed in large dumps, leaking pollutants into the soil. Periodically, the resulting environmental crises trigger emergency tendering processes for the disposal of the boats, which allow for the environmental protections normally required in public bidding to be suspended for the sake of expediency. The disposal of migrant boats thus relies on a pattern of manufactured environmental emergencies, consistent with the intrinsically crisis-based management of the border itself.\

Critical Criminology 31(12):1-17, 2023.

By Malvina Bondy, Sefi Roth, and Lutz Sager

Many empirical studies have examined the various determinants of crime.However, the link between crime and air pollution has been largely overlooked. In this paper we study whether exposure to ambient air pollution affects crime using daily administrative data for London in 2004–5. For identification, we estimate models withward fixed effects and implement two instrumental variable strategies, using atmo-spheric inversions and wind direction as exogenous shocks to local pollution. We Find That air pollution has a positive and statistically significant impact on overall crime andon several major crime categories, including those with economic motives. Impor-tantly, the effect also occurs at pollution levels that are well below current regulatory standards and appears to be unevenly distributed across income groups. Our results suggest that reducing air pollution in urban areas may be an effective measure to reduce crime and that air pollution forecasts can be used to improve predictive policing

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. Volume 7, Number 3. May 2020

By Melina Risso, et al.

Environmental crime became the world’s third most lucrative illicit economy after drug trafficking and smuggling, with estimates of $110 to $281 billion in annual profits. Between 2006 and 2016, environmental crimes grew at a rate of 5% to 7% per year, a pace two or three times faster than that of global GDP growth. Money laundering is part of the criminal machinery that plunders the Amazon Rainforest.

The study “Follow the Money: connecting anti-money laundering systems to disrupt environmental crime in the amazon” reveals the need for systems, agencies, and institutions responsible for preventing money laundering to turn their attention to the connections between this illicit practice and environmental crimes.

The Igarapé study shows that the money laundering cycle follows three stages before the laundered funds can enter the financial system: placement, layering, and integration. However, not all proceeds from criminal activity are directly laundered into the formal financial system. Thus, informal diversification constitutes the process of moving illegal flows into the informal economy. It is estimated that 30% of the money to be laundered is used to pay the operating expenses of illicit economies. Cash transactions, divided into small amounts and deposited by “money mules,” are used to finance the hiring of precarious labor, accommodations, food, security, transportation, health services, leisure, and machinery, for example. The remaining 70% of illicit proceeds are formally inserted into the financial system.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil ; Igarape Institute, 2023. 33p.

By Melina Risso, et al.

Environmental crime in the Amazon has become one of the largest illicit economies in the world, generating annual profits estimated at between $110 billion and $281 billion. However, only 6.3% of money laundering cases reported between 2017 and 2020 to the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America (Gafilat), the main body responsible for combating illicit financial flows in the region, were related to environmental crimes.

To assess the level of attention and priority given to environmental crimes at each stage of the anti-money laundering system, we are launching the second publication in the “Follow the Money” series. Focusing on the three key countries of the Amazon basin – Brazil, Colombia, and Peru – the study proposes an analytical approach to the legal and institutional capacities to combat money laundering in five dimensions: 1) strategic planning and preventive measures; 2) monitoring and detection – financial intelligence units; 3) mandatory reporting of suspicious transactions; 4) criminal investigation; and 5) Prosecution and sanctions.

Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil , Igarape Institute, 2023. 43p.

By Faith Ngum | Radha Barooah

What constitutes an environmental crime has long been subject to debate. However, human-induced environmental degradation and biodiversity loss are both pertinent. Local communities, largely indigenous groups, living around biodiverse areas comprising forests, mountains and marine ecosystems stand to be among the first affected. The presence of illegal extractive activities, whether mining or logging, attracts men from outside these areas and effectively ‘masculinizes’ these territories. This disrupts regular life and threatens the safety of women, who often have to venture into forests to carry out domestic activities. The impact varies from community to community and is linked to gender roles and patriarchy, and sometimes includes physical violence. This policy brief presents case studies from four forest ecosystems: the Arajuno forests of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Sierra Tarahumara forests in Mexico, the Yabassi forests in Cameroon and the rainforests of North Sumatra in Indonesia. The findings show that while local indigenous communities rally to defend their territories against extractive operations and perceived environmental crimes, gender norms and patriarchy limit women’s voices and participation. However, women’s participation in resistance movements has gradually increased, especially against large-scale state concessions, and many have become leading environmental defenders in their communities. Their motivation to voice their perspectives and challenge dominant narratives against indigenous communities through various acts of solidarity is firmly rooted in their desire to protect their livelihoods. Their resilience strategies are similar but context-specific and nuanced across the communities in the four forest ecosystems analyzed in this brief.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime 2023. 34p.

