New UN Report Puts Staggering Dollar Figures on Environmental Crime Revenues
Crimes from illegal fishing to ivory dealing yield tens of billions of dollars annually.
A global industry in so-called environmental crime—which includes everything from selling elephant ivory to illegal fishing to illicit logging and more—is worth between $70 billion and $213 billion a year and largely finances criminal, militia, and terrorist groups, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations and INTERPOL.
"There has been a substantial upgrade in the scale from past reports," said Christian Nellemann, head of the Rapid Response Unit at the United Nations Environment Assembly. "One of the primary reasons, particularly with regard to timber and loss of wildlife habitats, is that the methods used by organized crime were not so well known just a few years ago."
The new report, called "The Environmental Crime Crisis," says that
