Conceptualizing maritime environmental and natural resources law enforcement - The case of illegal fishing

Environmental and natural resource crime (ENRC) is a growing criminal enterprise with significant adverse effects on ecosystems, livelihoods, and the global economy. While the theoretical knowledge and understanding of ENRC has advanced well for terrestrial ecosystems, leading to the application of a portfolio of successful response mechanisms, parallel knowledge and application in the context of aquatic resources is only poorly developed. Given the importance of ENRC for the world's oceans, this paper uses the example of illegal fishing to analyze the dimensions of ENRC, describe the magnitude of the problem, and discuss appropriate response mechanisms. The paper translates recent theoretical advances in analyzing and systematizing ENRC to help inform policy design and investment decisions. Bridging the gap between academia and practitioners, it introduces a conceptual framework of Environmental and Natural Resources Law Enforcement (ENRLE) developed for terrestrial ecosystems and illustrates its applicability for illegal fishing. The paper shows that the structured approach of crime Prevention, Detection, Suppression, and Recovery (PDSR) is important for developing efficient and effective responses to ENRC in the context of illegal fishing in a real-world scenario. Building on first-hand project experience, it demonstrates how the conceptual framework of PDSR can serve as a tool for mapping out institutions and actors for identifying investment and reform needs, rather than randomly mixing and matching upstream and downstream interventions. The paper concludes by proposing to further integrate the concept of ENRLE into policy design and implementation in the context of illegal fishing and identifies areas of additional research.