Dhulikhel, Nepal: Some 28 senior environmental law enforcement officials from
11 Asian countries gathered in Nepal for a training session on the use of
intelligence and information management in combating environmental crime.
The five-day course (17-21 December) organized by INTERPOL,
its National Central Bureau (NCB) in Kathmandu and the South Asian Wildlife
Enforcement Network (SAWEN), aimed to improve environmental law enforcement
capacity in the region, with a specific focus on illegal poaching and the
illicit trade in tigers and other Asian big cats.
Participants from police, customs and environmental agencies
learned ways to effectively use INTERPOL’s intelligence management tools in the
fight against environmental crime, and shared best practices and techniques for
environmental investigations. The course followed a “train-the-trainer” format,
so the participants will be able to transmit the skills and knowledge learned
to colleagues in their home countries.
“With environmental crime increasingly becoming a
transnational organized crime, capacity building programmes are fundamental in
any effort to combat this type of crime,” said David Higgins, head of
INTERPOL’s Environmental Crime Programme.
Countries participating in the training were Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Malaysia, Nepal,
Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The training course was held under the auspices of
INTERPOL’s Project Predator, which aims to protect the world’s remaining wild
tigers. Partners supporting the course included the US Agency for International
Development (USAID), UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(DEFRA), SAWEN, the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, Good Governance
Group (G3), WWF Nepal and the National Trust for Nature Conservation.