Recent discussions among governments, international organizations and civil society have highlighted persistent obstacles to progress in the fight against environmental crime.

While environmental crime is increasingly recognized as a serious threat requiring effective criminal justice responses, several challenges continue to hamper decisive action, including polarized geopolitical debates, weak implementation of existing conventions at the national level, and limited coordination between environmental protection and law enforcement agencies.

To discuss the challenges and weaknesses in existing responses to environmental crime and how these can be addressed through the multilateral system, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and the Government of France hosted a second security and development dialogue on environmental crime online on 23 January 2025. This event, held under the Chatham House rule, is part of a series designed to provide a unique, multidisciplinary, and cross-regional platform for a diverse set of stakeholders to share perspectives and develop common approaches to address this evolving challenge. Hosted with the financial support of the European Union through the ECO-SOLVE project, the dialogue series aims to align political priorities and innovative thinking with practical action and to strengthen diplomatic engagement on environmental crime within the multilateral system.

Each event is held with a view to informing important upcoming multilateral events. During the second dialogue, participants reviewed the latest multilateral discussions on environmental crime from the second half of 2024, and looked ahead to upcoming international meetings in 2025 and 2026, including the UN Crime Congress in Abu Dhabi in 2026.