When you have a difficult problem to solve, it often helps to look at it from a different angle. And it always helps to collaborate with experts who have different perspectives and skillsets.
This short report provides a framework for leveraging synergies between researchers in the field of social network analysis (SNA) and practitioners in the field of intelligence and law enforcement against illegal wildlife trade (IWT). The synergies between theory and practice are potentially great yet largely unexplored.
Every day, an unknown number of elephant tusks, rhino horn, pangolin scales and other wildlife products – alive and dead – cross the oceans in container ships and cargo flights for use in traditional medicine, crafts and the illegal pet trade. Rare trees are felled in ancient forests and shipped out under false certificates.
They leave behind the butchered carcasses of the last remaining animals of many species, scarred and emptied landscapes, legal livelihoods undermined by corruption and criminal activity, and communities ravaged by organised crime networks.
Given the vast dimensions of the multibillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade (IWT), it may be surprising that until recently, global efforts to tackle IWT came mainly from the conservation sector. This has typically consisted of numerous donor-funded efforts to catch poachers and raise public awareness of the plight of endangered species.
Valuable as those efforts are, they do little to impact the organised crime networks, corruption and illicit financial flows that allow the lucrative illegal trade in wildlife products to continue.
High-profile law enforcement operations against illegal wildlife trade (IWT), such as Interpol’s Operation Thunderball in July and the arrest of notorious trafficker Moazu Kromah in Uganda in June 2019, have drawn welcome attention to IWT as a financial and organised crime and not only a conservation issue.
Yet in working to strengthen legal frameworks and law enforcement capacity in countries that suffer from high levels of IWT, we must not forget the social drivers and facilitators behind wildlife trafficking – factors that laws alone are powerless to change.
Jacopo Costa, Senior Research Fellow, offers this quick guide to social network analysis (SNA). He explains how it can help us to better understand and tackle the transnational organised crime and dark networks that sustain corruption, money laundering and illicit trafficking.
Manuel Medina, specialised Intelligence Analyst for our Illegal Wildlife Trade programme, sets out the basics of intelligence analysis and why we do it. Key questions are:
Conservationists and public health experts alike have welcomed the recent renewed commitment by the Chinese government to eliminate illegal wildlife trade in response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency.
The latest deadly strain of coronavirus emerged, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, from a market in the city of Wuhan selling everything from rats to wolf pups and civet cats. The Chinese government shut the market, locked down the city and banned the trade in wildlife nationwide while it battles to contain the nascent epidemic.
A new report sets out preliminary findings from the social network analysis of wildlife trafficking networks in East Africa.
It first explores the structure and characteristics of social networks engaged in wildlife trafficking, suggesting that they operate as a form of transnational organised crime and remarkably like a business enterprise. In terms of supply chains, both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms are evident.