The growing scourge of nature crime — which includes illegal forms of logging, mining, fishing, forest conversion and wildlife trade — is devastating ecosystems and species around the world, robbing communities and governments of valuable resources and revenues. These crimes are estimated to generate as much as $280 billion in annual criminal proceeds, according to Interpol — money that could go to communities for health, education and development initiatives.
Nature crimes are also accelerating the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss, which have dire impacts on our planet. For example, half of all tropical deforestation is illegal, according to the World Economic Forum. From fires and floods to the destruction of critical ecosystems and the decline of iconic wild species, nature crimes are putting us at even greater risk.
What’s more, these crimes undermine global cooperation efforts on climate change, biodiversity and other environmental threats that are already hobbled by growing political rifts, bureaucracy, funding cuts, and in some countries, an inward, populist and sometimes xenophobic political turn.
Organized criminal elements are exploiting these political currents to exploit the planet’s living resources, building on the opportunities of a globalized world.
It’s increasingly clear that we won’t be able to effectively slow the worst impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss without countering nature crime. Solutions, like emerging technologies that can trace product origins, strengthening legal frameworks and empowering Indigenous communities with tools and resources, are just some of the ways the world can fight back.
A Persistent Problem
This is not a problem that’s going away. Nature crimes are on the rise, with illegal gold mining among the fastest growing. Venezuela and Ecuador, for example, have reported large increases, especially since the price of gold rose significantly following the COVID-19 pandemic. The profits generated annually from illegal gold mining are estimated to be as much as $48 billion globally, according to Interpol.
Since 2016, the value of illegal gold exports surpassed cocaine in Colombia and Peru, respectively the largest and second-largest producers of cocaine globally. Cocaine and gold are becoming inextricably linked in many regions, with cartels using gold to launder illicit drug cash.
Indeed, convergence with other crimes is a regular feature of these environmental offenses. The links between illegal mining and illegal logging, for example, are well established. As a 2024 WRI report highlighted, the impact of mining, both legal and illegal, on global deforestation is striking, with nearly 1.4 million hectares of trees lost between 2001 and 2020 as a direct result of mining. That’s an area roughly the size of Puerto Rico.
At sea, illegal fishing fleets abound with human rights abuses and other forms of serious organized crime. In November 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned individuals associated with the Gulf Cartel due to their involvement in illegal fishing, human smuggling and narcotics trafficking in the Gulf of Mexico.
These are complex crimes. To address this, a new WRI report on nature crime, aims to provide greater understanding on how these crimes work, their enablers and their convergences, and offers a range of solutions to fight back.
5 Ways to Halt Nature Crime
Here are five approaches that, if executed effectively, could turn the tide on nature crime.
1) Follow the Money
Nature crimes are routinely entangled with financial crimes, with illicit profits laundered into the global banking system. While it is somewhat of a cliché, there has been proven success in following the money to prosecute environmental criminals for financial offenses. Given that many jurisdictions impose harsher sentences for financial crimes, like money laundering, than environmental offenses, focusing on the money is a key approach to taking down the perpetrators.
Yet there are challenges. The sheer complexity of the crimes, with layering of transactions to obscure illicit sources of funds, presents a major obstacle. Furthermore, the linkages between nature crime and financial crimes are often missed or not prioritized by investigators. This needs to change: Illegal forms of logging and deforestation, along with illegal mining, are the highest-value crime types linked to associated financial crimes, according to the multilateral Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog.
Progress, however, is being made. Last year saw the launch of the Amazon Region Initiative Against Illicit Finance, a partnership between Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and the U.S., to “combat the financing of nature crime and counter the transnational criminal organizations benefiting from it.”
