By Wildlife Justice Commission

The report aims to bring to light key aspects of the criminal dynamics of ivory and rhino horn trafficking in Vietnam and the efforts of Vietnamese law enforcement authorities in bringing Ah Nam to justice. The Wildlife Justice Commission initiated an investigation in 2016 to delve into the illegal ivory and rhino horn trade in Vietnam and gain a deeper insight into the Africa-Asia supply chain. By January 2017, Ah Nam had become the main focus of the investigation due to his growing role. By 2019 he had asserted his position as one of Vietnam’s top wildlife criminals, acting as lead broker for a sophisticated criminal network responsible for trafficking vast quantities of elephant ivory and rhino horn from Africa to China via Vietnam. The Wildlife Justice Commission’s investigations into Ah Nam and his network resulted in the collection of a wealth of intelligence and evidence. This information on Ah Nam and his key associate Duong Van Phong was compiled in a detailed Case File and provided to the Vietnam Environmental Crime Police and the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of China Customs in December 2017. The two men were partners in crime for the entire period of the investigation and were eventually arrested and convicted together. Over the course of the three-year investigation, the Wildlife Justice Commission documented Ah Nam’s access to a minimum of 17.6 tonnes of raw ivory (valued at more than USD 9 million), and 477 kg of rhino horn (valued at more than USD 8 million). This quantity of product is estimated to equate to the killing of approximately 1,760 elephants and more than 106 rhinos, and still represents only a fraction of what Ah Nam’s network is likely to have trafficked. The Wildlife Justice Commission’s efforts directly contributed to the arrest of 12 other individuals in Vietnam – 10 of whom were imprisoned and two were released without charges – and the seizure of 1,428 kg of ivory and 18 rhino horns. Ah Nam’s conviction and heavy penalty also send an important message: the risk-reward ratio for wildlife crime is changing in Vietnam. Analysis of published court judgements in China shows that additional cases linked to Ah Nam have continued to be prosecuted and convicted, while the Wildlife Justice Commission’s investigations have found many Vietnamese traders are no longer operating due to the increased fear of arrest and difficulties in smuggling products across the border into China.

The Hague: Wildlife Justice Commission, 2022,. 59p.

By Felipe Thomas

This brief gives an overview of the online illicit wildlife trade (IWT), and analyzes the current state of this market, and speculates on its likely developments. Although there is currently very little IWT activity on the dark web, we expect this to change as enforcement steps up, and this brief explores how that process might evolve.The online market for illicit wildlife trade appears to be disaggregated and characterized by ‘blurred channels’, yet, at the same time, it is relatively ‘out in the open’, which points either to a lack of enforcement or challenges that stymie effective enforcement.However, as and when enforcement activities are stepped up, it is probable that the IWT will respond by moving along a specific pathway. This trajectory would first see a move to centralized dark-web markets, then to specialist, and smaller, dark-web ‘shops’. These market shifts would be followed by ‘markets by invitation’ and then distributed, peer-to-peer marketplaces. Under this scenario of a changing market, each step would be accompanied by a decline in market size caused by a decrease in potential consumers (and vendors), but this market loss would be counteracted by an increase in marketing efficiencies and organization on the part of the vendors.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2018. 15p.

By InSight Crime and Igarape

Environmental crime respects no borders. This investigation – conducted with Igarapé Institute – reveals how wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, illicit gold mining, and slash-and-burn land clearance are spreading across five Amazonian countries: Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Guyana, and Suriname. These countries account for some 20 percent of the Amazon Basin and have collectively lost 10 million hectares of forest over the last two decades -- an area the size of Portugal. This in-depth report traces the chain of actors involved in the plunder, from the labor force harvesting trees and digging up gold to the brokers and corrupt officials that launder the ill-gotten materials. It also uncovers the land trafficking schemes that serve settlers who invade forests to sow palm oil and soy, as well as raise cattle, for the benefit of large-scale agribusiness.

Washington, DC: InSight Crime and Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brasil, Igarape: 2022. 83p.

By Simone Haysom and Mark Shaw

Over the past 15 years, there has been significant growth in awareness that environmental crime constitutes serious organized crime. There has also been a development of laws and policies to accompany that. However, despite the urgency and importance of the issue, responses still fall far short of what is needed. Leading scientists have contributed to these shifts in awareness by producing major syntheses that delineate the vast scale of global risk that environmental damage is unleashing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have both released dire warnings, with the landmark 2019 IPBES report concluding that over a million species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. IPBES has also warned that environmental crisis undermines progress towards 80% of the assessed targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Environmental crime has a key and underappreciated role in this developing crisis.

