Experts strategise to fight environmental crime in West Africa

About 20 participants from Anglophone West Africa have attended a three-day regional workshop to strategise ways to combat environmental crime in the sub-region.

Dubbed the “Green Customs for West-Africa Countries” the workshop brought together customs officers, environmental experts and designated officers on the ozone units from the various countries.

Environmental crime includes illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, illegal dumping of hazardous wastes and illicit trafficking in wildlife.

At the opening session of the workshop, the Coordinator of the United Nations (UN) Environment, Mr Patrick Salifu, said it was widely recognised that environmental crime had become one of the fastest growing and highly profitable new areas of international criminal activity.

He said a UN Environment and INTERPOL report of 2016 indicated environmental crime was estimated to cost $91 billion to $258 billion annually.

International treaties

Mr Salifu said over the past decades, many international treaties had been negotiated and ratified by governments to address various pressing environmental issues, including international trade in endangered species, chemicals, ozone depleting substances, genetic modified organisms and trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes.

He said the challenge, however, was implementation and enforcement of the multilateral environmental agreements (MEA), adding that existing laws were already in place in many countries to address environmental issues “but there is a considerable lack of awareness of environmental crime.”

Environmental crime

The Coordinator of the GCI, Dr Wanhua Yang, noted that environmental crime depleted natural resources, harmed human health, posed a major threat to sustainable development and to national and international security.

Declaring the workshop officially open, the Deputy Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Mr Ebenezer Ampah-Sampong, reminded the participants that “we share a common concern about illegal trade in environmental commodities, particularly in the ECOWAS region.”

Mr Ampah-Sampong mentioned some initiatives Ghana had taken to assist in tackling some of the environmental problems to include efforts to implement the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their disposal under the Hazardous and Electronic Waste Control and Management Regulation 2016 (LI 2250).

 “We have also signed and ratified the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna,” he said, adding that it was also note worthy to mention the implementation of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.