The private sector is also stepping up, with WWF and Themis — a developer of anti-money laundering software — creating a new Environmental Crime Financial Toolkit. Launched at the 2024 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16), this resource helps the financial sector better understand illicit activities associated with nature crime. Elsewhere, the Private Sector Dialogue on the Disruption of Financial Crime Related to Crimes that Affect the Environment, hosted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in partnership with Interpol, the Nature Crime Alliance and United for Wildlife, bring together financial institutions, law enforcement, financial intelligence units and civil society to increase awareness of the financial fingerprints of nature crime. If banks get better at identifying financial flows linked to environmental crimes, the networks involved will face increasing disruption.
These efforts are making it harder for perpetrators to conceal their crimes — and their profits.
2) Seize the Potential of Emerging Technologies
In March 2024, Belgian authorities announced that some 260 metric tons of Russian timber had entered Belgium in violation of EU sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This discovery was not the result of intelligence tip-offs or vessel tracking. Rather, the timber’s origin was only established due to cutting-edge scientific techniques that leverage chemical and genetic information — one of several nascent technologies that could dramatically improve the detection of products resulting from nature crime.
Elsewhere, artificial intelligence is reshaping the fight against wildlife crime, with the development of camera traps that can differentiate between probable poachers and other individuals. This reduces false alarms while enabling rangers to know exactly what they are dealing with when receiving alerts.
Investing in and scaling these emerging technologies — alongside established ones such as geospatial monitoring that can identify nature crimes on land and sea — will equip frontline defenders and law enforcement actors with the tools that can thwart criminals on the ground.
3) Empower People and Communities on the Frontlines
Indigenous peoples and local communities are among the most affected by nature crimes such as land grabbing and illegal mining. As a result, they are often subjected to violence and intimidation by criminal gangs. In their role as frontline defenders, Indigenous communities must be supported in protecting their homes and livelihoods, as well as the biodiversity and ecosystems upon which we all depend.
This includes forging partnerships with the private sector, such as tech companies, to provide access to innovative tools and technologies that can give frontline defenders an advantage over the criminal gangs active in their area. Training communities to use platforms such as Global Forest Watch and other monitoring systems has already seen positive results. The challenge now is to scale these activities.
Building trusted relationships between Indigenous communities and law enforcement — bridging local intelligence with policing power and resources — is also essential. Such relationships will not only support investigations and prosecutions but can also lead to more effective protections for frontline defenders themselves, who are regularly murdered in the defense of nature.
4) Ramp Up Multi-Sector Approaches
Multi-sector collaboration is a common thread across many of the approaches used to combat nature crime. It is essential in tackling the complex web of vested interests that drive environmental crimes around the world.
The Amazon Conservation Association (ACA) — a civil society organization — routinely cooperates with a federation of Indigenous peoples and local communities in Peru to monitor areas under threat from illegal mining. Using its Mapping the Andean Amazon Program (MAAP), which harnesses satellite imagery, ACA shares confidential reports with the federation, which then works with affected communities to determine if legal challenges should be brought and engage relevant government departments to bring them forward. Between 2022 and 2024, this collaboration has directly led to five major law enforcement operations — a strong example of multi-sector cooperation resulting in direct action against nature crime. In one such operation in Barranco Chico, Peru, authorities discovered illegal mining camps, where they destroyed heavy machinery, including diggers and trucks. Deforestation linked to mining subsequently decreased in this region, ACA reported.
Multi-sector approaches are also championed by initiatives like the Nature Crime Alliance, a global, multi-sector network hosted by WRI. With more than 40 members across governments, law enforcement and civil society, it is a model that in its two-year existence is already bearing fruit.
This month, the Alliance published a suite of new resources, developed in consultation with members, which aim to support law enforcement investigations and deepen civil society access to the latest research and insights on nature crime issues. Many of these resources have been shaped by the Alliance’s activities, such as supporting Interpol’s work to strengthen links with civil society organizations focusing on wildlife crime. The Alliance also runs a working group with Indigenous Peoples Rights International to empower frontline defenders via trainings, provide access to technologies, and advocate at the policy level.
Financial commitments in support of multi-sector collaborations are also emerging. In January, the German government announced a 5 million euro ($5.4 million) grant to Interpol and WWF to tackle environmental crimes in a strong example of greater collaboration between law enforcement and civil society.
