End Impunity for Environmental Crimes Against Humanity: Inside a Crisis Without Borders

Upon receiving a lead from investigators in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, law enforcement officials at a freight terminal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, disembarked and inspected a container believed to be carrying legally harvested wood from an African country. Instead, the port authorities found nearly a ton of illicitly trafficked animal ivory, hidden in paraffin, sitting inside furtively hollowed-out logs. Recovered about seven years ago, this haul represented only a tiny portion of what is estimated to be a 500-tonne annual ivory trade out of Africa to end markets in Southeast Asia and beyond.

This example of ivory trafficking is just one of many crimes being perpetrated against the environment as we speak; deep seabed mining, poaching, overfishing of protected species, as well as extraction and exploitation of non-replenishable natural resources are all offenses increasingly endangering fragile ecosystems—and increasingly overlooked.

Certain forms of the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) are generally known. Consider bounties for what is referred to as “charismatic megafauna”, endangered species with greater familiarity among the public, like elephants, tigers, and lions among several others. These are significant, but not exclusive in the trade of flora and fauna. Transnational criminal groups have been extending their tentacles to target neglected taxa at the behest of uncritical consumers in high-demand markets. For example, large seizures of protected wildlife and plants across 109 countries as part of International Criminal Police Organization’s (Interpol) “Operation Thunderball,” found that the largest portion of confiscated contraband was timber, making it the most widely traded illegal wild product in the world.

Timber, like diamonds, gold, and other valuable natural resources form lootable commodities. Plunder of these goods by traffickers, armed insurgents, thieves, and mercenaries leads to logging at an industrial-scale, posing a threat not only to endangered species, but also to the security and stability of the communities in which they live. This vicious cycle of illegal wildlife trade—driven by criminal networks ominously close to those that traffic in drugs, weapons and human beings—corrupts local and national systems of governance, breeding hostility towards rule of law and democracy.

In this trade syndicate and supply chain, there are tiers within which countries contribute to the trafficking industry, classified mainly into origin, transit, and destination nations. For timber, the chain often begins in the Central African Republic, a country abundant in the highly coveted rosewood. As a hotbed of illegal logging and rare hardwood exports, it serves as a prime sourcing ground for traffickers. Origin countries like this, typically less developed, enable traffickers to capitalize on poverty, lack of education, and weak social, political, and legal systems. This illicit timber and other products are then trafficked through neighboring intermediary countries like Chad or Sudan, via multiple road and waterway transport corridors. From here, the contraband opens up to the rest of the world; that rosewood could now make its way into China where the market for rosewood furniture is estimated at USD 26 billion annually and beyond.

Corruption contaminates and characterizes every limb of the machinery, driven by opportunistic actors embedded in local economies and working in cahoots with transnational organized crime groups. They can be local traders, importers, transporters, or other players that supply illegal ivory and are reliant on international actors to sell it. Their connections to everyone from bribed border and forestry officers to compromised, affluent government officials are key to unchecked pillage. Technology and social media platforms like Facebook have only opened new, more porous avenues for international criminals to increase their trade, undermining good governance and striking at the core of the economic, social, and environmental pillars outlined in the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

According to Interpol, environmental crime has become the third most lucrative industry for transnational organized crime groups, generating up to USD 280 billion a year, and threatening communities and international security. And yet, environmental crime, as a category, is not defined under international law. For a crisis that can only effectively be responded to with robust partnerships between public, private, and non-profit sectors, the absence of a worldwide framework for identification and prosecution of such crimes has led criminal activity to reach crisis proportions.

The world can take immediate and long-term steps to mitigate it. The International Criminal Court needs to start by finally listening to environmental defenders and expand its jurisdiction to include environmental crimes as an international crime alongside war crimes and crimes against humanity. This would create a pathway for accountability for actors that knowingly contribute to environmental degradation. Upcoming COP and Munich Security conferences should be used as forums for ideating strong and deterrent legislation at national levels to counter IWT. Western nations should shore up overseas funding for local conservation efforts, capacitate law enforcement in global hotspots, and end shipping their waste to the global South once and for all.

Today, I see a world that is losing its moorings on one of the greatest tests of our times. But when hope does not seem worth holding on to, I am reminded of the world of 1987. Amidst the tumult that came with the forthcoming Fall of the Berlin wall and the dawn of a new world order, the world came together to halt the depletion of the ozone layer and ensure we had a viable future to reshape. That Montreal Protocol would be ratified by every country in the world.