Our analysis shows that all of the contributing factors identified by IPBES have both direct and indirect connections to criminal networks and transnational criminal flows. We also know that, at its worst, environmental crime is intimately bound up with threats to global peace and stability. It provides a soft entry point into global illicit flows for traffickers, and is often accompanied by widespread human rights abuses and dispossession by criminal networks and actors.

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  The corruption related to environmental crime can be so damaging that it creates political instability and entrenches systems of patronage or the elite capture of democratic institutions. While there has been a significant increase in multilateral investments in responding to wildlife and timber crime, some of these interventions are themselves producing harms that outweigh or undermine their benefits. Human-rights abuses, such as torture, rape and displacement, are also bound up in militarized responses to environmental crime. All of this points to the conclusion that the international community is still failing to support effective, sustainable ways of combatting environmental crime. There is still much to do and much to learn – all within a narrow window of time. The severity of these problems and the pressing time constraints on responding are linked to their intersection with other crises – a broader global failure to address the drivers of climate change; the rapid growth of organized crime and illicit trade over the past two decades; and the fall-out of the enormous shifts wrought by the greater social and economic integration of globalization, particularly through the changes introduced by digital communication and commerce on virtual platforms. The latter is having a transformative impact on all sectors, not least of which is the illicit trafficking of multiple commodities.

Geneva; Global Initiative Against Transnational organized Crime, 2022. 44p.

By Simone Haysom and Mark Shaw

Over the past 15 years, there has been significant growth in awareness that environmental crime constitutes serious organized crime. There has also been a development of laws and policies to accompany that. However, despite the urgency and importance of the issue, responses still fall far short of what is needed. Leading scientists have contributed to these shifts in awareness by producing major syntheses that delineate the vast scale of global risk that environmental damage is unleashing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have both released dire warnings, with the landmark 2019 IPBES report concluding that over a million species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. IPBES has also warned that environmental crisis undermines progress towards 80% of the assessed targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Environmental crime has a key and underappreciated role in this developing crisis.

• More.....

  Our analysis shows that all of the contributing factors identified by IPBES have both direct and indirect connections to criminal networks and transnational criminal flows. We also know that, at its worst, environmental crime is intimately bound up with threats to global peace and stability. It provides a soft entry point into global illicit flows for traffickers, and is often accompanied by widespread human rights abuses and dispossession by criminal networks and actors.

  The corruption related to environmental crime can be so damaging that it creates political instability and entrenches systems of patronage or the elite capture of democratic institutions. While there has been a significant increase in multilateral investments in responding to wildlife and timber crime, some of these interventions are themselves producing harms that outweigh or undermine their benefits. Human-rights abuses, such as torture, rape and displacement, are also bound up in militarized responses to environmental crime. All of this points to the conclusion that the international community is still failing to support effective, sustainable ways of combatting environmental crime. There is still much to do and much to learn – all within a narrow window of time. The severity of these problems and the pressing time constraints on responding are linked to their intersection with other crises – a broader global failure to address the drivers of climate change; the rapid growth of organized crime and illicit trade over the past two decades; and the fall-out of the enormous shifts wrought by the greater social and economic integration of globalization, particularly through the changes introduced by digital communication and commerce on virtual platforms. The latter is having a transformative impact on all sectors, not least of which is the illicit trafficking of multiple commodities.

Geneva; Global Initiative Against Transnational organized Crime, 2022. 44p.

By Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

This report builds on the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC’s) ‘Forest crimes in Cambodia’ study (March 2021) by further exploring the networks of state and military control that facilitate the illegal timber trade. High-volume logging and trafficking of luxury wood continue unabated despite years of legislation, export bans and high-profile crackdowns. Examples abound. ‘Forest crimes in Cambodia’ presented compelling evidence of this in Prey Lang.1 Hong Kong SAR customs officials seized 211 tonnes of endangered Cambodian timber in May 2021.2 COVID-19 border closures failed to prevent 27 498 cubic metres of high-risk Cambodian sawn timber making its way through official Vietnamese customs in 2020.3 Moreover, the resilience, mutability, earning power and scale of the illicit industry is evidenced by decades of rigorous investigation, monitoring and analysis by Cambodian NGOs, grassroots activism networks and international NGOs.4 Benefiting from, and expanding on, this wealth of evidence, this report adds to the existing knowledge on Cambodia’s illegal logging by shedding light on the actors behind this vast trade and the practices they employ. The emerging picture is one of complex and interdependent networks.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 61p.

