Similarly, government officials have been found to grant logging concessions to large corporations, regardless of indigenous land ownership and the laws surrounding it. These examples underscore the different ways in which government officials can be complicit and collude in the commission of environmental offences committed by corporations/businesses, including the potential responses by citizens (Ellefsen, 2012).
2.1.4 Organised criminal groups and networks The involvement of organised criminal groups and networks in various environmental crimes is acknowledged by a wide range of authors and institutions, including the UN Security Council, UN Environment, UNICRI, UNODC, CITES, EUROPOL and INTERPOL (See for example INTERPOL, 2017a; UNICRI, 2017; UNODC, 2017b; EUROPOL, 2017; INTERPOL-UNEP, 2016; Nellemann et al. 2016). According to a recent study, three out of the twelve most financially rewarding transnational criminal activities are linked to environmental crime: illicit wildlife trafficking, illicit timber trade and illicit fish trade (May, 2017; EnviCrimeNet, 2016). The UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) focuses on transnational organized crime and gives more broadly, in its article 2, a useful definition of the term “organized criminal group”. It is described as “a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit”. Therefore, three people acting together can be considered an organised group if the required conditions are met. In addition, UNTOC specifies that the structure of the group does not have to be sophisticated, since a “structured group” is “a group that is not randomly formed for the immediate commission of an offence and that it need not have formally defined roles for its members, continuity of its membership or a developed structure.” In this context, environmental crimes can be committed by very different types of criminal groups, from small groups to very sophisticated transnational syndicates.
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As previously mentioned, environmental crime can be committed by loosely organised groups of individuals, but there are also much more sophisticated forms of organised criminal networks with clear division of roles. For instance, illegal abalone harvesting in South Africa is highly-organized, and often controlled by organized crime groups who also control drug trafficking (Expert information). In the illegal trafficking of waste, EUROPOL reported that such networks are involved in the collection, transportation, and recovery of waste, and also have legal experts assisting them. Many of the brokers coordinating illegal waste management activities are embedded in the legal waste management and use their positions to corrupt key government authorities (EUROPOL, 2011). The involvement of organised criminal networks in the commission of environmental crimes will be discussed further in Chapter 3, particularly in view of the linkages between environmental crime and other serious crime.
2.2 Hotspot regions and countries Origin and destination countries/regions vary according to the type of environmental crime and the related market offer and demand. Hotspots for environmental crimes have also evolved in response to new regulations and efforts in enforcement strategies.
2.2.1 Hotspots for wildlife crime According to the UNODC, between 1,000 to 62,000 seizures of trafficked wildlife by law enforcement authorities were recorded between 2004 and 2015 in Mexico, Canada, the US, the United Kingdom (UK), India, China, Peru, Nigeria, Russia, France, and South Africa (UNODC, 2016b). Wildlife trafficking is widespread in various areas of Africa and Asia and causes irreparable damage to natural ecosystems. Elephants, rhinos, and tigers represent three of the largest endangered species killed for their skins and/or bones. Ivory, rhino horn, and tiger parts are among the most popular large animal ‘commodities’ being trafficked from various parts of South-East Asia and Africa into Asia (UNODC, n.d.). However, countless