Environmental crime used to be treated as a niche concern, a worry for park rangers, customs officers and a handful of conservation lawyers. Not anymore. From Vienna to Belém, a once technical debate about “crimes that affect the environment” is edging closer to the mainstream of multilateral diplomacy, and, more importantly, beginning to reshape enforcement and action on the ground. Environmental crime is a catch-all term for illegal activities that harm nature and the people who depend on it. It covers illegal land grabbing and logging, illicit mining, illegal fishing, wildlife trafficking, and the dumping of toxic waste. Increasingly, it also encompasses newer frontiers such as illegal sand extraction, fraudulent “green” or carbon projects, infiltration of biofuel supply chains, and exploitation of critical minerals and rare earths. From the Amazon to the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia, environmental crimes are anything but minor or opportunistic. They operate at industrial scale, generating hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars annually, embedded in complex global supply chains and financial systems. These crimes are often tightly intertwined with other serious offenses including drug trafficking, extortion, corruption and money laundering, and are often enforced through violence and intimidation against Indigenous and local communities, environmental defenders and journalists. A large illegal gold mine in Aceh, Indonesia. Image by Junaidi Hanafiah/Mongabay Indonesia. Environmental crime is also getting worse. Even as governments and international organizations have strengthened laws and enforcement over the past decade, these illicit markets are expanding, not shrinking. The reasons are depressingly familiar. On the one hand, profits are high: gold is trading…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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