By Théo Clément and Sam Inglis

Vietnam is known for its highly diverse tropical fauna and is considered to be a major hub for wildlife trafficking in South East Asia – and globally for certain highly trafficked species, such as rhinoceros and tigers. The country has a globalized, export-driven economy with extensive trade links and has been identified as a key node in the wildlife trafficking chain in previous research. Vietnamese networks abroad have been found to be involved in the poaching of at least 18 000 elephants, 111 000 pangolins and nearly 1 000 rhinoceroses since 2010. However, these investigations have led to only a few prosecutions.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2022. 26p.

By Gavin Hayman and Duncan Brack.

This paper summarizes the discussions and conclusions of a workshop on the nature and control of environmental black markets held at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London on 27–28 May 2002. Thanks to generous support from the European Commission (DG Environment) and UNEP Ozone Secretariat, some eighty participants from over thirty different countries were able to attend.

Rather than simply collect and repeat what is known about the extent of the illegal activities in specific jurisdictions – a traditional indulgence of the regulatory community – the workshop was intended to provide a more systematic understanding of the driving forces behind international environmental crime. Efforts to tackle the smuggling of environmental contraband have been dogged by an ad hoc and unsystematic approach where individual enforcement agencies attempt to headhunt environmental criminals without reducing the size of the illegal market in which they operate. The failure of the international ‘war on drugs’ suggests that this policy is doomed: as long as demand and supply pressures that shape profit-making opportunities remain, other operators will expand their operations or new operations will enter the international market. Thus, the workshop raised the need to think beyond simply increasing enforcement effort to minimize overall levels of environmental harm by addressing the demand and supply of the contraband.

Copenhagen: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2002. 42p.

By Wilson K. Korir

The objective of the study was to determine the effectiveness of environmental crime management in Kenya. Specifically, this included determination of factors affecting environmental crime management, causes of environmental crime, establishment of the nature and extent of environmental crime. All these assisted in understanding the effectiveness of environmental crime management in Kenya. Research questions which the study attempted to answer include what factors affect environmental crime management, the causes of environmental crime, the nature and the extent of environmental crime and the effectiveness of environmental crime management in Kenya. A conceptual framework was used to simplify the relationship between variables in the study. The relationship shows that environmental crime management in Kenya faces several challenges that in varied ways hinder proper environmental crime management. The methodology adopted during the study included desktop review of existing scholarly materials for secondary data and focused questionnaire tool for primary data. The respondents were also made aware of the purpose of the research and informed on how and when they will get feedback on the study. The questionnaire was administered to key respondents and their profiles captured so as to give a picture of their understanding of their background and input to the study.

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  The study concludes that lack of understanding of the long term effects of environmental crimes among key stakeholders has led to crimes being treated as misdemeanors thus attracting low penalties if any, hence resulting in poor management of the crime. The study recommends that the process of enacting legislation on environmental crime should be all inclusive, adopting a wider consultative approach. The study encourages the strengthening of environmental crime management policies. At the moment environmental crime management is a loose concept with weak policy. Environmental crimes should be addressed by policy and legislation that ensures that local communities benefit from the country‘s natural resources so that they value and protect them. Environmental crime management should be greatly enhanced by improving the capacity of the environmental law enforcement officials and other stakeholders through training

Nairobi: University of Nairobi, 2014. 146p.

By Duncan Brack

This paper summarizes the discussions and conclusions of a workshop on the nature and control of environmental black markets held at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London on 27–28 May 2002. Thanks to generous support from the European Commission (DG Environment) and UNEP Ozone Secretariat, some eighty participants from over thirty different countries were able to attend. Rather than simply collect and repeat what is known about the extent of the illegal activities in specific jurisdictions – a traditional indulgence of the regulatory community – the workshop was intended to provide a more systematic understanding of the driving forces behind international environmental crime. Efforts to tackle the smuggling of environmental contraband have been dogged by an ad hoc and unsystematic approach where individual enforcement agencies attempt to headhunt environmental criminals without reducing the size of the illegal market in which they operate. The failure of the international ‘war on drugs’ suggests that this policy is doomed: as long as demand and supply pressures that shape profit-making opportunities remain, other operators will expand their operations or new operations will enter the international market. Thus, the workshop raised the need to think beyond simply increasing enforcement effort to minimize overall levels of environmental harm by addressing the demand and supply of the contraband.

