Capacitate Legal Assistance against Wildlife crime (CLAW)

Wildlife Trust of India’s (WTI) responsibilities in the project largely involve aiding law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and the judiciary through legal counsel, in a bid to ensure the delivery of effective investigation and prosecution. At the onset, the team’s primary focus was on cases related to elephant poaching in India. This includes elephant poaching cases which are pending trial across the state of Kerala with the permission of the forest department for reference purposes, and elephant poaching cases across India that are available in the public domain. Specifically, WTI will aid the state forest department in pursuing trial court cases registered under “Malayatoor Elephant poaching cases” (in which WTI actively took part in the investigation and enforcement under Operation Shikar) and would render legal support to the forest department for seeking compensation for loss or injury caused to the wildlife and its habitat due to the offences committed by the offenders.

Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) causes serious, cascading, and often overlooked harms that affect the biodiversity, ecosystems, and human well-being at large. The concern lies in the fact that traditional criminal enforcement tends to disregard the variety and extent of these damages, as it primarily centres on penalizing offenders through fines and imprisonment. Such traditional sanctions are often low relative to the monetary benefits of IWT and thus, fail to hold offenders accountable for the harm they cause and leave the threat largely unresolved. There is a need for a novel legal approach, that not only puts emphasis on punishment and deterrence but also encompasses methods by which the law can ensure responsibility among the offenders and even subject them to remediation. Similar to the ‘Polluters pay principle’ (as is practised in India under the ambit of Indian Environmental laws), this approach through the Capacitate Legal Assistance against Wildlife Crime (CLAW) project may entail the offender footing the bill of conservation management and well-being of the communities depending on that wildlife.

WTI is partnering with Lancaster University (LU) as a co-applicant from India for a DEFRA IWT grant, aiming to establish accountability for IWT-related harm by incorporating strategic liability litigation alongside traditional criminal enforcement. Given WTI’s extensive work, which includes investigating and supporting the prosecution of wildlife crime cases in collaboration with governmental bodies, the Capacitate Legal Assistance against Wildlife Crime (CLAW) project aids WTI in spearheading the legal analysis efforts in India and building a case-selection framework involving Indian Elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) poaching cases.

Partners: Lancaster University

Project Lead: Debobroto Sircar