If we are going to reduce nature crime, and protect global biodiversity, the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, and our national economic and security interests, we need to break the silos and get sectors working together more closely.
5) Strengthen Legal Frameworks
Another essential step is to ensure that legal and institutional frameworks are up to the task of prosecuting and punishing the perpetrators of nature crime. Criminal activities are forever evolving and adapting. Laws and judicial processes need to keep pace.
Reforming legal practices, such as widening the threshold of evidence that is admissible in court, would make a huge difference. In many cases, evidence gathered by civil society organizations or journalists — such as remote sensor data — cannot be used in prosecutions. A shift here would significantly increase convictions. Similarly, establishing stronger land rights for Indigenous peoples and local communities, and properly enforcing these rights, will go some way in tackling offenses such as land grabbing.
At the policy level, developments to international frameworks could also bolster law enforcement efforts. The relationship between these frameworks and local laws can be seen in the UNODC’s analysis of the global criminalization of environmental crimes. This 2024 study noted that the environmental offenses which most frequently meet the definition of “serious crimes” under the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) are those that fall under well-established international frameworks; wildlife crime and waste trafficking, covered by the UN Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, respectively. However, these frameworks need to be strengthened. CITES, for example, has consistently failed to stem the trade in iconic animals such as cheetahs. Despite being accorded the highest level of protection under CITES, some 4,184 cheetahs were involved in trafficking incidents between 2010 and 2019, with cubs being traded through loopholes in the convention’s system. Today, it is thought that as few as 6,500 mature cheetahs remain in the wild.
Since 2020, there has been growing support for a new protocol to the UNTOC to cover the trafficking of wild fauna and flora in addition to its existing focus on human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and illicit manufacture and trafficking in firearms. This would unlock a range of international collaborative tools for law enforcement agencies.
Making Progress in 2025
These solutions highlight that fighting back against nature crime is possible. What we need now is the political will among governments and donors to ensure resources flow to where they are needed most. Throughout 2025, there will be meaningful opportunities for governments and international organizations to make significant progress. They include:
- The IUCN World Conservation Congress — the major international summit on protecting fauna and flora that convenes every four years, taking place this October in Abu Dhabi — presents a key opportunity to elevate political will for stronger action against nature crime. Several major civil society organizations are already coordinating on a new omnibus resolution motion on nature crime ahead of the Congress. The motion, should it be adopted, will complement ongoing efforts to integrate nature crime as a core priority in IUCN’s four-year program of work (2026-2029), cementing the issue in the international conservation agenda.
- The UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) Conference of the States Parties will take place in December in Doha. As a legally binding treaty, the UNCAC is among the best tools to fight organized and international networks perpetrating environmental crime. The upcoming UNCAC COSP11 is therefore a major opportunity to influence policymakers and drive tangible change on this issue, with networks like the UNCAC Coalition’s Environmental Crime and Corruption working group leading the charge.
- The Conference of the Parties for CITES convenes in Uzbekistan in November. Establishing more stringent enforcement of the convention and closing loopholes to combat illegal international trade in endangered species of fauna and flora, such as the cheetah, would be a welcome development.
- Finally, the United Nations annual climate summit (COP30) will take place this year in Belem, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon river. Hopefully, this setting will encourage governments to highlight the threat that forest crime poses to conserving the threatened Amazon rainforests, a critical component of the global effort to limit the emissions that are driving climate change.
Bolstering these high-level frameworks can drive much-needed political will to counter nature crimes at the national or regional levels, thus supporting the strengthening of local laws and enforcement operations on the ground. They can also serve as a vehicle to promote the expansion of international sanctions for environmental crimes — a move that would make the consequences of committing these crimes in line with their devastating impacts.
In a world of contesting demands on funding and resources, nature crime has for too long been overlooked. Failure to make meaningful progress on this issue will spell the failure of global environmental goals. That is a price none of us can afford to pay.
