Stories and Solutions

Environmental Crime

Transnational organised environmental crime is a rapidly growing threat to the environment, revenues from natural resources, state security, and to sustainable development. It involves everything from logging and deforestation, fisheries, mining and trade in minerals, dumping and trade in hazardous and toxic wastes and trade in and poaching of wildlife and plants.

A private aqua-farmwhere sturgeon caviar is produced. Photo: iStock/Pro-syanov

Caspian Sea Media Tour GRID-Arendal supported a group of 16 journalists who went to Astrakhan, Russia in May 2015 on a media tour to examine the sturgeon-poaching situation in the Northern Caspian. Participants met with representatives of the main government bodies responsible for the management of sturgeon stocks and poaching control, including the Volga-Caspian territorial department of the Ministry of Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo), the Office of Internal Affairs of Russia and the department of Agriculture and the fishing industry in the Astrakhan region. The journalists toured an area known for its high poaching activity and visited the Astrakhan Nature Reserve and a private aqua-farm where “Beluga” sturgeon caviar is produced. A follow-up media tour for journalists to the leading Russian sturgeon breeding company “Russian caviar house” in Kaduy, Vologda, was organised in December.

The journalists’ tours produced 10 stories on the topic in local and national print media, and 23 online publications. A 25-minute report on sturgeon poaching was included in a prime time TV Channel 1 show in Russia, and a 15-minute report for the environmental programme “Territory Tomorrow” appeared on Russian state TV, ORT Channel. An outcome of the media campaign was a high-level meeting held in the Moscow Public Chamber on the legal aspects of trade in sturgeon products in Moscow, where much of the illegal sturgeon is consumed. Organised by GRID-Arendal in partnership with WWF-Russia and the “Union of Sturgeon Breeders”, the meeting led to policy decisions on the issue by the Government of Moscow. Recommendations were forwarded to the Russian State Duma calling for poaching to be included in parliamentary hearings of the Committee on Environment scheduled for March 2016.

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