The Rise of Environmental Crime: A Growing Threat to Natural Resources, Peace, Development and Security

Legislation In 2014, the INTERPOL General Assembly passed a Reso- lution on INTERPOL’s response to emerging threats in Environmental Security (Resolution AG-2014-RES-03). 34 In that Resolution, instead of defining environmental crime, INTERPOL instead focused on “environmental security” by recognizing the impact that environmental crime and violations can have on a nation’s political stability, environ- mental quality, its natural resources, biodiversity, economy and human life. INTERPOL also recognizes that criminal networks engaged in financial crime, fraud, corruption, illicit trade and human trafficking are also engaged in or facilitating environmental crime. Both INTERPOL and the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) have taken this approach. By regarding environmental crimes more as a collective term, they can fall under already established laws on serious crimes, including, but not limited to, serious financial crimes, corpo- rate crimes, forgery, fraud including tax fraud, organized crime and threat or terrorist finance, where the damage to the environment or use of natural resources is a means to this goal and an aggravating condition. Given the complexity and the severity of the threat to the environment, such an approach provides prosecutors with far more powerful tools for prosecution and prevention and importantly – proportion- ality between offense, intent and punishment. Importantly, as pointed out by the EU, in Directive 2008/99/ EC of The European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on the protection of the environment through criminal law: Common rules on criminal offences make it possible to use effective methods of investigation also on environmental crimes. In order to achieve effective protec- tion of the environment, dissuasive penalties for environmen- tally harmful activities must be in place. Indeed, in the EU, a “failure to comply with a legal duty to act can have the same effect as active behaviour and should therefore also be subject to corre- sponding penalties. Therefore, such conduct should be considered a criminal offence throughout the Community when committed intentionally or with serious negligence.” 35 Natural resources are increasingly driving conflicts, and the nexus of organized crime and threat finance provide a particularly challenging framework for intervention and early prevention. This was recognized in UN Security Council Resolution S/RES/2195 (2014), which strongly called upon and encouraged the wider UN, as appropriate, and member states to “to collect, analyse and exchange information, including law enforcement and intelligence information” to ”prevent terrorism benefiting from transnational organized crime” and to share, as appropriate, between Special Repre- sentatives of the Secretary-General, the Department of Peace- keeping Operations, the Department of Political Affairs, the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, the UN Office on

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