Introduction:

The World Bank Group plays a pivotal, yet often underappreciated, role in the global fight against wildlife crime. As a founding member of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC)—alongside CITES, INTERPOL, UNODC, and the World Customs Organization (WCO)—the Bank brings unique financial, analytical, and convening power to bear on an issue that threatens biodiversity, security, and development. Wildlife crime is not merely an environmental concern; it is a transnational organized crime with profound economic and governance implications. By treating wildlife crime through a development and financial-crime lens, the World Bank complements the enforcement, regulatory, and police-focused work of its ICCWC partners, creating a more holistic global response.

The ICCWC Framework and the World Bank’s Mandate:

Established in 2010, the ICCWC was created to strengthen criminal justice systems and provide coordinated support to combat wildlife and forest crime at national, regional, and international levels. Its five partner agencies—the CITES Secretariat, INTERPOL, UNODC, the World Bank, and the WCO (World Customs Organization)—each contribute distinct comparative advantages. While CITES sets the international wildlife trade regulatory framework, INTERPOL facilitates cross-border police cooperation, UNODC supports criminal justice and anti-corruption efforts, and the WCO enhances customs enforcement, the World Bank’s mandate centers on financing, capacity building, economic analysis, and addressing the root developmental drivers of wildlife crime.

The Bank’s involvement in ICCWC is formalized through strategic programmes that outline shared priorities, such as the ICCWC Strategic Programme 2016–2020 (extended to 2024) and the ICCWC Vision 2030 with its Strategic Action Plan 2023–2026. Within this framework, the World Bank leads or co-leads key initiatives, particularly those related to financial investigations, anti-money laundering (AML), and sustainable financing for conservation to choke off the financial incentives driving global wildlife trafficking networks. This division of labor ensures that efforts to disrupt wildlife trafficking networks address not only the physical movement of wildlife contrabands but also the financial flows that sustain them.

Making the Economic Case: World Bank Analysis

The Bank's first contribution is evidence that reframes wildlife crime for finance and planning ministries. Its 2019 paper, Illegal Logging, Fishing and Wildlife Trade: The Costs and How to Combat It, was produced by a GWP/World Bank team. It put the annual cost of these illegal activities at $1 trillion to $2 trillion, and estimated that source-country governments forgo $7 billion to $12 billion in fiscal revenue each year. Over 90 percent of the losses come from unpriced ecosystem services such as carbon storage and water filtration. These are the benefits that forests, wildlife and coastal resources provide.

Three other findings from the paper matter for policy:

• Under-resourced enforcement. A 2019 World Bank study found that about $260 million a year is spent on combating illegal wildlife trade across 67 African and Asian countries. The US federal government alone spent $30 billion on drug control in 2017.
• Governance and corruption. The paper explicitly concludes that illegal logging, fishing, and wildlife trade cannot be solved by rangers and border checkpoints alone; they are fundamentally governance crises fueled by corruption and institutional weaknesses, requiring sustained, high-level political commitment to resolve.
• Leveraging AML Frameworks: To target the criminal syndicates profiting from these activities, the report strongly advocates for extending the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-based National Risk Assessments (NRAs). By treating natural resource depletion as a primary predicate crime for money laundering, countries can deploy powerful financial intelligence units to track and seize the illicit wealth driving these environmental crimes.

Financing the Fight: The Global Wildlife Program:

The World Bank’s most visible contribution to combating wildlife crime is its leadership of the Global Wildlife Program (GWP). Launched in 2015 and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the GWP is one of the largest global partnerships dedicated to addressing wildlife poaching, trafficking, and demand. As of 2025, the GWP has mobilized $352 million in GEF financing and over $2 billion in co-financing to support national efforts in 38 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The GWP’s scope is comprehensive. Its components have evolved over three GEF phases. The first focused on poaching, trafficking and demand. The second added wildlife-based economies. The third broadens the mandate to unsustainable wildlife trade, zoonotic spillover risk and human-wildlife coexistence. Between 2010 and June 2023, 73 international donors invested over $3.63 billion in combating IWT globally, with the World Bank Group consistently ranking among the top five donors. In the 2010–2016 period alone, the World Bank was a top-five contributor to the $1.3 billion committed by donors, underscoring its sustained financial commitment.

GWP projects range from $1.8 million to $15.8 million in GEF investment per country, with an average project size of $6.2 million, and are bolstered by significant co-financing from governments, NGOs, and the private sector. These funds support protected area management, law enforcement capacity, community livelihoods, policy reform, and demand-reduction campaigns. For example, in Ethiopia, improved enforcement capacity supported by GWP has led to 90% of illegal wildlife trade cases presented in national courts ending in convictions with appropriate sentences. In Indonesia’s Leuser landscape, GWP-backed measures have contributed to reduced poaching of Sumatran tigers and rhinoceros.