By The Joint Analytical Cell (JAC)

In early October, the Joint Analytical Cell (JAC) released the results of a collaborative analysis into a fleet of Chinese-linked distant-water squid fishing vessels. These vessels are known as the “150 Series,” named as such because each vessel’s reported Maritime Mobile Service Identities (MMSI) numbers all start with the numbers one-five-zero. This group of vessels identified in the report appear to have engaged in behavior consistent with attempts to conceal their identity by MMSI spoofing — changing and sharing names over Automatic Identification System (AIS), as well as using multiple MMSIs, making it extremely challenging to monitor and enforce their activities. Following the identification of this behavior, which has been linked with illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities, the JAC engaged with China to better understand the nature and motivation of the behavior identified.

Long Beach CaliforniaL Global Fishing Watch, 2023. 46p.

By The Wildlife Justice Commission

The report builds on our first crime convergence report, published in 2021, which analysed a set of 12 case studies, and illustrated the varied ways that wildlife crime can overlap or intersect with other serious and organised crimes.

It presents additional analysis and insights from three in-depth case studies, based on open-source research and intelligence collected during Wildlife Justice Commission investigations. These three case studies add to the knowledge base on this issue, which will continue to develop globally as more cases are detected and analysed.

Wildlife crime is a cross-cutting criminal activity which cannot be tackled in isolation from other crimes. Crime convergence should be further studied and integrated as part of the approach to tackle wildlife crime and organised crime more broadly. An improved understanding of this intersection can help to identify more strategic policy and law enforcement responses to address it.

The Hague: Wildlife Justice Commission, 2023.39p.

By Lauren Young, Cathy Haenlein and Grace Evans

Comprising everything from small-scale, near-shore activity to industrial-scale, long-distance operations, the current IUU fishing threat has the potential to evolve significantly in a warming world. A global horizon scan explores the impacts of climate change on IUU fishing over the next 10 years and beyond.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a multifaceted global threat, occurring worldwide in inland waters, exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and on the high seas. Comprising everything from small-scale, near-shore activity to industrial-scale, long-distance operations, the current IUU fishing threat has the potential to evolve significantly in a warming world.

These evolutions stand to occur as fish populations themselves respond to a warming climate. Alongside critical stressors such as overfishing, oceanic warming is set to continue to contribute to an ongoing overall decline in fish populations globally. In parallel, there is evidence that key species are shifting poleward and to deeper waters, with declines in marine catch potential expected in the tropics. Combined with the effects of melting sea ice, changing weather patterns and the growth of marine heatwaves, among other factors, the impact on aquatic ecosystems is potentially highly destabilising.

These disruptive environmental changes have a range of potential implications for IUU fishing activity. The need to anticipate future trends across the threat landscape is thus pressing.

This paper presents the results of a global horizon scan conducted to explore the impacts of climate change on IUU fishing over the next 10 years and beyond.

The scan gathered globally available information by eliciting submissions from contributors worldwide, with a group of expert assessors collating and prioritising trends based on their ‘novelty’, ‘plausibility’ and ‘potential impact’. The scan produced a ranked list of 20 priority trends, categorised into four thematic areas. While the scan considered both emerging threats and opportunities, most of the 20 priority trends speak to emerging challenges, with potential options to address them where feasible and appropriate.

The first group of trends emerging from the scan covers evolving IUU fishing issues linked to shifting fish stocks and distributions. A number of these have the potential to challenge existing management and enforcement frameworks. Potential trends identified relate to an emerging ‘race to fish’ in the Arctic; ice loss and rising demand in the Antarctic; climate change impacts on the Humboldt Current System; novel interactions between mobile industrial fleets and smaller vessels; and domestic fishery closures potentially altering the length of supply chains.

The second group of trends relates to contested maritime boundaries and ungoverned spaces. Potential emerging trends include risks arising where fish cross between EEZs, and where sea-level rise feeds into maritime boundary disputes; evolving intersections between IUU fishing and geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea; the rising importance of IUU fishing in maritime security discourse; and the push to expand marine protected area (MPA) cover despite unresolved issues around the policing of MPA borders.

The third group of trends relates to evolving socioeconomic and criminological dynamics across small-scale IUU fishing and larger-scale operations. Potential issues include the incentivisation of IUU activity as livelihoods are undermined; risk-taking and vulnerability in the face of extreme weather; reliance on illegal labour practices in the face of reduced profitability; and evolving criminal tactics and patterns of crime convergence with growing seafood scarcity.

