The European Commission has identified four main areas of environmental crime. They are the illegal:

• emission or discharge of substances into air, water or soil;

• trade in wildlife;

• trade in ozone-depleting substances;

• shipment or dumping of waste.

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Environmental crime can be as lucrative as illegal drug trafficking but it is harder to detect and the sanctions (punishments) are less severe. This makes it attractive to organized crime groups.

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Environmental crimes are regarded as an emerging threat in Europol’s 2013 Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA). Europol notes:

• the involvement of organised crime groups was rising in line with the increase in volume of waste and the cost of disposing it;

• an increase in the smuggling of illicit waste to West Africa and China;

• a rise in the number of reports from Member States of the illicit dumping of waste.

 

Environmental crimes often involve crossing borders and therefore require cooperation from many different law enforcement agencies. Europol supports the permanent secretariat for the Environmental Crime Network (EnviCrimeNet) with an informal network connecting these agencies.

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In 2015, the EnviCrimeNet and Europol finalised a year-long intelligence project on environmental crime. The project, which used data from 50 jurisdictions, found that, next to the usual problems of comparing EU crime statistics, the main issue with environmental crime is that much of it goes undetected due to the reticence or inefficiency of law enforcement agencies in dealing with this problem.

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This information is summarized from the Europol web page on Environmental Crime. See the original page here.

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Are you interested to know more about how Norway supports international development specifically with regard to water rights and security? Check out The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation's (Norad) water resources.