An Overview Of Our Solution
This program will improve communication and cooperation in-country and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) by promoting mechanisms for effective information sharing and coordination behaviors through the development of a shared wildlife trade database (A.L.E.R.I.S.) to more effectively address wildlife trafficking challenges. This project seeks to provide technical assistance to: 1) assess the current state of wildlife trafficking; 2) facilitate information sharing through the development of best practices and guidelines, deployment of the A.L.E.R.I.S. database, and relationship building among communities, organizations and governments; and 3) inform policy reform while providing materials to aid technical capacity development to address wildlife trafficking and resulting biodiversity loss.
- Population Impacted: 30,000,000
- Continent: South America
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Context Analysis
The role of Latin America with respect to illegal wildlife trafficking (IWT) has been increasingly prominent in recent years. The Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region holds over 40% of the world’s biodiversity (Connelly & Peyronnin, 2021). High levels of biodiversity lend themselves to diverse illegal wildlife trade across a range of ecological zones.
Political and socioeconomic instabilities in the region (such as the crisis in Venezuela), have been identified as significant potential catalysts for IWT activities, facilitating both extraction and transit (Esmail et al., 2020). Traffickers also continue to exploit the connectivity of the continent to move wildlife to consumers both within and outside the region. Between 2004 and 2013, there were over 4,000 individual shipments seized at United States ports of entry with Latin American origins. In total, 47,914 illegal wildlife products and 7,111 illegal animals were seized from 2004 to 2013 (Goyenechea, Alejandra & Indenbaum, 2015).
This form of transnational crime generates tens of billions of dollars for transnational criminal organizations annually, robbing governments and local communities of their resource base and undercutting potential benefit to international wildlife-related tourism. It is estimated that the global value of the illegal wildlife trade is 7-23 USD billion per annum, with 15% of recorded global wildlife seizures originating from Latin America (Nellemann et al., 2016; UNODC, 2016). This threatens the security, economic prosperity, rule of law, conservation efforts, the environment, and human health of affected countries.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
We want organizational commitments to contribute to and utilize the ALERIS database to increase knowledge, cooperation, and communication, inform policy reform, incorporate community buy-in, educate the public on the current state of wildlife trade and what steps need to be taken to decrease negative impacts. Recognizing barriers to previous information-sharing initiatives, ALERIS will alleviate the required technological capacity for law enforcement and conservation agencies to engage in the continuous capture and sharing of information. To accomplish this, ALERIS will be built into the business by being free of charge, simple to use, and highly secure, by way of the widely available Microsoft technology. The database is also inherently forward-looking in that it will be fully compatible with existing databases and will continue to influence policy and technical outcomes into the future. This includes engaging organization(s) that maintain comparable databases elsewhere in the world.
Describe your behavioral intervention.
SI: Interviews with local communities, indigenous groups and soliciting input from organizations at all stages of project/database development creates conversation around shared beliefs and expectations and increases buy-in and participation increases chances of sustainability. -Scheduled conferences and training will facilitate peer or community exchanges where others can observe and gain support for the project. -Letters of commitment encourage commitments or pledges to drive the target behavior. -By providing training and eliminating the cost for users we eliminate excuses for not engaging with our database. -A.L.E.R.I.S.’s accompanying website will list participants when it is positively reinforcing to highlight those that are taking part in the target behavior of contributing or utilizing the database leading to positive outcomes. The website also increases exposure and conversation on the topic and solution. The website also provides a platform to promote successes with targeted behaviors. Perhaps most important is that the ALERIS framework is also flexible enough to be revised and co-produced with those agencies charged with combatting IWT to maximize benefit, participation, and ownership in the system. We believe this is particularly important to the early onboarding and adoption of the system, which in turn will encourage even more partnerships across the LAC region moving forward.
Behavioral Levers Utilized
As needed, please explain how you utilized the lever(s) in more detail.
CA: -The database scalability, transferability, security and continued networking will make the target behavior the default option. -The ALERIS database streamlines complex decisions to focus on key info and actions by providing user friendly interfaces and easy access to relevant information. I: -We offer training and provide forums and materials (currently in 3 languages) that describe the target behavior and its importance.-Materials provided give instructions through tutorials and accompanying website. -The interface builds awareness and understanding with clear and easily digestible info.-We provide feedback by assisting with data analysis. MI: -The target behavior is more convenient and accessible with free access for users to decrease costs, provided training and tutorials decreasing learning and implementation time, and data analysis support to decrease effort for users and creates a user friendly and efficient experience in languages to increase convenience and accessibility.
