Eco-crime worth $10bn per year

New research has discovered that eco-crime is big business, worth $10 billion a year globally towards the revenues of gangs and criminal syndicates.

A report by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) says that eco-criminals make their money selling off body parts of endangered animals, including ivory elephant tusks and tiger skins.

These items have profit margins of up to 700%.

In addition, millions of acres of protected ancient forests are being cut down illegally to sell off the expensive wood.

Other activities include wild-life trafficking, smuggling ozone-depleting compounds and global warming chemicals, trading illegal hazardous waste, and illegal fishing.

EIA’s report, ‘A Threat to Our Future’, calls upon the world’s governments to start taking eco-crime as seriously as drug smuggling and people trafficking.

According to the report, environmental crime is a serious, time-critical problem that requires governments to work together towards a substantial, committed and sustained response.

Several men suspected to be heavily involved in eco-crime have been named by the EIA, including Sansar Chand, who has sold more than 12,000 animal skins, and Abdul Rasyid, an Indonesian businessman who was believed to have been involved in illegal logging of the country’s rainforests, although this could not be proved.

Antonio Mario Costa, UN director of the Office for Drugs and Crime, said in response to the report that eco-crime is not victimless but hurts us all, because we all share one world.