London: Royal Institute of International Affairs (RUSI), 2002. 42p.

By Claude-Hélène Mayer

This brief explores wildlife crime and its international and culture-specific combat in South Africa from a green psychology perspective, focusing on a specific method of forensic trace recovery by analysing and evaluating the use of gelatine lifters. It provides theoretical and applied insight into visualising and sequential processing of finger-, shoe- and footprints, and environmental traces. It allows the reader in-depth insight into effective methods of international wildlife crime combat, based on the South African perspective. This brief gives theoretical and applied recommendations for international, regional and local actors for successful cooperation on wildlife protection.

As global and local programs, actions and law enforcement strategies to combat wildlife crime are gaining strength, forensic trace evidence is a useful method for investigative and preventive success. This brief will be useful for students and researchers in forensic science, wildlife crime, green criminology, as well as for law enforcement and international actors combating wildlife crime practically on both international and local levels.

Cham: Springer, 2019. 90p.

By John M. Sellar

The UN's Lone Ranger tells of law enforcement and diplomacy. It is also the first book, written from an international perspective, about a subject that warrants much greater attention, if the world's most threatened species are to be safeguarded for future generations. John Sellar describes why organized crime has turned to robbing nations, especially in the developing world, of their animals and plants and how this is bringing several species to the brink of extinction. It illustrates, in words and images, how criminal networks recruit, equip and direct poachers and wildlife contraband couriers; arrange the smuggling of species and products, often involving transportation across many borders and several continents; use bribery and violence against law enforcement personnel; and the nature of the markets in which illegal-origin wildlife is being consumed.

Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland: Whittles Publishing, 2014. 201p.

Edited by Gary R. Potter, Angus Nurse, Matthew Hall

This book critically examines both theory and practice around conservation crimes. It engages with the full complexity of environmental crimes and different responses to them, including: poaching, conservation as a response to wildlife crime, forest degradation, environmental activism, and the application of scientific and situational crime prevention techniques as preventative tools to deal with green crime.

Through the contributions of experts from both the social and ecological sciences, the book deals with theoretical and practical considerations that impact on the effectiveness of contemporary environmental criminal justice. It discusses the social construction of green crimes and the varied ways in which poaching and other conservation crimes are perceived, operate and are ideologically driven, as well as practical issues in environmental criminal justice. With contributions based in varied ideological perspectives and drawn from a range of academic disciplines, this volume provides a platform for scholars to debate new ideas about environmental law enforcement, policy, and crime prevention, detection and punishment.

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 246p.

By Tanya Wyatt

The global illegal wildlife trade is a burgeoning black market which is threatening the survival of numerous species. Wyatt's unique analysis provides new theoretical conceptualisations of the victims and offenders of wildlife trafficking, and furthers the discussion of these crimes through a distinctive green criminological perspective. This book begins with essential background information into the scale and scope of the smuggling of animals and plants bringing to light the often unknown magnitude of this black market. Wyatt considers the threats posed to the environment, people and the economy and evaluates the reasons behind wildlife trafficking by exploring the demand for wildlife.

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 216p.

Edited by William D. Moreto

The editors and contributors toWildlife Crimeexamine topical issues from extinction to trafficking in order to understand the ecological, economic, political, and social costs and consequences of these crimes. Drawing from diverse theoretical perspectives, empirical and methodological developments, and on-the-ground experiences of practitioners, this comprehensive volume looks at how conservationists and law enforcement grapple with and combat environmental crimes and the profitable market for illegal trade. Chapters cover criminological perspectives on species poaching, unregulated fishing, the trading of ivory and rhino horns, the adoption of conservation technologies, and ranger workplaces and conditions. The book includes firsthand experiences and research from China, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, and the United States. The result is a significant book about the causes of and response to wildlife crime.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2018. 330p.

By A.M. Lemieux, R.S.A. Pickles and D. Weekers

This guide equips analysts to support decision-makers in preventing wildlife crime by applying a problem-oriented approach. It sets out how to make the analytic process work and offers methods to examine a problem from multiple angles to identify a suitable response. The guide provides analysts with techniques to assess whether or not the response worked and communicate findings with purpose.

Phoenix, AZ: Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, Arizona State University, 2022. 160p.

