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Charcoal trade poses greater risks than poaching

“It’s a real war with gangs that sometimes have superior armoury, training. We need to think of the people involved in the wildlife trade the same way we think of the drug barons. We must through the book at them. They’re racketeers, they’re money launderers, behind them are lawyers, accountants and bankers and stock brokers, and so on. We must round all of them together,” he told Capital FM News.

His sentiments were shared by Kenya’s Chief Justice Willy Mutunga in a statement at the first session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA).

“The link between illicit environmental activities such as poaching and logging on the one hand, and terrorism and conflict, on the other, removes these activities from the inane and narrow realm of crime to the unnerving arena of state and human security. In other words, we must begin to see environmental crimes, money laundering, and terrorism as crimes of interoperable nature that imperil our democracies and our stability as nations,” he stated.

READ Delegates converge in Nairobi for UN environment talks

And to which end, Steiner said, UNEP was part of an inter-agency effort to track containers carrying ivory and other contraband to their owners; the kingpins who fund the environmental crime enterprises.

“Seizures are no longer something to celebrate. We have to start thinking like drug enforcement agencies. Let’s track these containers and get to the speculators stockpiling this ivory aware that if we continue killing them at the rate we are, elephants will become part of legend and the value of ivory will be equal to that of a historical artefact,” CITES Secretary General John Scanlon said in support.

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