Daan van Uhm

This book explores illegal mining in the context of the growing global demand for critical minerals and energy transitions. It examines how illegal mining operates across complex supply chains shaped by weak governance, contested jurisdictions, and global market pressures. Rather than viewing illegal mining as a marginal activity, this book situates it within a broader framework of “crimes in the mineral sector,” encompassing criminal activities, human rights violations, and environmental harm.

Developing an innovative approach to understanding how organized crime groups diversify into the illegal trade in natural resources, this book looks at the convergence between environmental crime and other serious crimes. In Organized Environmental Crime, Daan van Uhm breaks new ground by rejecting the classic image of organized crime as specializing in one kind of criminal activity. Instead, he develops an innovative approach to understanding how organized crime groups diversify into the illegal trade in natural resources by looking at the convergence between environmental crime and other serious crimes. Personal stories from informants directly involved in organized crime networks offer unique insights into the black markets in gold, wildlife, and timber in three environmental crime hotspots: the Darién Gap, a remote swath of jungle on the Colombia-Panama border in Latin America; the Golden Triangle, a notorious opium epicenter in Southeast Asia; and the eastern edge of the Congo basin, an important conflict area in Central Africa. The proliferation of organized environmental crime exacerbates the global destruction of ancient rainforests; the mass extinction of species; and the pollution of the atmosphere, land, and water, negatively affecting planet Earth. By uncovering its incentives, features, and harms, this book is crucial to understanding organized environmental crime in a rapidly changing world.