$250 Billion Market for Illegal Wildlife, Logging and Mining Is Destroying Our National Parks in Developing Countries

A $250 Billion Market is Fueling Illegal Wildlife, Logging and Mining Is Destroying Our National Parks in Developing Countries

A 2017 United Nations report shows llegal logging, mining and wildlife poaching earned criminal gangs up to $258 billion last year.

The amount spent by international agencies on combating environmental crime — $20-30 million — is just a fraction of its estimated value of $258 billion, it said.

The scale of crimes ranging from illegal gold mining by drug cartels in Colombia to pillaging forests by rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo is expanding two to three times faster than the global economy, the study by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol found.

“Environmental crime is growing at an alarming pace,” Interpol Secretary General Juergen Stock said in a statement.

Trafficking products from endangered wildlife, including tusks harvested by the decimation of one quarter of the world’s elephant population over the last decade, is worth between $7 to $23 billion a year, the report said.

Pointing to the mismatch between poachers’ profits and government measures to fight them, ivory traffickers in Tanzania reap five times the size of the country’s wildlife budget, or an estimated $10.5 million per year, it said.

An average 3,000 elephants were killed per year there over the last decade, the data showed. “The vast sums of money generated from these crimes keep sophisticated international criminal gangs in business, and fuel insecurity around the world,” UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said.

Weak park protection laws and poorly funded security forces are enabling international criminal networks and armed rebels to profit from a trade that fuels conflicts, devastates ecosystems and is threatening species with extinction.

Scale of the Problem

Activity                                Est. Annual Income

Wildlife Poaching                  $7 – 23 billion  

Illegal Logging and trade      $50 – 150 billion  

Illegal Fishing                        $11 – 24 billion

Illegal Mining                        $12 – 48 billion

Total                                       $80 – 245 billion

Drugs                                      $344 billion  

Human Trafficking                 $158 billion

Counterfeiting                         $288 billion  

Environmental crime is the world's fourth-largest criminal enterprise after drug smuggling, counterfeiting and human trafficking. The amount of money lost due to environmental crime is 10,000 times greater than the amount of money spent by international agencies on combatting it - just $20-30 million.

Enforcement efforts have revealed a great increase in the scale of organization of environmental crimes: Prosecuted and convicted individuals in recent years have been convicted for illegal logging and laundering of hundreds of millions of USD in individual cases, dwarfing the resources which are available for enforcement, investigation and prosecution.

For the full report, see Environmental Crime