The fourth group of trends relates to challenges and opportunities for monitoring and enforcement. Potential emerging issues relate to vessel monitoring capabilities to detect climate-driven changes in IUU activity; gaps around the evaluation of interventions; persistent weaknesses in the transnational response; port infrastructural upgrades; and mounting public pressure for transparency.

To support efforts to address these trends, this paper offers a set of broad considerations for the range of stakeholders involved in the global response to IUU fishing. With future policy unable to address climate impacts in isolation, these are designed to be considered in the wider context of other evolving aspects of fisheries management.

Advance planning is essential. Many identified potential impacts of climate change are rooted in already visible trends, with advance action needed given the time required to update multilateral agreements, for example. Dedicated monitoring is needed to track changes in fish stocks relative to specific governance arrangements, as are forward-looking fisheries crime assessments.

Vessel-monitoring capabilities must be bolstered to detect climate-driven changes in activity. IUU fishing vessels could exhibit greater spatial mobility as they pursue shifting fish stocks, yet numerous gaps persist in vessel identification and monitoring capabilities. Gaps in state-level capacity to analyse unprocessed data continue to act as a barrier, with sustained work to build analytical capacity required.

Enforcement must be strengthened and adapted to a climate-changed future. With perpetrators of large-scale IUU fishing potentially becoming increasingly geographically mobile, gaps in international cooperation must be addressed. Systematic evaluation of existing enforcement, mitigation and deterrence methods is also needed to inform future interventions. Beyond this, challenges around the policing of expanding MPAs must be addressed.

Enhanced transparency and traceability must be pursued. As fish distributions shift and potentially alter the length of supply chains, responses continue to be hindered by a lack of transparency. Fishing-specific transparency legislation should be passed, ultimate beneficial ownership registries expanded, and schemes such as the Fisheries Transparency Initiative supported.

Geopolitical stakes woven into fishing activity must be accounted for. As stocks of key species decline and their distributions shift, new juxtapositions of marine biomass concentration and fishing effort across jurisdictional boundaries risk altering the geopolitical stakes involved. A clear focus on fisheries is needed as part of wider efforts to build mutual trust and cooperation in affected areas.

Resilience among artisanal fishing communities must be strengthened. In a range of locations, climate change could affect the vulnerabilities facing fishing-dependent communities as key species shift out of reach to deeper, cooler waters. Evidence-based measures must be enacted to enhance resilience to climate change, including long-term ‘pro-poor’ strategies to strengthen adaptive capacities.

High-volume IUU fishing must be treated with the severity it deserves. With IUU fishing often treated as a minor issue, the disconnect between crime type and response could grow, as shifting fishing grounds potentially increase IUU actors’ reliance on sophisticated organised criminal operations. National legislation must be updated such that large-scale IUU fishing qualifies as a serious crime per the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, with enforcement responses tailored to address shifting crime convergence.

London: RUSI, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, RUSI Occasional Paper, March 2023. 67p.

By J. Sean Doody, Joan A. Reid, Klejdis Bilali, Jennifer Diaz and Nichole Mattheus

Despite the immense impact of wildlife trafficking, comparisons of the profits, costs, and seriousness of crime consistently rank wildlife trafficking lower relative to human trafficking, drug trafficking and weapons trafficking. Using the published literature and current events, we make the case, when properly viewed within the context of COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases transmitted from wildlife, that wildlife trafficking is the most costly and perhaps the most serious form of trafficking. Our synthesis should raise awareness of the seriousness of wildlife trafficking for humans, thereby inducing strategic policy decisions that boost criminal justice initiatives and resources to combat wildlife trafficking.

Crime Sci. 2021; 10(1): 19.

By James Allan

Litter is ugly and an overwhelming majority of Britons want action. Since the 1960s littering has increased by 500%. Years of inaction, compounded by a lack of personal responsibility and a sharp increase in littering during the COVID-19 pandemic has made the problem worse.

Policy Exchange first recommended a national and coordinated approach to litter in Litterbugs published in 2009, but it was not until 2017 that the Government published the first ever national strategy that dealt with litter and littering behaviour. Furthermore, in 2022 the Office for Environmental Protection has said that the Government has yet to move beyond mere commitments to policy delivery.

This report calls for the Government to implement a new and revitalised Litter Strategy, including a significantly more aggressive approach to fines, including higher penalties, with a Local Authority League Table to name and shame those councils that are not using their powers; a new National Litter Awareness Course (modelled on the National Speed Awareness Course), backed by educational campaigns, to transform attitudes to personal responsibility; increased investment in bin infrastructure, with consideration of bins embedded in local design codes; and a large scale pilot of a digitised Deposit Return Scheme to enhance recycling.

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 45p.