On 1 December 2021, a new toolkit was launched to help conservation practitioners apply situational crime prevention to illegal wildlife trade. This practical toolkit has been developed by Fauna & Flora International in collaboration with conservation and criminology practitioners and academics.
Situational crime prevention is a framework from criminology that has been widely applied to a range of crimes globally, including violent crime, property crime, drug trafficking, international terrorism and maritime piracy. Evidence for its effectiveness is substantial (Eck & Clarke, 2019, Handbook on Crime and Deviance, 355–376). Situational crime prevention is a proactive approach that aims, through careful analysis of the problem and the cost–benefit decisions made by the individual, to modify the surrounding environment so as to reduce the likelihood of the crime being carried out, focusing on the illegal activity itself and not the motivations or types of individuals behind it.
Although a limited number of projects have tested situational crime prevention for conservation, the approach has yet to be systematically applied and evaluated in the context of illegal wildlife trade. Building on learning from the application of situational crime prevention to reduce other forms of crime, this toolkit provides practical guidance to design, implement and evaluate such crime prevention strategies for illegal wildlife trade. The long-term aim is to support application of the toolkit to contribute to a global evidence base of how situational crime prevention and other criminological approaches can help to reduce biodiversity loss from poaching and wildlife trafficking.
The toolkit addresses the need for interdisciplinary, evidence-led and proactive approaches to reduce illegal wildlife trade. Many efforts currently focus on strengthening reactive law enforcement, such as imposing sanctions and increasing surveillance with new technologies. These approaches aim to deter illegal activity but can be ineffective and sometimes counterproductive. Moreover, law enforcement intervenes once a crime has been committed and the impacts on biodiversity are often irreparable. Situational crime prevention focuses on preventing problematic behaviour by making it less attractive to commit rather than reacting to it.
There is increasing recognition of the role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in addressing illegal wildlife trade but they are often excluded from the benefits of conservation and can be negatively affected by heavy-handed, militarized approaches to tackling illegal activities. Such approaches seldom distinguish between illegal actions driven by large-scale profits and those driven by poverty. Moving beyond reactive law enforcement towards more holistic approaches has the potential to curb illegal wildlife trade more effectively and to move towards more inclusive and socially just approaches.
The toolkit is available to download from the Fauna & Flora International website fauna-flora.org/approaches/situational-crime-prevention and on the Arizona State University Problem-Oriented Policing Center website popcenter.asu.edu/content/resources in English, French, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.
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