Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

where did it come from? 129Imaginative national and international enforcement programs arenecessary, and adequate resources are required for their success. Actionableintelligence needs to be collected and disseminated, and enforcementneeds to be targeted at weak points in global commodity chains.Regional enforcement cooperation agreements that allow for sharedjurisdictional competence may also help to overcome the limitationsof partitioning enforcement responsibilities between separate jurisdictions,especially where cross-border gangs are active and able to takeadvantage of territorial divisions. Perhaps the most innovative model isthe 1996 Lusaka Agreement on Cooperative Enforcement OperationsDirected at Illegal Trade in Wild Fauna and Flora, which makes extensiveprovision for shared, cross-border investigations into transnationalwildlife poaching gangs in central and eastern Africa. The region’s firstmultinational task force was constituted in 1999, with diplomatic statusconferred on members to facilitate their work. The European Union’sEuropol Bureau may assume a similar role in helping to police someenvironmental CTRs across the EU, although its current mandateextends only to atomic and radioactive waste.International Intelligence Coordination. National intelligence onCTR violations needs to be collated and disseminated more efficientlyto allow for coordinated enforcement between jurisdictions. Actionableinformation is often withheld in order to avoid embarrassing thecountries involved or because of the perceived confidentiality ofnational enforcement processes. Information may be sanitized or sidelinedinto ritual exchanges at meetings rather than presented in anactionable way.The CTR secretariats, relevant UN agencies, and transnational enforcementfacilitation organizations like Interpol and the World CustomsOrganization all have a (coordinated) role to play in deliveringbetter intelligence, information exchange, and training to their memberstates to improve CTR implementation and enforcement. That said,it is also important to understand the culture and the standard operatingprocedures of different organizations and where they fit into thepicture. For example, Interpol passes information that “names names,”whereas the World Customs Organization does not.More international research is also needed on trafficking routeswhere nongovernmental organizations may be valuable partners. TradeRecord Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce, for example, actsas an occasional independent monitor, clearinghouse, and internationalresearch organization for information on wildlife trade (andsome fisheries and forestry issues). Supported by the InternationalUnion for the Conservation of Nature, the World Wildlife Fund, andothers, this is perhaps the most developed attempt to provide sustained