Highlights from the Nature Crime Alliance in 2024

As 2024 draws to a close, we reflect on our activities with Alliance members throughout the year to increase political will, mobilise financial commitment, and bolster operational capacity to fight nature crime.

Building our global, multi-sector network

Interest in joining the Alliance continued throughout 2024, with new members including a range of governments, international organisations, and CSOs.

Members to join in 2024 included Ghana, Malawi, Peru, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), ASOC, FishWise, IFAW, International Lawyers Project, Lilongwe Wildlife Trust, National Whistleblower Center, Outlaw Ocean, Wildlife Investigators Training Alliance, and WWF. View all members here.

Through the Alliance, we are creating new opportunities for engagement and cooperation, especially between actors in different sectors who have not previously collaborated.

“The Alliance, under WRI’s leadership and coordination, gives us a really impactful platform of organisations that are already aligned for fighting environmental crimes. This includes organisations that we haven’t previously worked with.”

– Braddock Spear, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership

Driving engagement, furthering knowledge

The Alliance continued to support members’ efforts to fight nature crime through various initiatives, from information sharing opportunities to the development of new tools and resources.

Regional Private Sector Dialogues launched

Alongside supporting UNODC and INTERPOL in the ongoing Global Private Sector Dialogues on disrupting financial crimes linked to crimes that affect the environment, the Alliance Secretariat was also instrumental in launching new Regional Private Sector Dialogues in 2024 to sharpen the geographic focus of these efforts. The first Regional Southern Africa Private Sector Dialogue convened in Cape Town in January, while the first Asia-Pacific iteration took place in Singapore in December. These sessions bring together financial institutions alongside law enforcement entities, financial intelligence units, and civil society to share insights aimed at improving the detection and disruption of financial crime linked to environmental crime. 

Supporting government responses to illegal mining 

The Alliance Secretariat briefed government officials during a session at the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) Implementation Review Group meeting in Vienna. The session, chaired by Peru and France, convened experts from civil society to share insights on environmental crime and its convergences with other forms of serious organised crime to better inform government representatives working on the UNCAC and the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC). The Wildlife Justice Commission, a founding member of the Nature Crime Alliance, also participated in the session, alongside the UNCAC Coalition and Transparency International. 

New tools to support action against nature crime

Over the year the Alliance Secretariat has been working on enhancing its dot-connecting capabilities by developing a range of specialised tools designed to streamline collaboration and information sharing among stakeholders involved in combating nature crime. These resources were conceptualised together with members to address specific needs outlined during consultations. Tools which will be coming online in early 2025 include a new knowledge database, a library of tools and technologies, and a wildlife crime expert list. These resources will be hosted on the Alliance website. 

Bringing our members together

The Secretariat has continued to provide a platform for Alliance members to share insights from their work via our ongoing series of webinars. Organisations featured in 2024 included Amazon Conservation Association, IFAW, the National Whistleblower Center, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), World Forest ID, and World Resources Institute. The webinars aim to share knowledge and information between members and spark ideas for potential collaboration. View all 2024 webinars here. 

Alliance working groups continue

The Alliance has also brought actors together through its various working groups with the aim of developing new approaches to tackling nature crime across different contexts. The Illegal Fisheries and Transparency Tools working group has made progress in supporting electronic monitoring, as highlighted in our feature article with SFP. 

Elsewhere, the Secretariat has worked with Indigenous Peoples’ Rights International to convene the Indigenous Peoples and Frontline Defenders working group, which has met throughout 2024. An initial outcome from the working group includes a forthcoming report based on Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives on combatting nature crime. The analysis includes a range of case studies from illegal logging in the Amazon to land grabbing in Tanzania. 

Elevating nature crime in the international agenda

The Alliance Secretariat held two workshops on nature crime during IUCN’s US Regional Conservation Forum in August to raise awareness of this critical issue and explore ways for IUCN to approach this challenge ahead of its World Conservation Congress in 2025. “We had an engaging discussion on elevating the issue of nature crime within IUCN’s agenda for the upcoming years,” Elodie Perrat, Senior Government Engagement Manager for the Alliance, commented. “We’re eager to see the impact our collaborative efforts will have on advancing this crucial topic.”

The Alliance continued to raise awareness of the challenges of nature crime, as well as amplifying solutions, during key international fora in 2024. This included a major side event at UNEA6 in Nairobi featuring members including Norway, the US, Ghana, Malawi, UNEP, TRAFFIC, Basel Institute on Governance, and UNODC. Secretariat experts also spoke on nature crime during several sessions at the International Anti-Corruption Conference and the Forest Governance and Policy Conference, and supported an environmental crime focused event at the UNTOC COP in Vienna. The Alliance Secretariat also amplified member activities and other nature crime sessions during COP16, including a post-conference roundup. 

The importance of global, multi-sector cooperation in tackling nature crime, and the value of the Nature Crime Alliance, was also highlighted by Dialogue Earth in August. 

Thank you to our network

The Alliance Secretariat is extremely grateful to our members and partners who have supported and collaborated with us in 2024 as we work together towards eradicating nature crime.

We wish you all a positive and fruitful 2025.