Publication:
Illegal Logging, Fishing, and Wildlife Trade: The Costs and How to Combat it

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (13.01 MB)
2,442 downloads
English Text (207.75 KB)
302 downloads
Published
2019-10
ISSN
Date
2019-12-06
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper has two goals - to motivate policy makers in developed and emerging economies to pay more attention to illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade, and to provide a road map to address the root causes of the illegal activities. Illegal wildlife trade directly causes declines in species population, resulting in the deterioration of ecosystem functions. Illegal activities involve trade of species threatened with extinction, including many keystone species. It also covers a range of mammals, such as pangolins (considered the world’s most trafficked mammal), and wood products such as rosewood, and marine mammals such as the vaquita found in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. For all practical purposes, combating illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade is a governance issue that first and foremost requires high-level political commitment at the national and international levels. The financial action task force (FATF) recommendations (FATF 2012-19) provide a framework for a risk-based, peer-reviewed system of mutual evaluations for compliance with global standards on money laundering and terrorist financing. The national risk assessment tools can be expanded to also address illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade and other natural resources crimes.
Link to Data Set
Citation
World Bank. 2019. Illegal Logging, Fishing, and Wildlife Trade: The Costs and How to Combat it. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32806 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Enforcing Environmental Laws for Strong Economies and Safe Communities
    (Washington, DC, 2014-02) World Bank
    This roadmap for environmental and natural resources law enforcement (ENRLE) sets forth a course of action for the World Bank's ENRLE community of practice for FY2013-15. It outlines for senior management a strategy to mobilize and strengthen the Bank's engagement in the fight against environmental and natural resource crime. The roadmap also serves as a mobilizing tool for staff and management in regional departments to demonstrate the importance of ENRLE and to outline the menu of solutions that the community of practice (COP) can offer to strengthen clients' fight against environmental and natural resource crime. Recent spikes in poaching, in illegal logging, and in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing have amplified the already urgent need for action. These crimes increase poverty, shrink prosperity, and magnify social and political tensions that undermine healthy communities and strong economies. Investment returns in wise environmental and natural resource law enforcement can be high. Criminal activities that affect the environment and natural resources are on the increase and pose an increasingly serious threat to development. Environmental and natural resource crime is common, but in many countries it is rarely prosecuted. This report discusses how the World Bank Group (WBG) will mobilize to work better on ENRLE. Recognizing the evolving global context, a new and fully mobilized community of practice will put more emphasis on building a constituency within the WBG to work on the range of ENRLE issues, on building the capacity of WBG staff to provide investment and technical assistance on ENRLE, on strengthening analytical work to develop a pipeline of ENRLE investments, and on fostering demand among clients for Bank investment in ENRLE.
  • Publication
    Justice for Forests : Improving Criminal Justice Efforts to Combat Illegal Logging
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-03-14) Goncalves, Marilyne Pereira; Panjer, Melissa; Greenberg, Theodore S.; Magrath, William B.
    Every two seconds, across the world, an area of forest the size of a football field is clear-cut by illegal loggers. In some countries, up to 90 percent of all the logging taking place is illegal. Estimates suggest that this criminal activity generates approximately US$10-15 billion annually worldwide funds that are unregulated, untaxed, and often remain in the hands of organized criminal gangs. Thus far, domestic and international efforts to curb forest crimes have focused on preventative actions, but they have had little or no significant impact. While prevention is an essential part of enforcement efforts to tackle illegal logging, it has not halted the rapid disappearance of the world's old-growth trees. New ideas and strategies are needed to preserve what is left of forests. This paper suggests that current practice be combined with a more targeted, punitive approach, through more effective use of the criminal justice system. It argues that the criminal justice system should form an integral part of any balanced and organized strategy for fighting forest crime. This strategy should include initiatives to enhance the efficiency of criminal justice in combating illegal logging that is, the investigation, prosecution, and conviction of cases, as well as the confiscation of the proceeds of criminal activity. These initiatives should be deployed in parallel with preventive programs, and the two approaches should complement and reinforce each other. The criminal justice system has been used in the fight against illegal logging, but only in very sporadic instances and in limited and ineffective ways. Moreover, in those few cases, it has tended to target low-level criminals whose involvement in illegal logging is due to poverty. As such, it has created no real deterrent and has encouraged skeptics to further discount the relevance of criminal justice methods. The objective of this paper is to inform policy makers and forestry and law enforcement actors how they can use the criminal justice system in fighting illegal logging. It seeks to mobilize them to take action and address the various criminal acts involved in illegal logging operations. The paper puts forward practical suggestions that can be implemented to achieve a tangible improvement in this fight. Rather than focusing on a single element of the criminal justice system, it provides a broad overview of the topic. Future papers may provide an opportunity to flesh out further detail.
