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

tion and courts/the judiciary in many developing countries. Indeed, a regional breakdown between North America and Southern Africa of relative expenditure on the police, pros- ecution services and courts revealed that in North America 43% of these funds went to prosecution and courts, while only 16% in the countries of southern Africa. Poverty also facili- tates recruitments of low-level perpetrators at the frontlines. This means that the issue requires a full range of responses, also beyond enforcement. The international community is still far behind in combating the rising role of environment-associated crimes for threat finance in conflict and for development and environmental security. Resources allocated to international enforce- ment efforts against environmental crimes are completely under-dimensioned for containing the growth in environ- mental crimes. Current global resources specifically allocated to international organisations such as INTERPOL, UNEP, WCO, UNODC and relevant conventions specifically for combating these transnational environmental crimes are likely combined no more than 20–30 million USD globally (dependent on calculation), resulting in continued rising involvement of organized criminal networks due to a permis- sive environment unless more resources are allocated and capacities shared across agencies.

VAT fraud to carbon credit fraud as the carbon credit market emerged, and are shifting to laundering illegal tropical timber through pulp and paper when customs target round logs or furniture. These criminal networks now also engage in “white collar”-crimes, including corporate crimes, use of thousands of shell companies in tax havens, tax fraud, double counting, transfer mispricing, money laundering, internet crimes and hacking, phishing/identity theft, securities fraud, finan- cial crimes, and fraudulent reclaiming of carbon credits, to mention a few, impeding and hindering development goals across sectors at both national and global levels. As transna- tional organized criminal groups become more established, their abilities to circumvent enforcement efforts increase, diversify and shift to new products. The root causes of environmental crimes vary greatly, and subsequently the design, identification and implementa- tion of appropriate responses must be carefully planned. Root causes are primarily the low risks and high profits in a permissive environment as a result of poor governance and widespread corruption, minimal budgets to police, prosecu- tion and courts, inadequate institutional support, political interference and low employee morale, minimal benefits to local communities and rising demand in particular in Asia. The situation is especially critical on support to prosecu-

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