Reports

Welcome to the Spring 2021 Investigator magazine, keeping you up to date on our activities and successes. Inside, you can find out about the amazing work behind the scenes by our Intelligence Team, unsung heroes whose ability to crunch the data and make sense of the huge amount of information we get from the field is essential for the success of our campaigns. There’s also a round-up of our key activities, including an update on illegal timber trade out of Myanmar in light of the violent coup of 1 February.

Recent years have witnessed an alarming increase in the illegal trade of plastic waste, with high-income countries consuming plastic products and packaging at unsustainable rates, exporting their plastic waste to developing countries with little capacity and infrastructure to manage it.

The United Nations General Assembly special session on corruption from 2-4 June 2021 (UNGASS) is an opportunity to highlight the important relationship between environmental crime and corruption and to galvanise governments and relevant agencies into action. The corruption that drives wildlife and forest crime is extensive and systemic and will be difficult to stop; arrests of ‘rogue individuals’ will not prevent further corruption. However, there are steps which EIA believes could be effective.

Preliminary findings of the evaluation and impact assessment for amending the EU F-Gas Regulation were presented and discussed in a stakeholder workshop on 6 May 2021. This briefing collates the comments and requests for further evaluation by EIA and other civil society organisations. 

Policy recommendations for the Government of China prior to the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, 11-24 October 2021

The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a major form of transnational organised crime, generating annual income of between $7 billion and $23 billion a year for the criminal syndicates involved. Wildlife crime threatens biodiversity, fuels corruption and impacts public health and the economy.