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Introduction
My name is Toby Masterton. I am embarking on the final stage of a project which aims to produce a sustainably financed, comprehensive and integrated solution to help prevent wildlife poaching and environmental destruction that can be reproduced at scale. The links between the slaughter of endangered wildlife, transnational criminal networks and international terrorism are now widely accepted. During an interview with Sky News on 23 November 2015, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales warned about the effects of climate change in relation to the conflict in Syria and the refugee crisis.
Background
I have been a soldier, a peacekeeper and an adviser to the United Nations, European Union and African Union on security, terrorism, governance and child soldiers, as well as an invited subject matter expert on human trafficking and gender-based violence. I am also the UK representative and a strategic adviser to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu's education campaign - "Tutudesk". Over the years, I have witnessed the destruction of ecosystems, livelihoods and world heritage sites caused by war, terrorism and transnational crimes such as poaching, illegal logging/fishing, and the looting of artefacts. The wildlife trade has become the fourth most lucrative after drugs, arms and human trafficking, valued at up to $20 billion per year.
Current Situation
Many species are critically endangered like the Black Rhino. With their horns worth more per kilo than gold and cocaine, they are being killed at a rate of 3 per day in South Africa, home to around 80% of the world's population. Elephants are also being poached on an alarming scale. In the 70s, South Sudan had over 80,000 elephants, today they have around 5,000. Terrorist and insurgent groups trade ivory with corrupt military officers, government officials and Asian buyers. In return they receive cash and weapons. Approximately 30,000 African Elephants are killed every year - that's one every 15 minutes.
The human population suffers too with forest rangers killed, villagers forced from their homes, women and girls seized as sex slaves, the young as child soldiers, and large numbers of people either internally displaced or becoming refugees. Many groups inspired by extremist ideologies - including Al-Qaeda franchises currently operating in the Middle East, Africa and Europe - make a significant proportion of their income from smuggling commodities including elephant ivory and rhino horn. Placing a value on our Natural Capital to ensure its survival will not only reduce habitat loss but also human-wildlife conflict, the extinction of key species, and money channelled to criminal networks and terrorist groups.
Project Outline
Over the past three years, I've examined the various methods that the International Community, national governments, NGOs, game reserves and local communities use to mitigate poaching. The main challenges are threefold:
1) the scale of the problem
2) the costs associated with prevention
3) the fragmented approach by the myriad organisations engaged in conservation, environmental preservation, law enforcement and counterterrorism
My research is focused on identifying the following:
a) an integrated intelligence solution linking commercially available satellite and airborne surveillance, tracking and communications intercept technologies to be deployed in partnership with community-based education, outreach and informant networks
b) a business model that will deliver funding year on year
This requires an alternative approach in order to clarify the strategic objectives, scale the appropriate solution rapidly, and sustain it financially over the long-term. The end result will be a fully costed integrated plan to help tackle wildlife poaching. In essence, we need to fit the budget to the solution, and not the other way around.
Finance
Having self-funded this so far, I'm now seeking assistance to complete the project. In the last year I have been to Somalia, Kenya, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Over the next 6 months, I must finalise the necessary partnerships to ensure this initiative succeeds. The funds are required for visas, flights, accommodation and internal travel. I have to employ local fixers for their knowledge, language skills and cultural advice. In countries like Somalia and South Sudan, plans may have to change due to security threats or other events beyond my control where a contingency budget is essential. I travel alone which has advantages (reduced cost, flexibility and light logistical footprint) and disadvantages (greater physical risk) so emergency evacuation cover is needed for worst case scenarios.
Education
The "Tutudesk" campaign will be one of the methods used to help educate those in the most poorly resourced parts of the continent as the young are the conservation guardians of tomorrow. With 95 million children in sub-Saharan Africa without school desks, the power of something as simple and 'low-tech' as a portable "Tutudesk" in transforming the lives of underprivileged children is profound. The image below is of a draft anti-poaching version of the "Tutudesk". The educational design will be finalised with input from local communities and conservation groups in each region. In addition, I am a founding external faculty member of a new partnership in London, the King's College Conflict & Health Research Group.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lsm/research/divisions/global-health/research/conflict/research.aspx
I act as the environment-conflict-global health lead and will use this platform to address the youth and graduate constituencies that must be targeted across Africa, and especially Asia.
