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Strengthening the Weakest Links: Innovative Enforcement Conservation Strategies

This article explores the challenges of enforcement in conservation efforts and presents an innovative economic approach to strengthen enforcement. It provides case studies and proposes policy reforms to enhance interagency cooperation, budget allocation, and capacity building.

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Strengthening the Weakest Links: Innovative Enforcement Conservation Strategies

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  1. Strengthening the Weakest Links: An Innovative Approach to Enforcement Conservation International Center for Conservation and Government Enforcement Initiative Anita Sundari Akella December 2004

  2. Why Enforcement? Why Enforcement? • Enforcement of PA boundaries, natural resource use rules and regulations is weak • Illegal timber trade $150 billion per year • Illegal fishing 30% of total catches • Illegal wildlife trade $6 – 7 billion per year • Innovative conservation strategies are stronger with good enforcement • Ecosystem Services Payments • Tradable Development Rights • PA Creation

  3. What Are Conservationists Doing About It? • Solutions are ad-hoc and often limited to individual sites • No methodical analysis of why enforcement is weak • No comparison across sites to draw global lessons learned

  4. Conventional Wisdom on Enforcement • Hire and equip more detection agents • Raise fines These strategies, in isolation, are not working!

  5. Enforcement: An Economic Perspective • Illegal activity is fundamentally an economic issue • To deter it, disincentives must be bigger than incentives driving illegal activity • Enforcement is also an economic issue

  6. Innovation: The Enforcement Economics Approach ED = Pd * Pa|d * Pp|a * Pc|p * Penalty * e-rt Where: ED Enforcement Disincentive Pd Probability of detection Pa|d Probability of arrest given detection Pp|a Probability of prosecution given arrest Pc|p Probability of conviction given prosecution e-rt discount factor t Time between detection and penalty

  7. Risky Business? Only 1% of crimes result in a conviction

  8. Applying the theory in practice • Bahia, Brazil: Illegal logging, illegal deforestation • Selva Maya, Mexico: Illegal wildlife trade • Palawan, Philippines: Cyanide/Dynamite fishing • Papua, Indonesia: Illegal logging, illegal wildlife trade

  9. Atlantic Forest BAHIA, BRASIL Incentives to illegally log or deforest: $75.00 Enforcement Disincentive: $6.44

  10. Selva Maya CHIAPAS, MEXICO Incentives to Illegally Hunt/Trade Wildlife: $191.57 Enforcement Disincentive: $5.66

  11. Papua Province INDONESIA Incentives to Illegally Ship Timber: $91,967.36 Enforcement Disincentive: $6.47

  12. Calamianes Islands PALAWAN, PHILIPPINES Calamianes Islands PALAWAN, PHILIPPINES Incentives to Dynamite/Cyanide Fish: $70.57 Enforcement Disincentive: $0.09

  13. What does this mean for conservation? • For complex reasons, enforcement is abysmal in many of the countries where we work. • Less than 1%of environmental crimes result in any penalty whatsoever. • When it comes to the environment, CRIME PAYS!

  14. Key Challenges • Interagency cooperation across enforcement chain • Adequate budgetary resources • Consistent performance monitoring and adaptive management system for all agencies • Regular, ongoing capacity-building programs, jointly developed • Strong, clear and adequate laws and policies

  15. Priority: Reform Enforcement Policy • Increase budget allocation to environmental enforcement agencies across the chain • Strengthen, clarify, and consolidate legislation • Establish guidelines for inter-agency cooperation and annual performance reporting • Create the legal framework for alternative enforcement systems to operate

  16. Priority: Implement Adaptive Management • Develop standardized data management systems for use across agencies • Reach agreement on enforcement statistics (indicators) to be produced annually • Train key staff in use of enforcement economics methodology to analyze statistics and develop strategic enforcement strengthening plans • Require annual publication (public disclosure) of enforcement performance report

  17. Priority: Build Enforcement Capacity • Improve performance of detection agents, prosecutors and judges through periodic training • Involve all agencies in the process of designing curricula for each audience • Take advantage of existing technical assistance partnerships with donor government agencies • Incorporate specialized local NGOs, think tanks and institutes

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