These reports aim to provide a quantitative assessment and economic valuation of the impacts of environmental crime in several thematic areas where there existed sufficient data. Originally, data availability for a wide range of environmental crimes was analysed, however, data was found to be highly variable and significant gaps existed. Lack of sufficient data made it difficult to provide a robust estimate of the overal impacts, however, the reports provide an in-depth analysis where sufficient data could inform an analysis.
The five areas of environmental crime analysed were:
- Arson events
- Illegal wildlife trade in rhino and elephant
- Marine pollution
- Illegal WEEE shipments from the EU to China
- Illegal wildlife trade in Horsfieldii Tortoise
The research conducted found that data can be useful to understand the impacts of environmental crime. For some areas of environmental crime, gaps in data can be overcome by linking together data from different sources. For example, in the report on illegal wildlife trade of rhinos and elephant, population data in combination with poaching data was used to gauge the rate of extinction. Despite being an economic analysis, these reports found that there were many qualitative impacts of environmental crime that were not easily measured in quantitative of monetary terms, but that did have important impacts on economic development, public health, political institutions and the environment.
