A business even more ‘lucrative’ than drugs

Sasa Braun has seen a lot in the 28 years he has worked as an investigator. But it’s the past six years as a criminal intelligence officer with Interpol’s environmental security program that has shocked him the most. “The brutality and profit margins in the area of environmental crime are almost unimaginable. Cartels have taken over entire sectors of illegal mining, the timber trade and waste disposal,” he said at a recent press conference, held together with German politicians. Braun listed examples. Villages in Peru that had resisted deforestation efforts had been razed to the ground by criminal gangs in retribution, he said, while illegal fishing fleets had thrown crew overboard to avoid having to pay them.

And much of the timber and fish acquired through illegal means ended up in Germany, he said. Environmental crime has many faces and includes the illegal wildlife trade, illegal logging, illegal waste disposal and the illegal discharge of pollutants into the atmosphere, water or soil. It is a lucrative business for transnational crime networks. Illegal waste trafficking, for example, accounts for $10 to 12 billion annually, according to 2016 figures from the United Nations Environment Program. Criminal networks save on the costs of proper disposal and obtaining permits. For some crime networks, the profits from waste management are so huge that it has become more interesting than drug trafficking.

Is wood the new gold?

The profits from illegal logging have also grown. Well-seasoned tropical hardwood, which is used to build yachts for example, is increasingly rare and demand is high. Katharina Lang, project manager for forest crime at the German branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said that consumers could never be certain if the wood in a product they had bought had been acquired through legal means. According to a 2021 study by the German Association of Engineers (VDI), illegal logging accounts for 30% of activities in the global forestry sector. This figure can rise to almost 90% in countries that produce tropical timber.

German timber regulations call for a certificate of origin, but labelling fraud is frequent, as WWF has demonstrated many times. For example, wood might be labelled as being hardwood from Vietnam but actually it might be low-grade waste wood. WWF Germany uses genetic and isotopic fingerprinting to verify the declared origin of wood.

Sasa Braun from Interpol says that cooperation with NGOs such as WWF is invaluable but, he says, the activities of these organisations aren’t always appreciated, particularly in countries where there is corruption at all levels. According to the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), environmental crime — the third most lucrative area of crime worldwide after drug trafficking and counterfeit goods — generates profits of between $110 billion and $280 billion each year.

It is difficult to be more precise because there is an extremely high number of unreported cases. And it’s not like nature cannot sue.

“This certainly also has to do with the fact that we speak of administrative offenses in the case of environmental crime. Cases of environmental crime often aren’t uncovered at all. They are only discovered when deliberate and targeted controls are carried out,” said Moritz Klose, head of the wildlife program in Germany and Europe for WWF.

Environmental advocates still have some time to make their case. The EU is only expected to adopt the new directive by the middle of next year.