EHP Expands Information Sharing on Global Health Issues

the last three decades the national and international framework for the protection of the natural environment has evolved rapidly. Charles Schmidt's excellent article (Schmidt 2004) in this issue shows that as national and international legislation has expanded, so too have the opportunities to evade it. International environmental crime—the deliberate evasion of environmental laws and regulations by individuals and companies in the pursuit of personal financial benefit, where the impacts are transboundary or global—is a serious and growing problem. As far as we know, the total value of the major forms of international environmental crime—illegal logging and fishing, illegal trade in wildlife and in ozone-depleting substances, and illegal dumping of hazardous waste—may be on the order of $20–40 billion a year, about 5–10% of the size of the global drug trade. Compared to the " war on drugs, " however, the resources and political will that are being devoted to tackling the problems of international environmental crime are derisory; yet, also unlike the drug trade, they threaten every citizen of the world and also undermine several key environmental treaties. Why does international environmental crime exist? In practice, there are a number of drivers behind the formation of environmental black markets. • Differential costs or values: where illegal activities are driven by regulations that create cost differentials between legal and illegal products , by differential compliance costs (or different consumer prices), by demand in different countries for scarce products for which substitutes are not available or accepted, and by a lack of concern for the environment. • Regulatory failure: where illegal activities result from a lack of appropriate regulation, including failures to determine and/or protect property rights and open access problems (for example, no one " owns " the oceans). • Enforcement failure: where illegal activities exist because of problems with enforcement, including suitability of regulations, the costs of compliance (detection of environmental contraband is often very difficult), lack of resources and expertise, corruption, and political and economic disruption. The reported incidence of illegal environmental activities has undoubtedly grown in recent years, partly because the implementation of new multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) has provided new opportunities for evasion, and partly because greater public and governmental awareness has led to more investigation into the issues. Other contributory factors include the general trend toward trade liberalization and deregulation, which makes enforcing border controls more difficult, and the growth of transnational corporations, among whom regulations …