Trafficking in free-born animals: Practices, consequences and injustice

• In Event: The Theft of Nature: Perspectives from Green Criminology

Abstract

The legal and illegal trafficking in so-called ‘wildlife’ is an example of extremely abusive and violent practices that harm and kill millions of individual non-human animals—and threaten entire species—in many countries every year. Based on interviews with experts, police and NGO representatives in Colombia and Brazil, this paper demonstrates how such practices are played out in these countries. This paper discusses harm to individual victims and to entire species, more generally, and examines the range of motivations for the trade. Various cultural and social practices are analysed from different justice-based perspectives within green criminology. This paper concludes with a consideration of whether the efforts to control and prevent trafficking are sufficient to thwart the trade in these countries, and draws a comparison between the efforts in Colombia and Brazil and those in Norway—a comparison that takes into account the fact that all three countries are parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)—a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals.

Author

• Ragnhild Sollund, University of Oslo