15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice: Ancillary meeting
Ancillary Meeting in the Lead-Up to CBD COP17 in Armenia – “Addressing Crimes that Affect the Environment to Support the Implementation of Global Environmental Commitments: Building Block for the 1st Global Review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework”
Statement by Rafael Benitez, Director of Social Rights, Health and Environment
Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,
Let me begin by thanking Armenia for the invitation to participate in this important discussion.
Our meeting comes at a particularly timely moment. From 19 to 30 October, Armenia will host the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity – COP17 in Yerevan.
COP17 will mark an important milestone in the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. For the first time since the Framework was adopted in 2022, Parties will undertake a global review of their collective progress in its implementation.
That review will allow the international community to take stock: to identify where progress is being made, where gaps remain, and where implementation must accelerate if we are to achieve the Framework’s goals and its targets for 2030.
This makes COP17 not simply a moment for assessment, but an opportunity to move from commitments to stronger implementation.
And this brings us directly to the subject of our discussion today.
If we are serious about halting and reversing biodiversity loss, we must also address the criminal activities that are destroying nature.
Environmental crime has become one of the world’s largest and most profitable forms of criminal activity. It is also a major obstacle to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.
Illegal pollution, trafficking in protected species, illegal logging, unlawful waste shipments and other serious environmental offences destroy ecosystems, deplete natural resources and undermine conservation efforts. They can fuel organised criminal networks and corruption and weaken the institutions responsible for protecting our natural heritage.
Their consequences are ultimately borne by people. Environmental degradation affects public health, livelihoods, food and water security and the enjoyment of human rights. It also threatens the natural heritage that we have a responsibility to preserve for future generations.
Addressing environmental crime is therefore not only a matter of criminal justice. It is also a human rights issue and an essential component of effective biodiversity protection.
This is the approach that the Council of Europe will bring to COP17.
For more than 75 years, the Council of Europe has worked to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Environmental protection has progressively become an important dimension of that mission.
At the Fourth Summit of Heads of State and Government in Reykjavík in 2023, the leaders of our 46 member States committed to strengthening the human rights dimension of environmental protection and responding to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.
Building on that commitment, the Council of Europe Strategy on the Environment 2025–2030, “United around our values, for people and for the planet”, provides a comprehensive framework for strengthening environmental protection through the Organisation’s core values.
Our work is guided by a One Health approach, recognising the close interdependence between human, animal and ecosystem health and that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is integral to the full enjoyment of human rights.
Significantly, the Strategy identifies both the prevention and prosecution of environmental crime and the protection of wildlife, ecosystems, habitats and landscapes among its strategic objectives.
These priorities are mutually reinforcing. Effective biodiversity conservation requires effective enforcement, just as criminal law in this field must ultimately serve the protection of nature and people.
This is where the new Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law makes a particularly important contribution.
Adopted in May 2025 and opened for signature on 3 December of that year, it is the only international legally binding instrument specifically dedicated to environmental crime. It establishes a modern and comprehensive criminal-law framework covering the most serious environmental offences, including those affecting biodiversity and ecosystems.
One of its most innovative provisions is Article 31. It addresses intentional unlawful conduct causing widespread and substantial or irreversible environmental damage – conduct that could include major industrial disasters, large-scale pollution or devastating forest fires.
The Convention does not use the term ecocide, but Article 31 provides a criminal-law response to environmental destruction of comparable gravity.
The Convention goes much further. It establishes common minimum standards for criminalising serious environmental offences and provides for effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions. It promotes the specialisation and training of investigators, prosecutors, judges and other relevant authorities.
It also places people at the centre of the criminal justice response.
The Convention contains specific provisions for victims, witnesses and persons who report environmental offences or otherwise cooperate with justice. Victims should be informed about their rights and relevant proceedings and have appropriate opportunities to participate and be heard. Those who report environmental offences or assist investigating and prosecuting authorities must be protected against intimidation and retaliation.
This matters because environmental crime is often difficult to detect. Cases may come to light precisely because individuals, communities, civil society organisations or others are prepared to speak up and provide information. Their protection is therefore part of an effective enforcement system.
And the Convention recognises another fundamental reality: environmental crime does not respect national borders.
Wildlife trafficking, illegal waste shipments and other environmental offences can involve sophisticated criminal networks, multiple jurisdictions and complex financial flows. The Convention therefore strengthens international cooperation, including through provisions on mutual legal assistance, extradition and information exchange.
In this way, it helps fill an important gap in international environmental governance. It complements existing international instruments and environmental treaties – including the Council of Europe’s own biodiversity convention, the Bern convention, and the Council of Europe Landscape Conventions – by providing States with criminal-law tools to ensure that serious attacks against the environment can be effectively investigated, prosecuted and sanctioned.
As we look towards COP17, the Council of Europe therefore sees both the Convention and our Strategy on the Environment as concrete contributions to biodiversity conservation and to the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
In Yerevan, we look forward to presenting this work through a series of events and to discussing how the Council of Europe can contribute to the collective effort to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.
We also hope that COP17 will help broaden support for the new Convention.
There is already encouraging momentum. Several Council of Europe member States, as well as the European Union, have signed the Convention and earlier this month, Latvia became the first State to deposit its instrument of ratification.
These are important steps, but they are only the beginning.
The Convention will fulfil its purpose only if States make it a living instrument. Signatures must be followed by ratifications, and ratifications by effective implementation.
So let me use this opportunity to make a clear appeal: to Council of Europe member States that have not yet signed the Convention, we encourage you to do so; and to those that have signed, we encourage you to move towards ratification as swiftly as possible.
But our ambition does not stop at Europe.
The Convention was conceived from the outset with international cooperation in mind. It is open for accession by States that are not members of the Council of Europe. This is particularly important in a field where criminal networks, environmental damage and illicit flows routinely cross regional and national boundaries.
We therefore invite States from all regions to engage with the Convention, to explore what it can offer and, ultimately, to consider joining it.
Broader participation will strengthen our common legal framework, facilitate cooperation between jurisdictions and help build a genuinely international response to environmental crime.
COP17 provides an important opportunity to advance that conversation. The first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Framework should not only tell us how far we have come. It should also help us identify the practical tools needed to close implementation gaps and accelerate action.
Effective criminal law and international cooperation are among those tools.
Let me conclude by returning to the broader picture.
As the Council of Europe advances a New Democratic Pact for Europe and works to strengthen democratic security, we are increasingly conscious that democratic resilience and environmental protection go hand in hand.
Our approach is founded on a simple conviction: human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the protection of nature are intrinsically connected.
Strong institutions help protect the environment. Effective environmental governance strengthens public trust. Participation and access to information enable people to defend the places in which they live. And the rule of law ensures that those who seriously damage our common environment are held accountable.
This is also why the discussions that will take place in Yerevan matter well beyond biodiversity policy. They are about our capacity to translate international commitments into action, to strengthen the institutions that protect our common natural heritage and to ensure accountability when that heritage is seriously harmed.
Ultimately, the measure of our success will not be the commitments we make or the instruments we adopt, but the difference they make: healthier ecosystems, stronger protection for people and nature, and a better future for all – including the generations to come.
Thank you.