Transnational environmental crime in the Asia Pacific: an ‘un(der)securitized’ security problem?

Abstract

While other forms of transnational crime in the Asia Pacific have been securitized – that is, represented by policy elites and security actors as crucial or existential threats to national and regional security – transnational environmental crime has been un(der)securitized. It warrants little mention in regional security statements or the security concerns of individual countries. Yet the consequences of activities such as illegal logging and timber smuggling, wildlife smuggling, the black market in ozone-depleting substances and dumping of other forms of hazardous wastes and chemical fit the (in)security profile applied to other forms of transnational crime. This article surveys the main forms of transnational environmental crime in the Asia Pacific and assesses the ‘fit’ with a ‘crime as security’ framework. It shows that transnational environmental crime generates the kinds of ‘pernicious effects … on regional stability and development, the maintenance of the rule of law and the welfare of the region's people’ that the ASEAN Declaration on Transnational Crime identified as matters of serious concern. The analysis draws on securitization theory to understand the lack of a ‘securitizing move’ and to explain why security elites do not believe the problem warrants serious attention. The possibilities explored here include intellectual inertia, confusion about referent objects, institutional incapacity, mixed policy signals and the exclusion of environmental expertise from a closed community of security elites.

Keywords:

• Securitization theory
• transnational crime
• environmental crime
• illegal logging
• wildlife trafficking
• ODS smuggling

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was delivered to a workshop on Re-envisioning Asia-Pacific Security at the Australian National University in August 2006. This article was completed during a Visiting Professorship at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Free University of Amsterdam, and a Visiting Fellowship at the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice at Keele University. Thanks are due to both institutions for their support, and the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University for supporting the author's sabbatical leave. Thanks are also due to Katherine Morton, Ralf Emmers, Graeme Cheeseman, John McFarlane, Andreas Schloenhardt and the journal's anonymous referees for their comments and helpful suggestions.

Lorraine Elliott is a Senior Fellow in International Relations at theAustralian National University. She has published extensively on global environmental governance, and on environmental security in the Asia Pacific. Her books include The Global Politics of the Environment (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and Force for Good: Cosmopolitan Militaries in the 21st Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004; co-edited with Graeme Cheeseman). She is a member of the Australian national committee of the Council for Security Cooperation Asia Pacific (CSCAP).

Notes

1 See, for example, Dupont (1998, 2001), Elliott (2002a, b, 2007a) and Barnett (2001).

2 See Haque (2001) and Elliott (2007b).

3 For more, see Emmers (2002, 2003), McFarlane (2005) and Hernandez and Pattugalan (1999a).

4 The exception is illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing and poaching which is usually raised in the context of maritime cooperation.

5 An important caveat applies to this investigation. The discussion here makes no particular claims about whether TEC should be securitized. Nevertheless, there is an interesting debate to be had about whether the logic of exceptionalism that accompanies the emergency measures associated with full securitization is appropriate for dealing with transnational environmental crime.

6 Some endangered timber species are listed under CITES appendices.

7 Other approaches to TEC rely on a consequentialist definition. Duncan Brack (2002: 143) suggests that environmental crime is international or transnational when the deliberate flouting, by individuals and companies, of environmental laws and regulations for power and profit has transboundary or global impacts. A third body of literature defines eco-crimes not in terms of law enforcement but in terms of harm and particularly harm to the environment (in effect, crimes against the environment); see, for example, Walters (2006) and Halsey (2004).

8 Although it is not covered here, other more localized forms of cross-border environmental crime would include problems such as sand smuggling between Indonesia and Singapore, which allegedly involves organized crime syndicates; see Anon. (2002c).

9 See, for example, Cook et al. (2002), Zimmerman (2003), Warchol (2004) and G8 Environment Ministers (1999). TRAFFIC International, on the other hand, has suggested that organized criminal activity within the illegal wildlife trade is relatively rare (Anon. 2002a).

10 For example, smuggled turtles and marijuana have been found in the same illegal shipments (BBC News 1998). Live snakes have been found stuffed with condoms full of cocaine (Anon. 2002b). For other examples see also van Note (2002), Zimmerman (2003), Cook et al. (2002) and Hayman and Brack (2002).

