Page 3 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

presentation

environmental crimes are crimes against the future

We cannot be left alone in the defence of our future: this is why we need a
joint and global system of regulations, methods and procedures for sharing infor-
mation. From this basic reflection the project TECUM (Tackling Environmental
Crimes through Standardised Methodologies) was generated. It was promoted by
agencies specialised in environmental issues from Italy (Carabinieri Corps); Spain
(Guardia Civil), and Romania (National Environmental Guard): a EU funded
project to promote joint operative activities also open to non-EU countries in the
field of cross-border waste movement.

The purpose of the project, led by Italy, in particular by the Carabinieri
Corps, is the launch of a common path the aim of which is to create in our
country, and above all at an international level, a network of qualified police
officers with the intention, universally shared, to safeguard the environment as
a global concern. It will not be long before environmental crimes are prosecu-
ted as crimes against the future of humankind, as we already consider them,
and for their seriousness will be judged by international courts.

In view of this, we must come to understand that such crimes have
serious consequences for the environment, and, as unfortunately often hap-
pens, serious repercussions for other sectors. This is criminal activity which
transnational criminal organisations more and more frequently engage in by
working under the cover of legal enterprises.

These crimes against the future of the ecosystem, humankind, nature, and
the Earth affect the economy and the development of the whole world, causing
damage that individual countries find difficult to cope with. At the same time,
they affect the culture of legality in our society since, with the large amount of
money they have at their disposal, they are able to influence political choices
which should instead be taken for the common good.

This behaviour affects people’s health, causing consequences that have a
strong and intolerable impact on the social costs that states are required to bear
and on the suffering of families.

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