  • Publication
    Elephant Crime Intelligence System Assessment
    (2015-03) Fahlman, Robert C.
    This assessment concludes that individual nation as well as regional and transnational organizations now have severely limited to nonexistent capacities to effectively respond to growing threat levels. It proposes a networked intelligence-led strategy at national, regional, and transnational levels to more effectively control, reduce, and, more importantly, prevent the wholesale slaughter into extinction of the African elephant population within the next decade. It concludes by outlining the requirements for designing and implementing a long-term sustainable elephant crime intelligence system, including the required governance arrangements, and proposes the roles and functions that key organizations could play at the national, regional, and transnational levels. Currently, a robust intelligence system addressing elephant poaching and illegal trade of ivory at all phases within the intelligence process is either nonexistent or seriously limited in capacity (the key phases in the intelligence process are planning and direction; collection; evaluation; collation; analysis; reporting/dissemination/action). Therefore, the project examines the need for designing and implementing a long-term sustainable elephant crime intelligence system and governance model as well as assessing the roles and functions that key organizations could play at the national, regional, and international levels within such an intelligence system and accompanying governance model.
  • Publication
    Investing in Natural Capital for Eradicating Extreme Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity : A Biodiversity Roadmap for the WBG
    (Washington, DC, 2014-06) World Bank Group
    The World Bank Group (WBG) has a long experience in engaging in biodiversity with world-class expertise in the field. It has been the single largest funder of biodiversity investments since the late 1980s. The WBG investments have largely been of two kinds: (1) investments in biodiversity, aimed at the conservation and sustainable use of species, habitats, and ecosystems that sustain healthy ecosystems, while enhancing people's livelihoods and safety nets. These investments have also been providing jobs and economic development in frequently impoverished rural areas for example by supporting protected areas and an increasingly important tourism industry; and (2) investments that add value to projects in other sectors, such as irrigation, hydropower, and infrastructure, by increasing their environmental sustainability. The WBG is a global center of excellence that provides economy wide technical and economic knowledge and expertise on biodiversity and ecosystems. It has the standing and convening power to facilitate participatory dialogue between client countries and networks of other relevant stakeholders on matters of biodiversity and climate change concern, such as loss of ecosystem resilience, forest law enforcement and governance, wildlife trade, and overexploitation of natural resources.
  • Publication
    Mongolia
    (Washington, DC, 2010-03) World Bank
    This report reviews and recommends strategies to regulate the trade of wildlife through Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Ulaanbaatar is an ideal site to launch an effort to support improved enforcement of wildlife trade regulations. The city is the seat of Mongolia's government, media markets, and civil society, as well as the center of the wildlife trade. Some of the country's largest raw materials markets are located to the east and west of the city. Ulaanbaatar's many road inspection points, its train station, and its airport are all strategic sites for enforcing trade regulation. Responsibility for enforcement of wildlife trade regulations is distributed among half a dozen different agencies. This report focuses specifically on Mongolia's existing legal framework for controlling the wildlife trade, and on strategies for improving enforcement, particularly in Ulaanbaatar. Before turning to those subjects, the next section provides a brief overview of the Mongolian wildlife trade.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008
    (2009-06-01) Kaufmann, Daniel; Kraay, Aart; Mastruzzi, Massimo
    This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.
  • Publication
    Design Thinking for Social Innovation
    (2010-07) Brown, Tim; Wyatt, Jocelyn
    Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.
  • Publication
    Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003) Collier, Paul; Elliott, V. L.; Hegre, Håvard; Hoeffler, Anke; Reynal-Querol, Marta; Sambanis, Nicholas
    Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.
  • Publication
    Governance Matters IV : Governance Indicators for 1996-2004
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06) Kaufmann, Daniel; Kraay, Aart; Mastruzzi, Massimo
    The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.
  • Publication
    Government Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996-2002
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08) Kaufmann, Daniel; Kraay, Aart; Mastruzzi, Massimo
    The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions of governance and use an unobserved components model to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. They present the point estimates of the dimensions of governance as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. The governance indicators reported here are an update and expansion of previous research work on indicators initiated in 1998 (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobat 1999a,b and 2002). The authors also address various methodological issues, including the interpretation and use of the data given the estimated margins of errors.