Preventing and Combating Crimes that Affect the Environment

Urges Member States to adopt effective measures to prevent and combat crimes that affect the environment, such as illicit trafficking in wildlife, including, inter alia, flora and fauna as protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, in timber and timber products, in hazardous wastes and other wastes and in precious metals, stones and other minerals, as well as, inter alia, poaching, by making the best possible use of relevant international instruments and by strengthening legislation, international cooperation, capacity-building, criminal justice responses and law enforcement efforts aimed at, inter alia, dealing with transnational organized crime, corruption and money-laundering linked to such crimes, and illicit financial flows derived from such crimes, while acknowledging the need to deprive criminals of proceeds of crime;

Urges States, in this regard, to adopt concrete and effective measures to recover and return, in appropriate cases, the proceeds of such crimes, consistent with the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations Convention against Corruption, and emphasizes the importance of removing obstacles to applying measures for the recovery and return of those assets and proceeds;

Encourages the States parties to the Organized Crime Convention and the Convention against Corruption, respectively to take full advantage of Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime resolution 10/6 of 16 October 2020 and Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption resolution 8/12 of 20 December 2019;

Urges all States that have not yet done so to consider ratifying or acceding to the Organized Crime Convention and the Convention against Corruption;

Calls upon Member States to make crimes that affect the environment, in appropriate cases, serious crimes, as defined in article 2, subparagraph (b), of the Organized Crime Convention, in accordance with their national legislation, in order to ensure that, where the offence is transnational in nature and involves an organized criminal group, effective international cooperation can be afforded under the Convention;

Also calls upon Member States to develop or amend national legislation, as necessary and appropriate, in accordance with fundamental principles of their domestic law, so that crimes that affect the environment falling within the scope of the Organized Crime Convention are treated as predicate offences, as defined in the Convention and as mandated in its article 6, for the purposes of money-laundering offences and are actionable under domestic legislation on proceeds of crime, so that assets derived from crimes that affect the environment can be seized, confiscated and disposed of;

Urges Member States, consistent with the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, to investigate and prosecute the laundering of proceeds of crime derived from transnational organized crimes that affect the environment, including by using financial investigation techniques, with a view to identifying, disrupting and dismantling the criminal groups involved, to strive to eliminate incentives for the transfer abroad of the proceeds of crime, thereby denying safe haven to those proceeds, and to recover the proceeds of such crimes;

Calls upon Member States to strengthen at the national level, in accordance with domestic legislation and their respective international legal obligations, crime prevention and criminal justice responses against crimes that affect the environment, as well as corruption and money-laundering related to such crimes, including by establishing or developing integrated and multidisciplinary responses, establishing the liability of legal persons for such serious crimes, as appropriate, and by reinforcing, where necessary and if appropriate, the capacities, training and specialization of relevant law enforcement and judicial authorities for effectively preventing, detecting, investigating, prosecuting and punishing crimes that affect the environment, as well as cooperation with relevant stakeholders from civil society;

Calls upon States, consistent with the Organized Crime Convention and in accordance with national legislation, to take all appropriate measures within their means to provide effective assistance to and protection for witnesses and victims of crimes that affect the environment, and to establish appropriate procedures to provide access to compensation and restitution for victims of the offences covered by the Organized Crime Convention, and, in this regard, encourages States to consider providing access to civil compensation and habitat restoration for damage caused to the environment and to victims;

Also calls upon States, in accordance with national legislation, to take all appropriate measures within their means to provide effective assistance and protection for those persons who contribute to combating in a peaceful manner crimes that affect the environment;

Strongly encourages Member States, in accordance with their national legislation, to improve and enhance the collection, quality, availability and analysis of data on crimes that affect the environment, consider undertaking national statistical capacity-building in this regard and share such data on a voluntary basis with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, consistent with its mandate, in order to strengthen research and analysis on global trends and patterns in crimes that affect the environment and to improve the effectiveness of strategies aimed at preventing and combating them;

Also strongly encourages Member States to increase the exchange of information and knowledge on crimes that affect the environment among national authorities, as well as with other Member States and relevant international and regional organizations, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), in accordance with domestic legislation and their respective international legal obligations;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, within its mandate, subject to the availability of extrabudgetary resources, in close consultation and cooperation with Member States, and in close coordination with the United Nations Environment Programme, INTERPOL, the World Customs Organization, the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, the World Bank and other relevant competent intergovernmental organizations such as the secretariats of multilateral environmental conventions and agreements, as appropriate and within their mandates, including through inter-agency partnerships, such as the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime, to strengthen the collection, analysis and dissemination of accurate and reliable data and information to enhance knowledge on trends in crimes that affect the environment, and to report to Member States thereon on a periodic basis;

Calls upon the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice to hold during the intersessional period expert discussions on preventing and combating crimes that affect the environment in order to discuss concrete ways to improve strategies and responses to effectively prevent and combat these crimes and to strengthen international cooperation at the operational level on this matter, subject to the availability of extrabudgetary resources;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, subject to the availability of extrabudgetary resources and within its mandate, to provide technical assistance and capacity-building to Member States, upon request, for the purposes of supporting their efforts to effectively prevent and combat crimes that affect the environment, as well as corruption and money-laundering related to such crimes;

Also requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, within its mandate, to further enhance and expand its cooperation and coordination with the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, and, in close consultation with Member States, enhance its cooperation with INTERPOL, the World Customs Organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the World Bank, the secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and other relevant international and regional organizations, within their respective mandates, in supporting Member States, upon request, in their efforts to effectively prevent and combat crimes that affect the environment, including through inter-agency partnerships, such as the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime and the Green Customs Initiative;

Invites Member States to consider initiatives such as the INTERPOL concept of national environmental security task forces in order to promote integrated and multidisciplinary responses to better address crimes that affect the environment;

Invites Member States and other donors to provide extrabudgetary resources for the purposes set out in the present resolution, in accordance with the rules and procedures of the United Nations;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session a report on the implementation of the present resolution.