Cooperation on Transnational Environmental Crime: Institutional Complexity Matters

Abstract

There have been clear calls for enhanced international cooperation to meet the environmental, economic and criminal challenges of transnational environmental crime (TEC), defined here to include illegal wildlife trade, timber trafficking and the black market in ozone-depleting substances. In the absence of an overarching international or transnational environmental crime legal framework, institutional settings are characterized by regime density and complexity amid a growing number of actors across related but distinct institutional settings. Scholars of international cooperation have worried that this kind of complexity leads to legal indeterminacy, normative ambiguity and regulatory uncertainty that will make cooperation more difficult. In the TEC sphere, these propositions remain under-researched and untested. This article sketches the contours of a study that would bring some conceptual and empirical clarity to these issues. In doing so, it outlines the constitutive elements of the TEC regime complex and the nature of institutional interplay between and among those elements.

Strengthening International Legal Cooperation to Combat the Illegal Wildlife Trade Between Southeast Asia and China

“…Although there is yet to be a systematic review of the challenges that constrain the use and utility of UNTOC visà-vis SEA-China legal cooperation on IWT, this paper posits that obstacles are likely to include: limited resources, weak rule of law in relevant countries, government corruption (Elliott, 2017), a lack of suitable guidelines and protocols for the content and scale of cooperation (UNODC, 2017b), gaps in the coverage of nationally protected species that result in the priotitization of indigenous species protection (Broussard, 2017), as well as discrepancies in the definition of "organized crime groups" and the penalty threshold for serious crimes. Indeed, it warrants note how the legal definition of organized criminal group still varies considerably between SEA countries and China, specifically in terms of the threshold for the minimum number of group members and minimum prison terms.…”

“…Cooperation to fight IWT will necessarily have policy, regulatory and operational dimensions, and can take place at all points along an illegal chain of custody from prevention, interdiction to prosecution (Elliott, 2017). Disrupting illicit supply chains, therefore, requires that major countries of supply, transit and demand collaborate to dismantle the criminal networks that operate these supply chains across borders.…”

“…At present, the international legal regime for addressing IWT is fragmented. Although a substantial body of treaties, agreements, and declarations has emerged since the 1970s to better protect the environment and endangered wildlife (Trouwborst et al, 2017), none of them contain specific measures for the prevention and suppression of wildlife trafficking (Elliott, 2017). Existing international rules, obligations, and principles relevant to wildlife trafficking have arisen from multiple areas of international law, including international trade, environmental protection and conservation, organized crime and corruption, and animal welfare (UNODC, 2012;Slobodian, 2014;Lelliott, 2020).…”

Assessing Global Governance in the Area of Human Trafficking Through Civil Society Participation in its Regime Complex

“…It is a key regime complex, subject to a high number of studies and presenting a rather integrated and robust structure (see among others Morin and Orsini, 2014;Rabitz, 2018). The GR regime complex is currently evolving at the crossroads of the international regimes for agriculture, environment, property rights and trade (Raustiala and Victor, 2004;Elliot, 2017), made up of numerous international arenas such as the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on biological diversity, the World Intellectual Property Organization Committee on genetic resources, or the International Treaty to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.…”

Experiences of the Hungarian customs authority in international illegal wildlife trafficking

“…In addition, it causes enormous damage to the world economy, being linked to severe organized crime (FTAF, 2020;Interpol, 2019a;Viollaz et al, 2018), and can even undermine the stability of some states (Wyatt, 2013). Effective action against international illegal wildlife trading can only be achieved through dedicated work and cooperation in different areas (Elliott, 2017). This is the task of legislative bodies, certain branches of law enforcement, law enforcement agencies (police, customs, nature conservation guards), competent ministries (Ministry of Environment, Game Management), and nongovernmental organizations (Keohane & Victor, 2011).…”