By Alexandria Reid and Mark Williams

This paper examines the illegal wildlife trade in West Africa, and provides recommendations on how to combat it. In the last five years, West Africa has emerged as a major source and transit hub in the global illegal wildlife trade (IWT). The industrial scale of the multi-tonne, multi-product seizures originating from West Africa clearly demonstrates that profit-driven organised crime groups are running the trade. Yet, while the significance of the region in global IWT flows is increasingly recognised, very little is known about the financial aspects of these criminal operations. This paper begins by analysing IWT trends in West Africa, with a focus on high-grossing trafficking in elephant ivory, pangolin scales and rosewood. Second, it identifies key challenges that currently prevent the use of financial investigation in IWT cases, with a view to establishing baseline levels of awareness and capacity to combat IWT as a financial crime among financial intelligence units in the region. Third, it provides recommendations to support the implementation of the Financial Action Task Force's guidelines in the region.

London: RUSI, 2021. 54p.

By The Organization of American States, Department against Transnational Organized Crime,

The typologies and cases assessed for this study reveal numerous key findings about the characteristics of the illegal gold trade that have enabled its dramatic growth in recent years. That growth is driven by the relatively low risk that illicit gold mining poses, the high profitability of the trade, and a proliferation of methodologies to take advantage of the multiple gaps in local, national, and international enforcement regimes. …We hope the examination of the main typologies and red flags in the illegal gold trade will be a useful first step toward coordinated regional efforts to combat the gold trade’s criminal aspects. It is important to note that illegal gold mining operations do not operate in isolation, but are almost always at the center of multiple criminal networks and activities. The illicit gold supply chain, due to its characteristics as described in the typologies, often overlaps or operates parallel structures to cocaine trafficking organizations and other criminal enterprises. …. Because the alluvial mining of illicit gold requires clear-cutting large tracts of jungle or forest, it entails enormous environmental damage; hence, environmental crimes are an integral part of the process.

Washington, DC: Organization of American States, Department against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 76p.

By The Organization of American States, Department against Transnational Organized Crime

The illegal gold trade is a growing and significant challenge in Ecuador. The spread of illegal gold mining activity has brought surges of violence and instability to remote areas while attracting organized crime, at the local and international level, and triggering an increase in money laundering and contraband. Concern regarding the disruptive and harmful impact of illegal gold mining, as well as the government’s desire to develop and expand Ecuador’s mining sector away from its reliance on small-scale and artisanal operations, have also led to a renewed focus on the challenges posed by illegal mining. There is reason to believe that the illegal gold trade and its associated criminal networks are less entrenched and developed in Ecuador than in neighboring Peru and Colombia. However, there are significant challenges facing the government as it works to combat illegal mining activity, which is increasingly accelerated by illicit cross-border contraband flows and unique vulnerabilities to money laundering activity.

Washington, DC: The Organization of American States, Department against Transnational Organized Crime, 2021. 46p.

By ENACT AFrica and INTERPOL

Over the last decade, criminal actors engaged in illegal mining have made huge amounts of illicit profits at the expense of countries’ economies, vulnerable populations, and the environment across the Central African region. In the region, gold is mainly produced by artisanal and small-scale gold miners and semi-mechanized companies. The exact quantities of gold produced is unknown to authorities; gold smuggling within and out of the region is well organized, systematic, and concerns the majority of gold leaving the region. The dominance of crime in the industry is enabled by a variety of factors affecting the entire gold supply chain. Illegal financing, by gold, cash, or other means, fuels the process. Fraudulent practices are a central aspect in land exploitation, and allow criminals to employ more effective methods for extraction and production, and to conceal the real quantity of gold produced. A network of illegal buyers collects gold from production sites and smuggles it to regional traders and refiners, who, in turn, are likely to obscure its real origin, ownership, and quantity. Gold is then smuggled out of the country or region mainly by air, often via Cameroon or Uganda, towards Asia (United Arab Emirates, India, and China). Smuggling gold to neighbouring countries allow criminals to benefit from discrepancies in export taxes. It also allows them to introduce gold onto the global market masking its origin, especially if originating from conflict zones. Information suggests that gold mining is largely controlled by criminal consortia composed of different actors, who, collectively, benefit from criminal synergies: members of organized crimes groups (OCGs) and /or corrupt officials in high-ranking positions, economic players, and non-state armed groups in conflict zones. The presence of non-state armed groups in gold mining areas, who seek to finance their activities with the illicit proceeds from this natural resource, is likely to be controlled.

Paris: INTERPOL; ENACT AFRICA, 2021. 53p.