Veterans
A key pillar of the project will be the establishment of a local work force in each location to offer a positive alternative to the poaching syndicates. Where possible, I will always plug into existing operations through the project's proposed partners so as not to duplicate effort and waste valuable resources. I intend to use military veterans - where appropriate - as trainers and mentors, including those from partner countries from existing veterans organisations. Their skills and experience are both transferable and much in demand. Former combatants and reformed criminal gang members make excellent informants, and 'turning poachers into gamekeepers' is a tried and tested process.
Summary
The objective is to produce a system that can deploy the latest technology at scale to augment the extraordinary efforts already being made by courageous individuals and groups working in conservation. The optimum solution will be a combination of "best of breed" technologies with a sustainable income stream in a coalition of effective partnerships. We all have to be collaborative, flexible and agile as we're operating in a rules-based world and our antagonists are not.
With the recent terrorist attacks in Europe and Africa, and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the International Community is struggling to form a unified strategy to prevent the worst outrages in the immediate future. My initiative is designed to significantly reduce the level of poaching and associated transnational crimes such as human trafficking, thereby conserving species, ecosystems and livelihoods whilst simultaneously strangling the flow of money and weapons to terrorist groups.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any help towards achieving my goal will be greatly appreciated. I will be posting film clips, regular updates, including news of partnering agreements with some of the most highly regarded global conservation organisations during my travels, and the website will be online soon. For reasons of personal security and operational effectiveness, some information will not be made public including the identities of certain individuals and groups, specific technologies and how they are used, particular tactics and precise target areas. I will be moving to East Africa in 2016 to establish the operational base.
My name is Toby Masterton. I am embarking on the final stage of a project which aims to produce a sustainably financed, comprehensive and integrated solution to help prevent wildlife poaching and environmental destruction that can be reproduced at scale. The links between the slaughter of endangered wildlife, transnational criminal networks and international terrorism are now widely accepted. During an interview with Sky News on 23 November 2015, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales warned about the effects of climate change in relation to the conflict in Syria and the refugee crisis.
Background
I have been a soldier, a peacekeeper and an adviser to the United Nations, European Union and African Union on security, terrorism, governance and child soldiers, as well as an invited subject matter expert on human trafficking and gender-based violence. I am also the UK representative and a strategic adviser to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu's education campaign - "Tutudesk". Over the years, I have witnessed the destruction of ecosystems, livelihoods and world heritage sites caused by war, terrorism and transnational crimes such as poaching, illegal logging/fishing, and the looting of artefacts. The wildlife trade has become the fourth most lucrative after drugs, arms and human trafficking, valued at up to $20 billion per year.
Current Situation
Many species are critically endangered like the Black Rhino. With their horns worth more per kilo than gold and cocaine, they are being killed at a rate of 3 per day in South Africa, home to around 80% of the world's population. Elephants are also being poached on an alarming scale. In the 70s, South Sudan had over 80,000 elephants, today they have around 5,000. Terrorist and insurgent groups trade ivory with corrupt military officers, government officials and Asian buyers. In return they receive cash and weapons. Approximately 30,000 African Elephants are killed every year - that's one every 15 minutes.
The human population suffers too with forest rangers killed, villagers forced from their homes, women and girls seized as sex slaves, the young as child soldiers, and large numbers of people either internally displaced or becoming refugees. Many groups inspired by extremist ideologies - including Al-Qaeda franchises currently operating in the Middle East, Africa and Europe - make a significant proportion of their income from smuggling commodities including elephant ivory and rhino horn. Placing a value on our Natural Capital to ensure its survival will not only reduce habitat loss but also human-wildlife conflict, the extinction of key species, and money channelled to criminal networks and terrorist groups.
