Environment security

INTERPOL exposes global marine pollution crimes

An INTERPOL-led global law enforcement operation involving 61 countries has identified thousands of illicit activities behind severe marine pollution as well as hundreds of violations and exposed serious cases of contamination worldwide.

Codenamed 30 Days at Sea 2.0, the month-long (1-31 October) operation gathered more than 200 enforcement authorities worldwide for concerted action across all continents.

Illustrating the severe global extent of marine pollution crime, preliminary operational results have already revealed more than 3,000 offences detected during 17,000 inspections.

The offences – such as illegal discharges at sea, in rivers, or in coastal areas – were found to have been committed primarily to avoid the cost of compliance with environmental legislation.

As part of Operation 30 Days at Sea 2.0, INTERPOL hosted an Operational Command Centre (OCC) in Singapore to focus on the illegal trade in plastic waste, a key threat to marine environment security. The OCC brought key countries together to trigger investigations into cases of illegal export or import of plastic waste.

Environment security

Volkswagen Emissions Scandal Just Got Worse

The largest fine in automobile history is not going to be the end of the story for Volkswagen.

Attorneys general for New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland announced Tuesday they are suing the company for fraud, saying that the Volkwagen’s installation of defeat devices to thwart emissions testing was part of a “willful, systemic scheme.”

“Today’s suit and the nine-month investigation that led to it are designed to hold Volkswagen accountable for their actions,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said at a press conference Tuesday. “What we found in our investigation was shocking and reveals a cunningly cynical fraud at the heart of this scandal.”

Environment security

Tanzania turns a blind eye to poaching as elephant populations tumble

For tour guides in Tanzania, the results of a continental elephant censusshowing that the country had lost two-thirds of its herd in five years and become Africa’s ivory trading hub came as no surprise. 

They’d tried to prevent tourists from seeing the melting skins and drying bones littering the Selous ecosystem in southern Tanzania for years. But they couldn’t mask the shots heard from safari camps in a reserve once known as “the elephant capital of the world”. Last year it was named in the journal Science as Africa’s poaching hotspot, and a Unesco world heritage in danger site. 

Environment security

Giant earthquakes are shaking Greenland — and scientists just figured out the disturbing reason why

If Greenland goes, it is becoming clear that it won’t go quietly.

Scientists have already documented entire meltwater lakes vanishing in a matter of hours atop the vast Greenland ice sheet, as huge crevasses open beneath them. And now, they’ve cast light on the mechanisms behind another dramatic geophysical effect brought on by the rumbling and melting of this mass of often mile-thick ice: earthquakes.