11 A kilo of rhino horn can trade for as much as US$30,000 on the Asian market; see Warchol (2004: 59).

12 The Environmental Investigation Agency has identified China as the largest consumer of stolen timber in the world; see Newman and Lawson (2005).

13 There have been some suggestions that Indonesian Navy seizures of illegal timber ships have as much to do with underpaid bribes, or trumping bribes to disrupt competing operations, as they do with genuine interdiction (Newman and Lawson 2005: 8).

14 Bribery and corruption sometimes go to the highest levels. Ferdinand Marcos is reported to have accepted payoffs of more than US$1 billion from Japanese timber companies when he was president of the Philippines (see van Note 2002).

15 An Indonesian forestry ministry official has referred to the powerful businessmen involved in the timber smuggling industry as ‘slippery as eels in a pond of lubricating oil’ (cited in Guerin 2004).

16 Undercover operations conducted by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency and Jakarta-based Telapak have caught smugglers and brokers on tape making such claims on more than one occasion.

17 Otherwise legitimate timber companies – such as Asia Pulp and Paper – are also reported to be involved in illegal harvesting; see Yoon (2004) or any of the reports produced by EIA/Telapak or by Global Witness.

18 While some of the bear populations in Asia – the Sun Bear, the Sloth Bear, the Asiatic Black Bear and the Brown Bear (as well as the Giant Panda which is not relevant for TAM) – are banned from international trade under CITES, hunting them or farming live bears in not always illegal in East Asia.

19 Following rumours that the material was radioactive, 10,000 people sought to flee the region and eight were killed in a subsequent riot.

20 The shipment involved 122 containers. The cost of repatriation for the Japanese government was estimated at over 100 million yen (the company president had reportedly gone missing); see Anon. (2000).

21 For an explanation and examples of the ‘shadow state’, see Le Billon (2000), Nest (2002), Reno (2000) and Global Witness (2007).

22 In practice some issues such as drug smuggling, arms smuggling and terrorism attract more policy attention than adjacent issues such as corruption which go to the heart of domestic governance.

23 The Indonesian government has cited illegal fishing (and the economic losses associated with this) as a major reason for seeking to strengthen its naval capabilities. Illegal fishing is a continuing source of tension between Thailand and its neighbours, particularly Malaysia, involving naval and border patrol activity on both sides. Shots have, on occasion, been fired.

24 The evidence is mixed on what happens when conflict is contained by ceasefire agreements. There is some evidence that illegal logging and smuggling actually increases in Burma because both sides are more easily able to access forest lands for illegal harvesting (see Talbott and Brown 1998: 54). On the other hand, Global Witness (2006) has reported a near standstill in logging in regime-controlled areas and those controlled by Kachin state ceasefire groups in northern Burma.

25 An attempt by the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri to bring illegal logging into the serious crimes category failed because making it a capital offence, punishable by death, was thought a step too far by parliamentarians and NGOs alike.

26 The FLEG East Asia process involves a Task Force and an Advisory Group and periodic meetings with the support of international partners such as ASEAN and APEC. Not all countries in the region are part of the FLEG process: Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are notable non-participants.

27 This is helped by the fact that all ten ASEAN countries are parties to CITES.

28 The eight areas of transnational crime are: drug trafficking, trafficking in persons, sea piracy, arms smuggling, money laundering, terrorism, international economic crime, and cyber-crime.

29 The report of the 2nd meeting of what was then a CSCAP Study Group identified a number of areas of transnational crime but environmental crime was not among them.

30 Buzan et al. refer to these as the ‘functional actors’ in the securitization process – those who can affect the dynamics of a sector without being its agents or referents (Buzan et al. 1998: 36).

31 Examples include the Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (FLEG) initiative, the Voluntary Partnership Agreements established by the European Union, the OzonAction Network, the Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking (CAWT), and the Global Forest & Trade Network, to name just a few.

32 In 1994, Interpol established an environmental crimes committee with two working groups, one on wildlife crimes and one on pollution crimes, and developed the ‘ecomessage’ reporting system to generate a database on international environmental crime.

33 China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Lao PDR, Cambodia and Burma are parties to the Convention; Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand have not yet ratified the Convention. North Korea, Mongolia and Brunei have not signed.