Descripción del proyecto
Cómo se financia la delincuencia organizada a través del tráfico de especies silvestres
El tráfico de especies silvestres supone una amenaza grave para la protección de la biodiversidad y la seguridad mundial. Esta actividad ilegal no solo contribuye a la pérdida de especies animales y vegetales, sino que también alimenta la corrupción, la delincuencia organizada y el terrorismo. Aunque la idea de que el tráfico de especies silvestres supone una amenaza grave para la seguridad se ha ido afianzando en los círculos investigadores y políticos, sigue siendo poco conocida y estudiada. El equipo del proyecto BIOSEC, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, adoptará un método integrado para comprender mejor el papel del tráfico de especies silvestres en la generación de la financiación de amenazas. Examinará los vínculos entre los países de origen y de destino, y analizará las respuestas a estos retos por parte de las organizaciones no gubernamentales, los organismos públicos y las organizaciones internacionales.
Objetivo
The core intellectual aim of BIOSEC is to explore whether concerns about biodiversity protection and global security are becoming integrated, and if so, in what ways. It will do so via building new theoretical approaches for political ecology.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNEP recently stated ‘the scale and role of wildlife and forest crime in threat finance calls for much wider policy attention’. The argument that wildlife trafficking constitutes a significant source of ‘threat finance’ takes two forms: first as a lucrative business for organised crime networks in Europe and Asia, and second as a source of finance for militias and terrorist networks, most notably Al Shabaab, Lord’s Resistance Army and Janjaweed.
BIOSEC is a four year project designed to lead debates on these emerging challenges. It will build pioneering theoretical approaches and generate new empirical data. BIOSEC takes a fully integrated approach: it will produce a better conceptual understanding of the role of illegal wildlife trade in generating threat finance; it will examine the links between source and end user countries for wildlife products; and it will investigate and analyse the emerging responses of NGOs, government agencies and international organisations to these challenges.
BIOSEC goes beyond the ‘state-of-the art’ because biodiversity protection and global security currently inhabit distinctive intellectual ‘silos’; however, they need to be analysed via an interdisciplinary research agenda that cuts across human geography, politics and international relations, criminology and conservation biology. This research is timely because in the last two years, the idea that the illegal wildlife trade constitutes a major security threat has become more prevalent in academic and policy circles, yet it is an area that is under researched and poorly understood. These recent shifts demand urgent conceptual and empirical interrogation.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantInstitución de acogida
S10 2TN Sheffield
Reino Unido