By Environmental Investigation Agency

Lost at Sea, calls on governments, industry, retailers, and consumers to help end the appalling damage that plastic waste inflicts on marine environments.

The report details how global plastics production has grown from five million tons per year in the 1960s to 299 million tons in 2013. It is found in our clothes, computers, and cars and has now found its way to our oceans, leaving no area uncontaminated. Plastics are ingested by seabirds and other marine life, concentrated in Arctic Sea ice, and are accumulating in deep sea sediments where microplastics are now more numerous than in surface waters. An estimated 80 percent of marine litterl originates from terrestrial waste sources, but can vary depending on geographical area.

This report outlines some of the impacts on marine creatures, with recommended actions to reduce the rising tide of plastic waste entering the oceans.

London: Environmental Investigation Agency, 2015. 12 p.

By Mähler, Annegret

This paper studies the oil‐violence link in the Niger Delta, systematically taking into con‐ sideration domestic and international contextual factors. The case study, which focuses on explaining the increase in violence since the second half of the 1990s, confirms the differentiated interplay of resource‐specific and non‐resource‐specific causal factors. With re‐ gard to the key contextual conditions responsible for violence, the results underline the basic relevance of cultural cleavages and political‐institutional and socioeconomic weakness that existed even before the beginning of the “oil era.” Oil has indirectly boosted the risk of violent conflicts through a further distortion of the national economy. Moreover, the transition to democratic rule in 1999 decisively increased the opportunities for violent struggle, in a twofold manner: firstly, through the easing of political repression and, sec‐ ondly, through the spread of armed youth groups, which have been fostered by corrupt politicians. These incidents imply that violence in the Niger Delta is increasingly driven by the autonomous dynamics of an economy of violence: the involvement of security forces, politicians and (international) businessmen in illegal oil theft helps to explain the per‐ petuation of the violent conflicts at a low level of intensity.

Hamburg: German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) , 2010. 39p.

By Robin Clarke.

Join Robin Clarke, world class naturalist, on his dramatic venture in Bolivia, to establish the Amboró national park along with his friend and Bolivian zoologist Noel Kempff Mercado, who was eventually murdered by a drug cartel. Clarke battled for decades to save the beautiful rain forests, terminate the trafficking in endangered species, and grappled with the Californian mafia’s drug cartel. And he risked his life to save hikers lost in the wilds of the Bolivian mountains. Though this book is essentially a very personal memoir, it reads like a suspense story.

New York. Harrow and Heston, A Read-Me.Org Imprint. 2022. 391p.

By The Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT)

Illicit trade in alcohol is widespread, representing significant percentages of alcohol consumption worldwide and stripping governments of billions of dollars in tax revenues. In almost all cases, illicit trade in alcohol results in serious health risks to consumers, revenue loss, and brand degradation for legitimate manufacturers, as well as reduced tax revenue for governments. This publication explores the situation in India and the causes for the flourishing trade in illicit alcohol. The problem in India is exacerbated by the massive size of the country, the federal structure, diverse drinking patterns, the varied regulatory structure and regional nuances and traditions that characterize the alcohol market. Notably, the report highlights a number of regulatory and legal mechanisms that the government can implement to better control and combat illicit alcohol.

NY: The Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT) (September 2019) 16p.