What the Evidence Shows:

The GWP's own 2024 Progress Report shows the following achievements:

• Almost 60,000 law enforcement, criminal justice and wildlife management staff trained in wildlife crime prevention.
• 221 joint law enforcement operations and investigations conducted.
• 18 wildlife-related legal or regulatory instruments revised, nine countries with improved transboundary collaboration, and 12 countries equipped with specialised tools such as databases and forensic labs.

On poaching outcomes, the report says that nearly 100 project sites have strengthened anti-poaching measures, and 32 of them report a decline in poaching of key species. Examples include:

• South Africa's wildlife-based economy project, which reports an 80 percent reduction in rhino poaching across 18 reserves since the project began.
• Ethiopia, which reduced elephant poaching by more than 75 percent in targeted protected areas, covering 1.5 million hectares.

On habitat and communities, over 28 million hectares of wildlife habitat are under more effective management, and about 800,000 people have benefited.

Disrupting Financial Flows: Anti-Money Laundering and Financial Investigations

The World Bank actively targets the financial dimensions of wildlife crime, as trafficking profits are routinely laundered through formal systems. To combat this, the Bank developed the Environmental Crimes Risk Assessment Module (Module 10) under its national money laundering toolkit. With GEF and UK DEFRA support, this tool has rolled out since 2017 in nations like Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to map financial vulnerabilities.

Furthermore, under the ICCWC Strategic Action Plan 2023–2026, the Bank delivers specialized anti-money laundering (AML) technical assistance. In 2023, over 400 African professionals from law enforcement, financial intelligence units, and the private sector were trained in AML, counter-terrorist financing, and open-source detection tools. By following the money, this approach disrupts economic incentives, complementing INTERPOL and UNODC operations while aligning with the Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative (StAR) to reclaim assets from environmental corruption.

Where the World Bank Intersects with CITES, INTERPOL, UNODC and WCO:

The Bank's work only makes sense alongside its four ICCWC partners. Each partner has a distinct mandate, and the Bank's role is to fund, connect and sustain those mandates.

CITES sets the legal trade framework. The Bank supports its implementation at national level. In the GWP's first phase, GWP projects supported national implementation of CITES. The CITES Secretariat sits on the GWP steering committee and is a close partner. As part of this collaboration, Madagascar's GWP project successfully advanced discussions and finalized the development roadmap with the CITES Secretariat. They officially launched the cloud-based ASYCUDA eCITES Base Solution to transition away from vulnerable paper permits to a secure, digital tracking system that curtails fraudulent activities.

UNODC leads the delivery of the ICCWC Toolkit and Indicator Framework, utilizing 50 performance indicators to measure national law enforcement and criminal justice responses over time. The Global Wildlife Program (GWP) actively integrates these analytical tools into its country-level operations, allowing national projects to request assessments and establish rigorous baselines. For instance, the Tanzania GWP project collaborated with UNODC to deliver four specialized training sessions, successfully building vital skills for 128 law enforcement personnel across intelligence, operations, investigation, and prosecution pipelines. Furthermore, UNODC’s foundational World Wildlife Crime Report supports these efforts by providing the World Bank and national governments with a shared, data-driven evidence base to target illicit wildlife supply chains effectively.

INTERPOL and WCO hold direct operational mandates for intelligence-led policing and cross-border customs controls. The World Bank contributes indirectly by financing projects through ICCWC. Notable GWP reported results include strengthening counter-trafficking capabilities across 14 major maritime trade seaports. This strategic intersection is where Bank-funded development work directly empowers frontline customs and border control agencies.

The GWP’s partnerships actively extend to regional enforcement networks to counter transnational syndicates. For instance, India’s SECURE Himalaya Project successfully supported a critical joint meeting with the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN). This collaboration culminated in an approved strategic plan and a commitment to real-time information sharing across borders. Through these regional linkages, the project bridges the gap between localized landscape conservation efforts and coordinated international wildlife crime deterrence.

Conclusion:

The World Bank Group’s role in combating wildlife crime is distinctive and indispensable. As a founding member of ICCWC, it brings financial resources and economic expertise that complement the enforcement mandates of its partners. Through the Global Wildlife Program, the Bank has mobilized $352 million in GEF financing and $2 billion in co-financing across 38 countries to support anti-poaching measures and community livelihoods. Furthermore, its anti-money laundering tools, like Module 10, actively disrupt the illicit financial flows sustaining trafficking networks. Field evidence highlights this expanding impact, including a remarkable 75% reduction in elephant poaching within targeted protected areas in Ethiopia. By addressing wildlife crime as both a development and a financial threat, the World Bank helps build resilient, wildlife-based economies, serving as a cornerstone of the global architecture for conservation and security.