Interpol Takes on Emissions Fraud. By Mark Shapiro, MotherJones, 10/8/10. “In Lyon, France last month, undercover agents specializing in wildlife smuggling rubbed elbows with financial sleuths at a conference sponsored by INTERPOL intended to highlight the increasing complexity of environmental crimes and the tightening of environmental regulations in developing and developed countries… Global carbon markets, operating in countries subject to the emission restrictions of the Kyoto Protocol, have grown exponentially over the past five years, churning through more than $300 billion worth of transactions…
“The complexity of the carbon markets, which operate with ambiguous oversight, presents an array of new opportunities for fraud, noted Peter Younger, a veteran with Interpol and now in charge of the agency's enforcement of wildlife and forest protection in Africa. ‘You're talking about an international financial trade mechanism and the question is still evolving, where does the liability lie? We're still filling in our knowledge gap.’ The carbon commodities being traded, he said, are unlike any others: ‘You're obtaining not a physical entity or asset but a piece of paper.’ Take the rapid growth of interest in tropical forests serving as ‘offsets’ to companies' carbon emissions. In countries where land ownership is often disputed, the possibility for fraud is considerable, he said."
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