Busy times in JGI's work to end wildlife trafficking
It’s been a busy few weeks for our ForeverWild team and partners, as we take action on wildlife crime. Here are recent highlights.
End Wildlife Crime Breakfast Symposium 11 October 2024
In the lead up to UNTOC CoP12 (Vienna, 14-18 October) the Jane Goodall Institute Global’s representative to End Wildlife Crime (EWC), Dr Zara Bending spoke at an EWC breakfast symposium hosted at Taronga Zoo, Sydney. The event featured experts including Taronga’s Chief Executive Cameron Kerr AO, Dr Vanessa Pirotta from Rapiscan Systems, Dr Phoebe Meagher from Taronga, and colleagues from the Wildlife Justice Commission.
Discussions covered strategies towards accountability for criminal networks, legal challenges and opportunities to disrupt organised crime, and the deployment of innovative technologies to enhance detection and determine species and provenance.
In addition to covering the role of international law in tackling wildlife crime, Dr Bending showcased the Institute’s work in crime detection, giving specialist care post-seizure, providing sanctuary for animals in need of rehabilitation and safe haven, and even repatriation back-to-wild. The presentation featured many familiar faces our followers would know from the Institute’s Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center, like recently rescued infant gorilla Mozambique (‘ZZ’) and chimpanzees Motambo, Anzac, Wounda,and Jeje. Dr Bending also recognised the work of Tchimpounga’s veterinarians, Ecoguard and sniffer dogs, and recent part in returning seized African grey parrots to the wild.
EWC Chair and newly unanimously elected Executive President of the International Council of Environmental Law, John Scanlon AO, delivered a virtual speech viewable here. Dr Goodall delivered her own address to the multidisciplinary audience including key members of the legal and conservation communities, viewable here.
The Wildlife Justice Commission’s motto that ‘it takes a network to defeat a network’ best sums up the spirit of the event, with collaborations in the works for 2025 already on the cards.
A Civil Society Declaration for more effective implementation of the UNTOC
At UNTOC CoP12, the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice presented the Civil Society Declaration for more effective implementation of the UNTOC. A recording of the event can be found here. The Declaration dated October 2024 can be read here and was signed by over 150 organizations (including JGI Global) and 80 individuals (including Dr Zara Bending).
The Declaration was created within the context of the UNTOC’s Implementation Review Mechanism (IRM) which launched in 2020. The Alliance collected inputs from civil society participants throughout the Constructive Dialogues with Member States as part of the IRM and drafted the Declaration. This Declaration is intended to convey to State Parties, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the wider public, the key concerns and recommendations of civil society when it comes to the implementation of the UNTOC.
The Jane Goodall Institute Global (JGIG) provided clauses for consideration for the drafting of the section on use of the UNTOC to address crimes that affect the environment, including highlighting civil society’s role in providing technical assistance to train those in charge of investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating these crimes, gathering intelligence, filling expertise gaps, raising public awareness, and acknowledging the risks faced by non-state actors operating in this space. We also drew attention to intersecting concerns with the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
A groundbreaking Resolution on crimes that affect the environment
UNTOC CoP 12 also saw the adoption of a historic resolution. The resolution titled ‘Enhancing measures to prevent and combat crimes that affect the environment falling within scope of the UNTOC’ was adopted by consensus and comes at a crucial time where crimes that affect the environment (CAE) are reaping impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, good governance and the rule of law, public health, human security and livelihood, and sustainable development.
The Resolution requests that the UNODC convene an open-ended intergovernmental expert group dedicated to CAE, with a mandate to review the implementation of the UNTOC in addressing CAE; identify gaps that may exist in the international legal framework and that could be addressed under the UNTOC to prevent and combat CAE; and consider possible responses to those gaps, including the possibility, feasibility and merits of any additional protocol to the UNTOC. This marks the first time that an UNTOC CoP Resolution requests States to consider an additional protocol on crimes that affect the environment.
JGIG will continue its work to support Member States in collaboration with our EWC colleagues in our shared fight to end wildlife trafficking as well as the looming threat organized crime poses to the environment more broadly. We look forward to what this new inter-governmental process will yield and the potential for advancing an additional protocol, or protocols, to the UNTOC.
A full roundup, including a summary of the drafting process of the resolution tabled by Brazil, France and Peru, is available from EWC here and a recording of a side event entitled ‘Wildlife Crime’s Devastating Impacts: How Enhanced International Cooperation Can Help Prevent and Combat These Serious Crimes’ is viewable here. Hosted by Brazil, and co-sponsored by Peru, Angola, and Costa Rica, alongside 16 civil society organisations—including EWC, JGIG, and the Wildlife Justice Commission—this event recognised the essential role of international cooperation in combating wildlife crime.
Did you know that 15 November 2024 is the first International Day for the Prevention of and Fight against All Forms of Transnational Organized Crime? Stay tuned for more and join the conversation with #StopOrganizedCrime
Photo credits: Taronga Zoo, Sydney
