The Rise of Environmental Crime

The world is being in a stage of lack of its natural resources, with much of what nations depend for their healthy living, they are now at risk from a new threat: environmental crime.

Environmental crime is defined as any act, or attempted act, committed against the environment that violates defined laws. Emphasizing the most common of environmental crimes are chemical waste, ozone decrease, illegal caught of seafood, wood exploitation and other forest products, but the main crimes are mining, fishing and deforestation.

According to a report made by the UNEP that follows these cases reveals that this area of criminality has diversified to become the world’s fourth largest crime sector, growing at 2 to 3 times the pace of the global economy.

INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) and UNEP now estimate that natural resources worth as much as 91 billion to 258 billion dollars that these criminals are stealing.

Organizations such as INTERPOL and the UNEP started to feel fully alarmed when they realized that this problem was increasing more and more everytime, so they began to fight this crime in 1992.

These are the solutions they purpose:

To reduce threats to security and peace, accept the information and share it across the sectors for the peacekeeping mission, in order to inform holistic responses towards securing peace, security and sustainable development.

The rule of law, the international community must recognize and approve the environmental crimes as a serious threat to peace and sustainable development, to prevent safe havens, improve legislation, implement dissuasive penalties, substantial sanctions and punishments.

 Leadership, governments should establish central coordination and national plans to combat the involvement of criminal organized groups in environmental crimes.

Financial support, declare to the international development community to recognize crime as a serious threat to sustainable development and strengthen the share of ODA (Official Development Assessment) to abolish and prevent environmental crime. This should be led to capacity building and technological support to relevant agencies.

Economic incentives and consumer awareness, to strengthen economic incentives, relevant institutions and awareness. Identifying best practices in behavioral change should be undertaken to reduce demand.

Global Background:

¿Why is this issue a conflict for the world?

Environmental crime endangers not only wildlife populations it also effects the ecosystems levels through massive deforestation, pollution from unregulated chemical use and disposal, and destruction of livelihoods. Confirming that it affects globally because nations depend from these natural resources and these actions make abrupt changes in the ecosystem that cause different reactions, such as water shortage, climate change, health diseases, loss of animal life, and oxygen.

Responding to environmental crime

Different needs must be recognized, and different tools are required depending on the environmental crime.

In the lasts decades, voluntary actions and awareness programs have been dominated by many efforts.

Approving over 99% of the billion dollars REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programs and EU (European Unions) FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade.) have largely focused on voluntary agreements and NGO (Non Governmental Organizations) support. Programs such as ICCWC (International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime), INTERPOL or national enforcement and security sector reform have received comparatively modest support in spite of major successes. Combining the successes of programs such as REDD and ICCWC may lead to breakthroughs in approaches to natural resources management and stemming the tide of ITW.

Ministers from Russia and the group of seven leading economies agreed to step up their cooperation against environmental crime in 1998.

The meeting of environmental ministers from Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia was held in advance of a gathering of national leaders in England.

 UNEP (2016). The Rise of Environmental Crime. Retrieved February, 2017, from http://web.unep.org/documents/itw/environmental_crimes.pdf
UNEP (2016). Rise of Environmental Crime. Retrieved February, 2017, from http://web.unep.org/documents/itw/eco_crime.pdf
The New York Times. 8 Countries Agree to Fight Environmental Crime. (1998, April 6). Retrieved February, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/06/world/8-countries-agree-to-fight-environmental-crime.html
UNEP. (2015). Climate Change. Retrieved February, 2017, from http://web.unep.org/climatechange/adaptation/AccessToAdaptationFinance/UDASP/ListOfCountriesSupportedByUDASP.aspx
Environmental Research Paper. (2016). Retrieved February, 2017, from http://research-paper.essayempire.com/criminal-justice-research-paper/environmental-crime/

Environmental Crime. (2016). Retrieved February, 2017, from https://www.stimson.org/enviro-crime/