Dylan Horne, ‘Policy Responses to Transnational Wildlife Crime in the Asia-Pacific: Part 1: Global and Regional Policy Context and a Potential Framework for Optimal National Policy’, TEC Working Paper 1-2013, Canberra: Transnational Environmental Crime Project, Department of International Relations, Australian National University, April 2013.

Transnational Wildlife Crime (wildlife crime) involves the trading and smuggling across borders of species in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Globally, governments and international organisations have responded to the challenges of transnational environmental crime (TEC) in both operational and policy contexts. The policy context is defined as the suite of documents, plans, programs, regulatory schemes, and strategies that provide for a coordinated, coherent response to, and support for, the fight against wildlife crime. Current knowledge of this policy context, and particularly of policy responses at the national and agency levels, is poor. This paper is the first of two research papers intended to provide a preliminary analysis of the current wildlife crime policy context and its effectiveness in dealing with wildlife crime. This paper contains an overview of the high level (global and regional) policy context for the Asia-Pacific region as it applies to six Asia-Pacific countries: Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Vietnam. The high-level policy context was summarised through desktop investigation of freely-available online material. The paper goes on to determine a potential set of ‘optimal’ requirements for wildlife crime policy at the national level based on existing literature. These requirements fell into four broad categories: the optimal wildlife crime policy response at the national level must be (1) proactive and intelligence based, (2) multifaceted, addressing many aspects of the problem, (3) multilateral, involving cooperation between several actors, and (4) monitored, evaluated, and adapted as necessary.

About the author

Dylan Horne is currently employed as a Senior Compliance Officer in the TEC Project‘s partner organisation, the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. Dr Horne‘s experience in this role has included policy development, and operational compliance and enforcement under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.