Looking back on all activities SPIDER WEB during 2018 and 2019, the SPIDER WEB Conference closed on 13 November 2019 with several recommendations. The most important ones are:
- Organisations that promote strengthening combating environmental crimes in the Western Balkan economies, should continue to support the region through organising and funding practical activities, such as capacity building and joint projects. As a quid pro quo, the organisations of the Western Balkan economies should provide the time resource of expertise to manage and run such activities.
- Building on the experiences of the SPIDER WEB project, a continuation with focus on practical and specialised training with a view on improving the detection of environmental crime cases, should be considered and encouraged. This could be horizontally (involving all actors in the compliance and enforcement chain) and/or vertically (focusing on a specific authority, e.g. customs, judiciary or environmental inspectorate).
- To establish partnerships with the private sector, as well as regular collaboration and exchange of information with national NGOs that operate in the field of the environment and to discuss appropriate measures to enhance the latter’s role in criminal proceedings.
- To develop prevention programmes and awareness campaigns against environmental crimes, targeted at the public sector and/or specific risk groups, risk behaviors, as well as identified new high-risk environmental subjects.
The final report of the SPIDER WEB project will become available soon. In addition, the online training toolkit will be made available, not only to all participants, but also to a much wider audience so that the collected knowledge can be shared and applied throughout the enforcement chain in Europe and even beyond.
