Our approach
We have a proud track record of achievements, including a ban on the international ivory trade and increased protection for whales and dolphins. We have also contributed to a legislation against imports of illegal timber in major consuming markets and a global agreement to curb the use of climate-damaging chemicals. We have spearheaded moves to create a global treaty on plastic pollution and we continue to expose those behind environmental crimes such as wildlife trafficking and illegal logging through our undercover investigation.
When the Environmental Investigation Agency was created in 1984, its first investigation and campaign was to protect cetaceans (whales and dolphins) from direct threats such as hunting in the Faroe Islands.
EIA campaigners began attending meetings of the International Whaling Commission, including its Scientific Committee, and as a result learnt about other indirect, equally concerning threats to cetaceans. The hole in the ozone layer, in suppressing the production of plankton in the ocean, was posing a serious threat to the crucial food source for whales.
From protecting whales to repairing the ozone layer
The international community came together in 1987 to agree the Montreal Protocol, which sought to heal the ozone layer through phased reductions in the consumption and production of ozone-depleting substances (ODS), such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which were widely used for refrigerants and aerosols.
Yet the ozone layer remained in a parlous state and EIA began hearing reports that a flourishing illegal trade in CFCs was undermining progress towards the Montreal Protocol’s goals.
EIA began researching and investigating the illegal trade in CFCs. It appeared that while production and consumption of CFCs were increasingly controlled in Europe and the US, production was booming in countries such as China due to different phase-out schedules for its use in developing countries. This provided opportunities for unscrupulous brokers to smuggle CFCs into Europe and the US.
EIA set out to expose the illegal trade through undercover investigations and in 1997 it published a groundbreaking report entitled Chilling Facts About a Burning Issue: CFC Smuggling in the European Union. The report was timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary meeting of the Montreal Protocol.
At the meeting, EIA campaigners successfully pushed for an amendment to the Protocol, establishing a licensing system for trade in ODS. Following this, EIA campaigners began to regularly attend Montreal Protocol meetings to bring new information on illegal trade in ODS to the member countries and gradually build up detailed knowledge of the workings of the Protocol.
Greenhouse gases – a new environmental threat
When a new environmental threat emerged in the booming production and use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), chemicals intended as replacements for CFCs, EIA was well-placed to intervene once more at global level.
HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases but as they had no impact on the ozone layer, they were not covered under the Montreal Protocol. They were one of chemicals in the basket of gases under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but no progress was being made on HFCs under that convention, which generally appeared to have stalled.
To EIA, the answer was simple – the Montreal Protocol had the experience and expertise in gradually phasing out refrigerant chemicals such as CFCs, so should be given the brief to tackle the worrying growth in HFCs. After all, the expansion in use of HFCs was a direct result of the CFC phase-out under the Montreal Protocol. After almost a decade of advocacy work by EIA to make its case, in 2016 parties to the Montreal Protocol agreed the Kigali Amendment to control production and consumption of HFCs.
Turning off the plastic tap for good
By the late 1990s, a new and urgent threat to the survival of cetaceans and a host of other marine species had emerged – plastic pollution of the world’s ocean. While initial efforts to grapple with the spiralling problem focused on the treatment of waste plastics, EIA’s detailed analysis showed that without tackling the burgeoning consumption and production of plastics at source, the scourge of plastic pollution would continue unabated.
Yet the challenge was to design an international agreement that could progressively reduce production and consumption of plastics. EIA had a ready-made model in the form of the Montreal Protocol, considered to be the world’s most effective multilateral environmental agreement to date.
EIA took this message to the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), attending a host of meetings to build support among member governments over a number of years. These tireless efforts paid off in March 2022 when, at the UNEA meeting an historic agreement was reached to start negotiations on a legally binding plastics pollution treaty to address the full lifecycle of plastics from creation to disposal – a step in the right direction for turning off the plastic tap for good.