Conservation and crime convergence? Situating the 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference

Francis Masse,Hannah Dickinson,Teresa Lappe-Osthege,Rosaleen Duffy,Jared Margulies,Laure Joanny

doi:10.2458/v27i1.23543

Abstract

The 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Conference was the fourth and biggest meeting on IWT convened at the initiative of the UK Government. Using a collaborative event ethnography, we examine the Conference as a site where key actors defined the problem of IWT as one of serious crime that needs to be addressed as such. We ask (a) how was IWT framed as serious crime, (b) how was this framing mobilized to promote particular policy responses, and (c) how did the framing and suggested responses reflect the privileging of elite voices? Answering these questions demonstrates the expanding ways in which thinking related to crime and policing are an increasingly forceful dynamic shaping conservation-related policy at the global level. We argue that the conservation-crime convergence on display at the 2018 London IWT Conference is characteristic of a conservation policy landscape that increasingly promotes and privileges responses to IWT that are based on legal and judicial reform, criminal investigations, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement technologies. Marginalized are those voices that seek to address the underlying drivers of IWT by promoting solutions rooted in sustainable livelihoods in source countries and global demand reduction. We suggest that political ecology of conservation and environmental crime would benefit from greater engagement with critical criminology, a discipline that critically interrogates the uneven power dynamics that shape ideas of crime, criminality, how they are politicized, and how they frame policy decisions. This would add further conceptual rigor to political ecological work that deconstructs conservation and environmental crime.Keywords: illegal wildlife trade, poaching, conservation, crime, event ethnography, criminology

Highlights

In October 2018, the UK government hosted the London Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Conference to bring together global leaders to "help eradicate illegal wildlife trade and better protect the world's most iconic species from the threat of extinction."2 The 2018 London IWT Conference highlighted the expanding ways in which thinking, practices and networks related to crime and policing are an increasingly forceful dynamic shaping global conservation-related policy
We suggest that political ecology of conservation and environmental crime would benefit from greater engagement with critical criminology, a discipline that critically interrogates the uneven power dynamics that shape ideas of crime, criminality, how they are politicized, and how they frame policy decisions
In 2014, Duffy called for more collaborative event ethnography (CEE) of environmental meetings "to uncover and critically interrogate how global conventions work, how alliances are forged, how particular ideas come to the fore, and how others are silenced" (2014b: 129)

Summary

Introduction

In October 2018, the UK government hosted the London Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Conference to bring together global leaders to "help eradicate illegal wildlife trade and better protect the world's most iconic species from the threat of extinction." The 2018 London IWT Conference highlighted the expanding ways in which thinking, practices and networks related to crime and policing are an increasingly forceful dynamic shaping global conservation-related policy. We build on political ecology that uses collaborative event ethnography to interrogate how these discursive processes manifest at global environmental meetings to shape conservation governance and policy We apply this thinking by examining the 2018 London IWT Conference as a site where key actors defined the problem of IWT as one of serious crime that needs to be addressed as such. Framing the illicit extraction, harvesting, and trade in biodiversity as serious organized crime emphasizes the transnational aspects of IWT, its putative convergence with other types of 'serious' crime, and its destabilizing potential This conservation-crime convergence, we argue, is characteristic of a conservation policy landscape that increasingly promotes and privileges responses such as legal and judicial reform, criminal investigations, intelligence gathering, law enforcement technologies, and informant networks. We end by suggesting that critical criminology can provide political ecology with further conceptual rigor needed to unpack and critically interrogate the conservation-crime convergence

Global meetings and the creation of biodiversity conservation policy

The 2018 London IWT Conference as a site of global political ecology

Producing wildlife crime

Conclusion