Green Crime Goes Global

RIO DE JANEIRO – In late 2024, Brazilian federal police dismantled a sprawling illegal gold mining network in Pará, exposing a criminal enterprise that stretched far beyond the rainforest. The operation, part of a broader crackdown on illicit mining in Indigenous territories, uncovered links to money laundering via shell companies and fraudulent permits, with funds traced to accounts in Dubai, Miami, and Panama.

During the raids, Brazilian authorities seized drones, encrypted phones, and fuel-laden barges – all tools of a well-financed transnational operation. The bust confirmed what researchers have warned about for years: environmental crime in the Amazon is now deeply entangled with global financial crime. The armed groups behind them are corrupting officials and increasingly operating at an industrial scale.

Environmental crime has become so extensive that it is reshaping the global policy agenda, evolving from a niche concern to an urgent topic of international diplomacy. Discussions about how to prevent it feature prominently at United Nations climate negotiations. There have also been official deliberations through the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), ministerial meetings at economic summits such as the G20, and joint statements from geopolitical groups such as the BRICS+.

Environmental crimes are far more than a form of ecological vandalism. They can undermine national security, economic stability, and disrupt climate action and biodiversity protection. According to the Financial Action Task Force, environmental crimes such as illegal logging and mining, wildlife trafficking, and hazardous waste dumping generate annual revenues of up to $280 billion, exceeding the profits of human trafficking and the illegal arms trade.

These illicit markets are often tied to organized crime networks and, increasingly, to transnational money laundering and corruption schemes, connecting resource-rich regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America with financial hubs in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

The growing awareness of the transnational threats posed by environmental crime is reshaping international, regional, and national responses. Forest and nature loss are no longer viewed only as environmental concerns, but increasingly as high priorities for law enforcement and criminal justice.

At the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) in Colombia last year, several governments and regional organizations – including the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization and the Inter-American Development Bank – called attention to the relationships between environmental crime and biodiversity loss. And ahead of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil, illegal deforestation and associated crimes are emerging as a potential theme, given their implications for nature loss, carbon dioxide emissions, and global warming.

Meanwhile, the UN has intensified efforts to tackle environmental crime under its transnational crime prevention mandate. Efforts to combat forest crimes and wildlife trafficking have gained momentum over the past decade, especially since the 2015 Doha Declaration. In late 2024, UNTOC established an open-ended intergovernmental expert group tasked with evaluating existing legal frameworks, identifying critical gaps, and considering the feasibility of establishing a dedicated UNTOC protocol on crimes affecting the environment. Supporters of the protocol, including Brazil, France, and Peru, argue that linking environmental crime prevention to anti-crime treaties would raise awareness, strengthen enforcement capabilities, and foster more predictable international legal and technical cooperation.

Several other intergovernmental institutions are also wading into these debates and looking for ways to counter environmental crimes. The G20, for example, has taken modest steps toward integrating environmental crime into its broader economic and financial stability agenda. In 2017, it agreed on a set of “high level principles on combating corruption related to illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products.” Then, at the 2024 G20 summit in Brazil, delegates highlighted the destabilizing financial and economic effects of nature crimes, particularly those coming from illegal supply chains in commodities such as timber, minerals, and wildlife products. For the first time, the G20 collectively endorsed measures to track and disrupt illicit financial flows linked to environmental crime.

Similarly, the BRICS grouping has tentatively identified environmental crime as a point of mutual concern and cooperation, following a 2021 meeting where member-state environment ministers explicitly acknowledged the threats posed by wildlife crime. Earlier this year, BRICS+ foreign ministers issued a statement highlighting the importance of tackling illicit financial flows connected to environmental crimes. Given the group’s significant global economic footprint, its growing alignment on this issue sends a powerful message.

Of course, coordinating and reconciling these diverse international efforts poses a challenge. Each forum approaches environmental crime differently. While the COPs are about protecting the climate and nature, UNTOC is focused on law enforcement and criminal justice, and the G20 and the BRICS+ are primarily concerned with illicit financial flows. The task now is to bring thematic and diplomatic coherence to these efforts.

Fortunately, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice is exploring ways to harmonize disparate agendas, including by linking environmental crime to the countering of illicit financial flows. Similarly, the BRICS+ summit in Rio de Janeiro in July, COP30 in Belém, and the G20 summit in November all offer promising entry points to align priorities and strategies.

Ultimately, tackling environmental crime will require more than isolated national efforts. The problem demands sustained diplomacy across an array of international platforms. Governments, businesses, and civil-society groups can each play to their strengths: the COP processes offer environmental legitimacy, UNTOC provides legal scaffolding, the G20 brings economic clout, and the BRICS+ brings geopolitical weight and the potential for South-South cooperation.

Closer coordination across these forums would not only sharpen the global response but also lower the costs of multilateral environmental crime fighting and improve the results. In an era of geopolitical volatility and institutional drift, strategic coordination is essential to any effective global response to environmental gangsters.

Robert Muggah, Co-Founder of the Igarapé Institute and the SecDev Group, is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Cities of Tomorrow and an adviser to the Global Risks Report.

Ilona Szabó, Co-Founder and President of the Igarapé Institute, is a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025.
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