Poaching is funding terrorism

Environmental crime is fuelling criminal activity by providing funds to groups like Somali’s al-Shabaab and Sudan’s Janjaweed. A new report by UNEP and Interpol states that environmental crime, which entails illegal exploitation of plants and animals, is worth as much as Sh18 trillion. This is ten times Kenya’s budget of Sh1.8 trillion, which essentially means annual proceeds from environmental crime can run Kenya for a decade!

It is this lucrative nature of environmental crime that keeps it going. Two types of environmental crime particularly rampant in East Africa are illegal ivory trade and illegal charcoal trade. The recent killing of 50-year-old Satao, Kenya’s great tusker, underscored the brutal tragedy of poaching. Not even a legendary elephant is safe from the hands of poachers.

Poaching generates revenue as high as Sh1 billion for militia operations across sub-Saharan Africa. It is likely that the Lord Resistance Army has been a key beneficiary of these poaching funds. What this means is that poaching is no longer harmful purely because of environmental reasons but also because of the insecurity it enables.

Terrorist groups like al-Shabaab have fuelled insecurity in East Africa for several years. The UN report has now made it clear that illegal charcoal trade in Somali is providing funds for al-Shabaab. The report, which was released at the inaugural United Nations Environment Assembly, further notes that trading in charcoal and taxing the ports have generated for al-Shabaab an estimated annual total of up to Sh5 billion.

It is a catastrophic irony that trees, which are bosoms of life, should be turned into instruments of destructive criminality. In today’s world, ecosystem conservation goes beyond green sentimentalism into the very core of national security. If charcoal usage will be replaced by other renewable alternatives, demand for charcoal will be drastically lowered and revenue for groups like al-Shabaab will be dealt a severe blow.

Indeed, most of the ongoing conflict in Africa is partly fuelled by environmental crime. Apart from Somalia, other countries whose conflict draws sustenance from illegal charcoal trade are the Central Africa Republic, DRC and Sudan. Militia and terrorist groups in these countries get as much as Sh25 billion annually from their involvement in and taxing of the illegal or unregulated charcoal trade.

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Every shilling that is earned from environmental crime robs countries of legal revenue and robs ecosystems of irreplaceable natural resources. The trees felled for the charcoal cannot be replaced. Satao together with all other felled elephants and wildlife cannot be replaced. Even more heartbreaking, the lives lost from the scourge of terrorism and violence as a whole cannot be replaced. African Governments must, therefore, begin to treat environmental conservation as a matter of national security.