Four Thai staff sit in the small Bangkok office of the world's oldest and biggest intergovernmental wildlife enforcement network.
It used to look like a proper international office, located on the ground floor of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. That was three years ago, when the Asean Wildlife Enforcement Network (Asean-Wen) was still adequately staffed and funded.
The Freeland Foundation, a non-governmental organisation supported by the US Agency for International Development, provided staff to sit in full time for about six to seven years. Freeland then rotated them on a part-time schedule, and eventually pulled out after being told its assistance was no longer needed.
The Asean-Wen website was only up and running in May after going offline for about six months, and no reports have gone out for three years.
Often credited as being a global template for other emerging wildlife enforcement networks, Asean-Wen increased wildlife enforcement more than tenfold between 2006 and 2013. But very little work has been done by the regional secretariat from 2013 onward when USAid started to pull back financially. Thailand currently hosts the secretariat, which is run solely by the DNP.
A decade after being established, it is not clear yet whether Asean-Wen achieved its goals, with Asean still at a crossroads when it comes to fighting wildlife crime.
"The external support has been fading away in the past few years, the members have not filled the financial gap and many international organisations have mixed feelings about Asean-Wen," said Giovanni Broussard, programme officer of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's programme for combating wildlife and forest crime. "Something has to change quickly."
HERE COME THE POLICE
Because the network has been a part of Asean's economic pillar since its establishment in 2005, it never managed to bring law enforcement officers to the forefront of the fight, despite being a network that bears the name "enforcement".
It didn't take long before people started to question whether this was the right structure to fight transnational organised crime.
After several proposals to include wildlife crime as a form of transnational crime -- one that has to be fought with the same techniques as drug trafficking or terrorism -- Asean security ministers finally accepted wildlife and timber trafficking as a new priority in October.
The financial value of wildlife trafficking worldwide is huge, ranging from US$7 to $23 billion (about 245 to 805 billion baht) a year, according to a recent report issued by the International Criminal Police Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme.
THE advocate: Giovanni Broussard, programme officer at UNODC, focuses on wildlife crime. Photo: Nanchanok Wongsamuth
A 2013 UNODC report estimated wildlife trafficking in Southeast Asia and the Pacific accounts for close to $2.5 billion a year, largely due to ivory and pangolin trade.
"Once it's trafficking, it's clear you're talking about transnational activity and high-level crime," said Mr Broussard.
A planned wildlife and timber trafficking working group, led by the Royal Thai Police, only held its first meeting last month. The new working group falls under Asean's political security pillar, and works separately from Asean-Wen.
What this means, and what industry experts hope to see, is that authorities will start to allocate more staff and resources to specialised units that fight wildlife crime.
"There is a complete change of policy and of players that are now starting to look into wildlife crimes," said Mr Broussard. "If all these things come together, then we will have the key security agents in Asean that will have to look into the issue of wildlife and timber trafficking. These developments are becoming what Asean-Wen should have been all along."
There will also be more justification for joint operations with other countries and for more advanced investigations involving money laundering and corruption. If there is a wildlife shipment that comes from Vietnam, for instance, that information has to be conveyed to Vietnamese authorities.
"You don't stop contraband but let it go and follow it until it reaches its destination. And when it reaches it, you understand more about organised criminal structures," said Mr Broussard. "Instead, what happens now is that very often you find an illegal shipment, open it, call the media and everyone takes a picture. The truck driver runs away, no one knows who owns the container. Open the container and have a picture in the newspapers the day after and it's the end of the investigation."
LESS CRIME, MORE TRADE
At the same time that a recognition of wildlife trafficking as a form of criminal activity in need of regional cooperation and prioritisation emerged, another process was going on that experts say has somehow demoted Asean-Wen.
The network signalled in March that it would merge with the Asean Expert Group on Cites. Cites refers to the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which regulates the wildlife trade.
James Compton, a senior director for Asia at Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network, said the decision reduces the priority of wildlife crime as Cites-focused agencies are often unequipped to deal with organised crime. "I think people get hung up on the fact that we're focusing on animals and not drugs and guns, but there is just as much criminal intent," he said.
The capacity of Cites to prevent criminal activities is weak because its enforcement mechanisms are not legally binding. When criminal networks manage to move ivory from Africa to Thailand, for instance, it is not possible to request agriculture- or environment-related ministries to take action against them -- even though the ivory trade is banned under Cites.
When Cites issued two suspensions for Laos -- one last year and the other this year -- for failing to prepare an action plan and progress report to show its measures to fight ivory trafficking, it meant that, theoretically, no country was supposed to trade with Laos in any Cites designated species. But the suspensions are a recommendation rather than legally binding instructions, and experts believe no country actually suspended trade with Laos.
"They [the DNP and agricultural ministries in each country] think they are the only agencies responsible for fighting wildlife crime and they don't think they need police," said Mr Broussard. "And for them, wildlife issues are mainly related to the sustainability or legality of trade and Cites regulations rather than focusing on the transnational organised nature of the crimes associated to this trade."
