Violence in Environmental Enforcement: A Global Comparative Study and a Research Agenda

• In Event: Environmental Resilience and Sustainability in the Face of Threat and Risk

Abstract

This study presents a novel dataset of violent events associated with environmental enforcement across the policy areas of forestry, wildlife, fishing, and protected area management from 2018 through 2023, collected using automated methods in combination with human coders. Recorded events are widespread across 51 countries spanning all major regions. Controlling for covariates, countries with more land allocated to protected areas, countries with more substantial ecological threats, countries receiving more foreign aid in the biodiversity sector, and less-democratic countries are more likely to have recorded events. Furthermore, a large proportion of recorded events are specifically associated with protected areas. Importantly, the number of recorded violent events grew between 2018 and 2023, and a notable share of events involved torture or other particularly extreme forms of violence. Statistical analysis suggests that events are being under-counted by at least 10 times and as much as 50 times. Future work is needed to understand the local factors that predispose some communities to violence as well as the impacts of policy changes on such violence, to alleviate issues related to monitoring, transparency, and event under-reporting, and to scrutinize the role of foreign donors in contributing to violence in Global South countries.

Author

• Nathan J Cook
  Presenting Author