DILI, 08 June 2026 (TATOLI) — Timor-Leste has called for stronger international cooperation, technological innovation, and community-based governance to combat wildlife trafficking and other environmental crimes, warning that such offenses pose growing threats to governance, sustainable development, and international security.
Speaking during the United Nations General Assembly High-level Debate on “Preventing and Combating Illicit Trafficking in Wildlife and Other Crimes that Affect the Environment” on Monday, Timor-Leste’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Dionisio Babo Soares, said environmental crimes present significant challenges for countries with vast maritime and forest resources.
Ambassador Soares welcomed the high-level debate held under Resolution 80/229 and commended the President of the General Assembly and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for elevating global attention to the urgent challenge of illicit wildlife trafficking and other environmental crimes.
The ambassador noted that environmental crimes are not merely conservation issues for Timor-Leste but represent broader governance and security concerns.
“The scale of Timor-Leste’s maritime exclusive economic zone and forested territories exceeds our baseline monitoring capacities. This structural asymmetry creates permissive environments for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, illicit logging, and transnational trafficking networks that operate across jurisdictions with relative impunity,” he said.
According to Soares, although the international legal framework—anchored in conventions on organized crime, corruption, and maritime governance—is robust, its effectiveness is limited by uneven implementation and legal fragmentation.
To strengthen global responses, Ambassador Soares outlined five priority actions aimed at improving international efforts to combat environmental crime.
First, he called for environmental crimes to be classified as serious transnational offenses to facilitate cross-border legal cooperation, extradition and financial investigations targeting criminal assets.
“Second, we must scale technological innovation—including satellite surveillance, vessel monitoring, and data sharing—to maintain territorial oversight and ensure enforcement credibility,” he said.
Ambassador Soares also stressed that community-based governance must lead prevention efforts, saying that policies grounded in inclusive participation, equitable benefit-sharing, and respect for traditional knowledge systems significantly reduce local vulnerability to criminal exploitation.
In addition, Soares said that anti-corruption measures must be systematically embedded into resource management, adding that strengthening transparency in licensing, border controls, and supply chains is vital to closing the institutional entry points that criminal networks exploit.
“Fifth, regional and multilateral cooperation must be deepened to harmonize enforcement standards and enable seamless information sharing,” said the Ambassador.
He also highlighted several domestic initiatives being implemented by Timor-Leste to address environmental threats.
“We are expanding our network of over forty protected zones under Law No. 5/2016, upgrading tracking infrastructure at naval bases to strengthen maritime domain awareness, and legally codifying the traditional customary pact of Tara Bandu to anchor environmental enforcement directly within local communities,” said Soares.
He concluded his statement by saying that environmental crimes are systemic threats to governance and international security. Only through coordinated legal, institutional, and community-driven actions can we disrupt these illicit networks and safeguard our collective future.
TATOLI
