SPECIES VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENTS: Giving Voice to the unheard victims of environmental crime

By  Alastair MacBeath | Amanda Whitfort

  Wildlife crimes are regularly perceived as technical breaches of conservation regulations rather than as serious criminal offences that directly impact the species and the ecosystem from which they were removed. When such crimes have been prosecuted in court, the animal victims are habitually marginalized from consideration in sentencing decisions, as jurisdictions largely recognize animals only as legal property to be either confiscated or returned to their owners. However, the need for sentencing that considers the extent of the harm caused or likely to have been caused to the environment or species is gaining support. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit identifies problems in deterring wildlife crime offences due to lenient sentences and encourages courts to consider the level of harm caused or likely to have been caused by the offence when determining the necessary penalty. This aim is to end the common perception that environmental crime is low risk and high reward. Academics and civil society organizations, largely working independently, have approached this problem by adapting victim impact statements (which have been used in prosecutions of other types of crime) for use in environmental crimes to represent the needs of species. Victim impact statements have been previously used in cases where the victims come from vulnerable groups, including the families of murdered people, women who have been trafficked and children who have been forced to work as child soldiers or labourers. Their use has therefore given these victims a voice to inform a court of the harm they have suffered, which can be considered by a judge during sentencing. This can help provide closure to the victim or to lay the foundations for restorative justice. As the animal and species victims of environmental crime are at a fundamental disadvantage because of their inability to speak, these ‘species victim impact statements’ are designed to give them a similar voice to inform presiding judges of the harm caused to them by wildlife and environmental crimes from a variety of perspectives. These range from an animal rights perspective due to the impact on individual animals from the pain and suffering associated with such crimes; to impacts at the species level relating to habitat destruction and population declines; and up to the environmental level due to damage to ecosystems. Furthermore, there is a precedent for the use of such statements in the sphere of environmental crime, with many jurisdictions accepting them in court to detail the harms associated with pollution offences. Such an approach would not only act as a deterrent against offending but would also address the interests of the species subjected to the illegal trade and repair the damage to the ecosystems caused by their removal.  

  This is an innovative approach that introduces ecocentric concerns into anthropocentric legal systems. It has grown into an effective body of practice, leading to increased sentences for environmental crimes in the countries where academics and civil society organizations promoting this tactic are operating, namely Hong Kong SAR, South Africa and Zambia. These successes prove that this concept can be scaled up to increase the number of jurisdictions using these tools, and can help to increase the effectiveness of the judiciary in deterring perpetrators of environmental crimes. This ‘community tool’ report is based on the concept created by the Hong Kong University Species Victim Impact Statement (SVIS) Initiative, which was started by Associate Professor Amanda Whitfort in 2015. The initiative is a collaboration between the University of Hong Kong’s Law Faculty and Conservation Forensics Laboratory and Kadoorie Farm and Botanical Garden. It also incorporates the work of other individuals and organizations who have developed similar tools, namely Professor Ray Jansen, a founding member and Africa Chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC) Pangolin Specialist Group in South Africa, and the civil society organization Wildlife Crime Prevention, working in Zambia. This guide is the result of an analysis of academic reports and semi-structured interviews with those who have successfully used species victim impact statements in the jurisdictions in which they operate. It is designed to aid conservationists, civil society organizations and other interested parties responding to the illegal wildlife trade by explaining the background to species victim impact statements and their associated challenges, providing examples of their successful use in practice and offering guidance on how they can be developed and used in court.   

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime , 2024. 27p.