With an annual turnover of USD 199 million, the illegal wildlife trade is the fourth largest illicit market in the world, after drugs, arms, and human trafficking. Amongst all known threats to wildlife, the illegal trade and consumption of wildlife is amongst the most significant and destabilizing. Moreover, the negative consequences of wildlife crime are not limited to natural ecosystems. Wildlife crime is organized, and transnational, is fuelled by corruption, and impacts local communities, national economies, security, and public health. The book “Wildlife Trafficking : A Crime Against Environment” by Siddartha Sarkar covers the economics of wildlife crime in detail.
In fact, wildlife crime has been the root cause of various pandemics, including COVID-19, due to increased exposure to zoonotic diseases. Despite the devastation associated with wildlife crime, there is no global agreement on wildlife crime, and existing wildlife trade laws are not adequately enforced.
One organization working towards improving the policy around wildlife crime is The Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime (EWC), founded and chaired by John Scanlon AO, former Secretary General of CITES. EWC is an alliance of individuals and organizations that support the need for these law reforms.
On this episode of The Think Wildlife Podcast, I speak to Alice Pasqualato, who is the policy advisor of EWS. We talk about all the great work EWS is doing to tackle wildlife crime. This includes the formation of the Pandemics Treaty and the addition of a Protocol to the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC).
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