Project Outline
Over the past three years, I've examined the various methods that the International Community, national governments, NGOs, game reserves and local communities use to mitigate poaching. The main challenges are threefold:
1) the scale of the problem
2) the costs associated with prevention
3) the fragmented approach by the myriad organisations engaged in conservation, environmental preservation, law enforcement and counterterrorism
My research is focused on identifying the following:
a) an integrated intelligence solution linking commercially available satellite and airborne surveillance, tracking and communications intercept technologies to be deployed in partnership with community-based education, outreach and informant networks
b) a business model that will deliver funding year on year
This requires an alternative approach in order to clarify the strategic objectives, scale the appropriate solution rapidly, and sustain it financially over the long-term. The end result will be a fully costed integrated plan to help tackle wildlife poaching. In essence, we need to fit the budget to the solution, and not the other way around.
Finance
Having self-funded this so far, I'm now seeking assistance to complete the project. In the last year I have been to Somalia, Kenya, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Over the next 6 months, I must finalise the necessary partnerships to ensure this initiative succeeds. The funds are required for visas, flights, accommodation and internal travel. I have to employ local fixers for their knowledge, language skills and cultural advice. In countries like Somalia and South Sudan, plans may have to change due to security threats or other events beyond my control where a contingency budget is essential. I travel alone which has advantages (reduced cost, flexibility and light logistical footprint) and disadvantages (greater physical risk) so emergency evacuation cover is needed for worst case scenarios.
Education
The "Tutudesk" campaign will be one of the methods used to help educate those in the most poorly resourced parts of the continent as the young are the conservation guardians of tomorrow. With 95 million children in sub-Saharan Africa without school desks, the power of something as simple and 'low-tech' as a portable "Tutudesk" in transforming the lives of underprivileged children is profound. The image below is of a draft anti-poaching version of the "Tutudesk". The educational design will be finalised with input from local communities and conservation groups in each region. In addition, I am a founding external faculty member of a new partnership in London, the King's College Conflict & Health Research Group.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lsm/research/divisions/global-health/research/conflict/research.aspx
I act as the environment-conflict-global health lead and will use this platform to address the youth and graduate constituencies that must be targeted across Africa, and especially Asia.
Veterans
A key pillar of the project will be the establishment of a local work force in each location to offer a positive alternative to the poaching syndicates. Where possible, I will always plug into existing operations through the project's proposed partners so as not to duplicate effort and waste valuable resources. I intend to use military veterans - where appropriate - as trainers and mentors, including those from partner countries from existing veterans organisations. Their skills and experience are both transferable and much in demand. Former combatants and reformed criminal gang members make excellent informants, and 'turning poachers into gamekeepers' is a tried and tested process.
Summary
The objective is to produce a system that can deploy the latest technology at scale to augment the extraordinary efforts already being made by courageous individuals and groups working in conservation. The optimum solution will be a combination of "best of breed" technologies with a sustainable income stream in a coalition of effective partnerships. We all have to be collaborative, flexible and agile as we're operating in a rules-based world and our antagonists are not.
With the recent terrorist attacks in Europe and Africa, and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the International Community is struggling to form a unified strategy to prevent the worst outrages in the immediate future. My initiative is designed to significantly reduce the level of poaching and associated transnational crimes such as human trafficking, thereby conserving species, ecosystems and livelihoods whilst simultaneously strangling the flow of money and weapons to terrorist groups.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any help towards achieving my goal will be greatly appreciated. I will be posting film clips, regular updates, including news of partnering agreements with some of the most highly regarded global conservation organisations during my travels, and the website will be online soon. For reasons of personal security and operational effectiveness, some information will not be made public including the identities of certain individuals and groups, specific technologies and how they are used, particular tactics and precise target areas. I will be moving to East Africa in 2016 to establish the operational base.
Organizer
Tobias Masterton
Organizer