Cites programme and communications officer Liu Yuan said regional wildlife enforcement networks such as Asean-Wen have an important role to play in creating a multi-agency approach to combat illegal wildlife trade, as they promote communication and cooperation among customs, police and wildlife agencies at the regional level. He refused to comment further on Thailand's role as the secretariat of Asean-Wen, noting the Cites secretariat has no mandate to review the work of Asean-Wen.
'A THAILAND PROGRAMME'
Asean-Wen was driven by Thailand from the start, with the DNP being the host of Asean-Wen's programme coordination unit -- essentially the secretariat -- since 2009. Before that, the environmental police were the temporary host.The unit facilitates and coordinates technical support for the network, including hosting meetings and workshops. All training for Asean member state agencies is done jointly with and through the secretariat.
The unit is under the responsibility of the DNP's Wild Fauna and Flora Protection Division.
"We have four staff there [at the secretariat office] but they don't do anything because Asean-Wen has no activities whatsoever," said the division's director Somkiat Soontornpitakkool.
In its interview with key informants, a 2013 mid-term evaluation prepared by independent consultants for USAid found that all member countries agreed that the secretariat was not very effective in providing support to its members in ensuring the smooth functioning of an integrated regional law enforcement network.
When asked about their interactions with the secretariat, some interviewees questioned its value and benefits, and viewed it mainly as a distributor of newsletters and information compiled from the other member states. "The DNP does provide a free office and some low-level support staff sit there, but are mainly doing DNP business," said an NGO source familiar with the issue.
The Asean-Wen website was offline for several months, and current updates are only going to the news section, which mainly features the work of Thai authorities.
"There is an erroneous perception among some countries that, because of its location in Bangkok, the programme coordination unit is strictly a Thailand programme, which serves to diminish its acceptance and support in the Asean network," said the USAid report.
LACK OF FUNDING
Critics say Asean-Wen does not have the financial capacity to maintain its regional network following the phasing out of USAid funding, a trend which started in 2013.
USAid's regional support to combat wildlife trafficking in Asia between 2006-2016 amounted to $19.77 million. Of that amount, about $1 million was spent on Asean-Wen's secretariat.
Asean-Wen was going strong for eight years, with wildlife related enforcement activities -- namely arrests and seizures -- rising more than tenfold between 2006 and 2013, according to statistics provided by Freeland. Then it went down when the DNP started to take sole responsibility. Thailand has allocated financial support to Asean-Wen in its national budget through the DNP, contributing $432,990 from 2007 to 2015.
The real battle was to get the other nine Asean countries to help pay for the regional secretariat so that they could work together as a network.
A source who has been involved in Asean-Wen from the start told Spectrum that many Asean member states were disappointed that Thailand let the secretariat almost die without USAid financial support during its last two years.
During its annual meeting last year, member countries were ready to support a "sustainability plan" entailing that each member country put forth $10,000 a year into an Asean-Wen account to fund the secretariat.
"But a Thai official who was responsible for the secretariat was worried that the money would go to supporting the Asean-Wen law enforcement extension office [located inside the Royal Thai Police] and not the secretariat, so he fought against it," said the source. "It confused the other countries because they thought Thailand wanted their help."
Mr Somkiat denied the incident ever happened, saying that member states have never been able to agree on contributions.
He said there was another problem: Asean member countries never finished the job of setting up Asean-Wen as a legal entity, leading to problems about where funding would go. This meant the network could not receive direct funding from other countries, which is why USAid provided financial support in the past through Freeland.
The DNP is currently studying ways to set up Asean-Wen as a legal entity, said Mr Somkiat.
But Mr Somkiat predicted that the role of Asean-Wen will substantially fade, paving the way for Asean's security arm to combat wildlife crime, following the inclusion of wildlife crime and timber trafficking as a priority focus last year.
"The original wildlife enforcement network did not conduct any arrests, but the new [working group] has a clean slate, with the Royal Thai Police as the main focal point," he said. "The role of wildlife crime suppression will now fall under [the security pillar]."
This story is the second in a series examining animal trafficking in Thailand and the region.
ANIMAL FARM: National Parks officials feed some of the 137 tigers taken from the Tiger Temple. Controversy broke out there last month when over dozens of dead tiger cubs were found. NARONG SANGNAK
CRAWLING BACK TO SAFETY: A National Parks official inspects a Burmese star tortoise that was rescued from smugglers. NARONG SANGNAK
NO MONKEY BUSINESS: A two-year-old orangutan is given a health check before being repatriated to Indonesia. Photos: REUTERS and EPA
STOLEN TUSKS: About two tonnes of ivory were crushed and incinerated last year in a campaign to discourage the illegal trade. CHAIWAT SUBPRASOM
IN CHARGE: Somkiat Soontornpitakkool, whose DNP unit hosts the Asean-Wen secretariat. Photo: SUPPLIED