Describe your implementation
ALERIS is the most efficient, secure, and user-friendly database available to track wildlife trade and presents information in a tailored and scalable interface that encourages interaction and increases chances of successful outcomes when dealing with wildlife trade issues such as policy reform and community education. Providing training and familiarization tools increases the likelihood of successful implementation and sustainable usage practices. Through letters of commitment, we can measure participation to ensure successful utilization of the database. Maintaining communication and soliciting feedback also helped ensure organizations could and were implementing usage of the database to track wildlife trade and inform policy reform and other interventions. Enabling conditions:-ALERIS is simple to learn, easy to use, extremely practical, highly secure, and requires minimal monetary and human capital. -Targeted and directed outreach. -Multiple languages. -Framework is flexible enough to be revised and co-produced with other agencies.Key successes: -A functional, efficient, and user-friendly database that meets the need to track wildlife trade in LAC and inform policy reform and future solutions to the ongoing crisis. -Bringing on multiple organizations in multiple countries committed to contributing to the database and using it to inform their wildlife trade solutions. -Materials and training tools developed in three languages (English, Portuguese, and Spanish) so far.Major obstacles: -Coordinating in multiple languages was overcome with a diverse team with language fluency. -Understanding organizational needs to obtain buy-in and commitment was navigated through relationship building meetings and including organization/community feedback into all steps of the database development process. -Funding is an ongoing challenge to maintain a cost free solution to end users, and we continue to seek out and apply for necessary funds.
Describe the leadership for your solution. Who is leading the implementation?
Our team currently comprises 8 core members from the United States and two LAC countries. We are working with organizations, governments and communities to implement this solution and share it with their peers and neighbors. Implementation can be managed within each organization and we are able provide training to aid in the implementation.
Share some of the key partners or stakeholders engaged in your solution development and implementation.
SPECIES has been canvassing the broad community of IWT practitioners and actors across Latin America to identify prospective end users of the ALERIS system. Currently, SPECIES is engaged in deliberations with multiple government agencies or government-adjacent organizations across Latin America, including law enforcement, and adjacent conservation NGO’s charged with informing and/or sharing IWT data with governments. Using our direct and second-order contacts, we have been able to initiate contact and correspond with the following actors in the implementation of ALERIS:
- U.S. Department of State Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES)
- John Jay College (Officer for International Research Partnerships)
- SPDA
- Serfor
- Organismo de Evaluación y Fiscalización Ambiental (OEFA)
- FEMA
- Misión Verde
- Brazil Federal Police
- IBAMA
- ProCosta
- General Directorate for the Protection and Conservation of Biodiversity Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, MADES, Paraguay
- Central American University
- El Salvador National Police (Environmental Division)
Who adopted the desired behavior(s) and to what degree? Include an explanation of how you measured a change in behavior.
Commitment to contributing to or utilizing the database when making policy or community campaign decisions. Letters of commitment from organizations (see list above for organizations) help to measure participation now and in the future. Increases in reporting through the database also provide a metric of success.
How did you impact the environment (biodiversity conservation, ecosystems, etc.)? Please be specific and include measurement methodology where relevant.
This has not been measured at this time due to the current stage of the project. We expect measurable impacts in protecting flora and fauna species, strengthening ecosystem resiliency and the communities that they support through policy reform and improved proactive solutions instead of limited reactive punitive actions.
How has your solution impacted equity challenges (including race, ethnicity, social class/income, indigenous communities, or others)?
By funding the cost of the database access remains free to uses keeping it from being cost prohibitive. Community interviews including indigenous groups helps ensure all communities can be represented.
What were some sustainable development co-benefits?
Cutting down on crime, protecting species/wild spaces, and informing improved policy reform will open up and focus resources on preserving natural resources, protecting local community rights and improving access to resources when developing.
Sustainability: Describe the economic sustainability of your solution.
This solution will require an annual fee to maintain free access to all members.
Return on investment: How much did it cost to implement these activities? How do your results above compare to this investment?
We began with a $300K grant, and the database has an annual fee as listed above. Considering that wildlife trade is a multi-billion dollar enterprise, our investment return is absolutely worthwhile.
How could we successfully replicate this solution in Latin America?
This is already being shared and replicated throughout LAC. With the use of specific permissions and privacy settings his database solution can be used as broadly or narrowly as required to increase participation and confidence in the project.
Peruvian Regions Applicable
Describe how the technical solution addresses wildlife trafficking in the Peruvian Amazon.
Our database brings together groups from the government, educational system, nonprofit arena and the community to work together in solving this crisis. We are currently building working relationships with 4 organizations in Peru and hope to continue to increase this number while also increasing communication and cooperation among governments, organizations and communities within Peru as well as the surrounding region.
Describe the sustainability and scalability of your technical solution
This database can be scaled down to individual communities or species or up to include multiple countries within the region. Scalability is very flexible through the features of the database. Sustainability would only be limited by participation, which would be maximized by keeping the database free to users, and by cost of the database, which would need to be funded each year.
If applicable, explain the level of progress of the solution
Organizational and community relationships are being developed between 9 countries so far. The beta version of the database has been developed and is currently waiting on funding for full deployment.
What are the additional sources of funding for the solution?
We have received an initial grant from the U.S. Dept of State to initiate the project and begin building and testing the database and will run through September 2023.
Cost of Innovative Solution
Holding an active Microsoft Power BI license will be critical to having an adequate capacity to integrate, display, demonstrate, and analyze the data of real end users, and thus critical to our overall success of ALERIS. The software itself costs $59,940 US dollars per year to run and keep the service free for all users, so that access is not cost prohibitive.