MEETING WITH ANDREA CROSTA
published by: Marco Donazzan
EARTH’S CIA:
On Friday the 22nd, which also was Earth day, I had the pleasure of talking to Andrea Crosta, founder of Earth League International, in his words, Earth’s CIA. I met a very interesting person, who was extremely passionate about what he does. He had solid plans for his organisation’s future, and he made me look at environmental issues in a different light. I hope you’ll be as intrigued as I was while learning about this alternative side to the fight against environmental crime.
How would you define yourself? Could you describe your job and the NGO you founded, Earth League International?
I define myself as a professional of environmental and wildlife crime. I respect activists very much, but we are not activists. We have a specific professional background: my team members and myself spent many years not working in this field. My right arm is a former FBI and CIA agent, I have crime analysts and cyber experts in my team. So we are professionals fighting environmental crime in a new way, a more sophisticated way. Our mission is to research and investigate the most important wildlife trafficking networks in the world, and to go after the most important environmental criminals in the world.
How did you start the Elephant Action League, then Earth League International? How was the idea born?
First of all, I was born with a really big passion for nature, wildlife protection and animals in general. In fact, I got a master’s degree in natural sciences and zoology at the university of Milan in Italy. After that I did another master’s degree in entrepreneurship and innovation, a sort of business administration. I wanted to try to do business as well, so I launched the second eCommerce company in Italy in 1998. I went all the way up, and then a few years later, the NASDAQ stock exchange crashed. For this reason I decided to move on to other kinds of technologies dealing with homeland security, antiterrorist intelligence investigations, and crime. In 2010 I was in Kenya, for my job, and at that time we were losing around 40000 elephants every year. The whole world was asking the Rangers to solve this gigantic problem, but it was very clear that they could not do it. I started thinking about applying my knowledge in intelligence gathering to these crimes. Elephant poaching is part of environmental crime, which is the fourth largest criminal endeavour on the planet, with revenues up to $260 billion per year. You cannot imagine to fight terrorism without intelligence, so why is nobody using intelligence to fight environmental crime? So, I decided to drop my previous job and establish this organisation, which had as a goal to create the first intelligence agency for Earth.
Has the ivory trade ban of 2018 in China, happened also thanks to the eco-documentary “The Ivory Game”, really reduced ivory demand? Do you think that the fight against illegal poaching of elephants is concluded?
The documentary we produced, the Ivory Game, certainly contributed to giving the final push to the Chinese government to make it happen. Of course, it was a combined effort by many people and many NGOs, over many years. I remember the documentary was invited to the Beijing international festival for documentaries, and also won a category, so it was really incredible. The problem is not solved, but it got better, however, it took a while for the demand for ivory to decrease. Nevertheless, after the ban we still saw significant seizures of ivory en route to China, especially from Nigeria, for example. They're still trying to sell ivory, because the market completely went underground. As an example, we can take rhino horn trafficking, which has been illegal forever, yet there is a black market because unfortunately there is demand.
Don’t you often feel powerless when confronted with huge powers? How do you cope with this?
Of course that will happen when you do something really difficult and maybe not as appreciated. In general, when you are an NGO like us, how you talk to people is also important. You do a good job in the field, but then you also have to be big enough to explain to the public what you actually do. This part for us is difficult because we are small and we don't have the resources that larger NGOs may have. But, especially in the past five or six years, we started getting really good results: a lot of important traffickers went to jail because of us, and we were able to produce reports that explain why what we do is important. And most importantly, many governments around the world started to appreciate our work: it's a win-win situation. We do part of their work, the part that they cannot do, or they don't want to do. Then at the end, we give them all this confidential information, free of charge, no strings attached, and they can also take the credit when they arrest the criminals.
What is your ultimate goal with your projects? Do you think you’ll ever reach it?
I ask myself every morning, and I don't really know if I’ll ever be able to reach it. What we have achieved until now is to create a sort of proof of concept: we created the first intelligence agency for earth. What we did was we built a small version of it, we have all the components we need: crime analysts, geospatial, undercover. We work with the government, we know how to analyse and process data. My dream now is to scale up and to become bigger because if you remain small, you might be able to do good, but you won’t change things. In order to change things, you need to get bigger. So my goal is to continue what we have been doing until now, but finally get bigger.
If you’re interested in the full video interview, scan the QR code which will lead you to a Google Drive file.