Wildlife trafficking is one of the most lucrative and destructive criminal enterprises in the world. Valued at more than $20 billion annually, these criminal networks impact more than 4,000 plant and animal species across 162 countries and territories. Yet for decades enforcement efforts focused narrowly on poachers, missing the broader criminal foundation that makes the trade resilient: the corrupt officials, armed non-state actors, and agile transnational networks.

Large-scale land acquisitions, otherwise known as “land grabbing,” are often believed to lead to resistance from affected local communities. According to an article by Ruth Hall et al. in The Journal of Peasant Studies, however, “political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed.”