Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System

The Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS) is an environmental governance project developed to assist in monitoring the effectiveness of enforcement and compliance of wildlife law at a national level. It was created by environment policy researcher Remi Chandran.

WEMS Project Presentation during CITES CoP14 meeting, The Hague.

Purpose and function

The purpose of WEMS initiative is to monitor trafficking and illegal wildlife crime through a joint effort carried out by United Nations bodies, national governments, private industries, civil society and research institutions, by building a common data collection and reporting mechanism at a national level. By bringing together various national institutions to a common information sharing platform, the initiative thereby builds the capacity of states to manage knowledge on wildlife crime trends and threat assessments. Research and analysis of the crime data is carried out through a designated national research institute, which conducts policy analysis identifying the trends and reasons for non compliance. It also attempts to analyse the legal decisions on wildlife crime from local courts, and identifies any weakness in legislation.

Partners

Lead institutions

• United Nations University, Institute for Advanced Studies

Government

• United Nations University, Campus Computing Centre

ICT for Development

• Lusaka Agreement Task Force

Research institutions

• Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, United States
• Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, Netherlands

International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation

• Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Earth Institute, Columbia University, United States
• Bond University, Australia
• United Nations University, Japan
• Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan

Industry

• Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)

Related work

• Bonn Convention
• World Conservation Monitoring Centre

See also

• Wildlife conservation
• Wildlife management
• CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)
• Environmental agreements