Editorial

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12208
• Date: 01 July 2017
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Author: Harro Asselt

Editorial

The notion of environmental crime covers a variety of

acts prohibited by law, such as illegal logging, illegal

waste disposal, illegal wildlife trade and so on. Although

many nations have set up legal frameworks –e.g., in

administrative or in criminal law –to monitor and

enforce environmental laws, and punish crimes leading

to environmental destruction, environmental crimes

increasingly transcend national boundaries. Criminal

networks operate across borders, and environmental

crimes in one country can be facilitated by a lack of

enforcement in another. The international relevance of

environmental crimes is further evidenced by the fact

that they can undermine the effectiveness of multilat-

eral environmental agreements, such as the Convention

on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna

and Flora, the Basel Convention on hazardous waste

and the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting

substances.

The role of international law in tackling environmental

crimes received renewed attention in the past year. In

part, this was sparked by the release of a paper by the

Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal

Court, which indicated that it may in the future look at

issues such as ‘land grabbing or the destruction of the

environment’.

1

This development highlights how envi-

ronmental crimes can be situated on the interface

between various fields of international law, including

international criminal law, international environmental

law and international trade law. Yet notwithstanding a

wide range of efforts in these various areas of interna-

tional law (as well as initiatives at regional and national

levels), environmental crimes continue to contribute to

environmental degradation and jeopardize the achieve-

ment of objectives of environmental treaties.

Against this backdrop, this special issue of RECIEL

focuses on the role of international and European law

in tackling environmental crimes.

It is important to acknowledge upfront that the interna-

tional governance of environmental crimes is multi-

faceted. There is no single international legal regime

addressing environmental crimes. Instead, as Lorraine

Elliott shows in the first article of the special issue,

transnational environmental crimes are governed by a

‘regime complex’involving a variety of international

institutions and actors. Elliott maps this regime com-

plex and identifies how several of its elements interact

with each other. Beyond environmental treaties, she

discusses the relevance of international criminal law

institutions, including the United Nations (UN) Con-

vention against Transnational Organized Crime,

INTERPOL, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the

World Customs Organization. Elliott not only maps the

various institutions, but also points to emerging forms

of cooperation between them. Focusing on the case of

wildlife crime, she suggests that there is some conver-

gence between the approaches to environmental crimes

adopted under international environmental and crim-

inal law regimes.

The other articles in the special issue adopt a regional

focus, with two examining environmental crimes in the

Asia-Pacific context and two in the European context.

First, Giovanni Broussard zooms in on illegal wildlife

trade in South East Asia. He discusses the challenges in

effectively tackling environmental crimes in the region.

While various countries have put in place laws and pol-

icies to address environmental crimes, Broussard shows

that divergences in the standards applied in monitoring

and enforcement, as well as inadequate cooperation,

still allow wildlife criminals to get off scot free.

Although initiatives have been launched at the regional

level to facilitate international cooperation, these initia-

tives themselves need to take into account that various

government agencies should work together to address

wildlife crime.

Next, Gregory Rose examines transnational coordin-

ation of the enforcement of environmental criminal

law, with a focus on cooperation between the Australian

and Indonesian governments on the issue of illegal log-

ging. Rose explains how measures adopted in Australia,

such as legal assistance and anti-money laundering reg-

ulations, can be helpful in countering illegal logging.

However, drawing on a hypothetical case study of an

environmental crime, he also shows that there are still

important legal hurdles to overcome before effective

cooperation can be achieved.

Moving to the European context, Michael Faure offers a

critical review of the history of European environmental

criminal law. Faure traces how since the 1970s, environ-

mental criminal law has become part of criminal law in

a broader sense in many Member States, as opposed to

being limited to administrative law. He further shows

that criminal law is increasingly used as part of a larger

suite of measures to address environmental crimes,

with criminal law only being employed in case other

measures do not achieve the desired result. While Faure

thus argues that Member States have learned their les-

sons, he suggests that the 2008 European Union (EU)

Environmental Crime Directive has thus far failed to

1

Office of the Prosecutor, ‘Policy Paper on Case Selection and

Prioritisation’ (International Criminal Court, 15 September 2016),

found at: <https://www.icc-cpi.int/itemsDocuments/20160915_OTP-

Policy_Case-Selection_Eng.pdf>,at5.

ª2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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RECIEL 26 (2) 2017. ISSN 2050-0386DOI: 10.1111/reel.12208

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Review of European Community & International Environmental Law