Combatting Wildlife Trafficking, Contraband and Smuggling

John served as Secretary-General of the CITES Secretariat from 2010-2018, and was founding Chair of the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) in 2010. He then joined African Parks as its first Special Envoy from 2018-2020. John is now the CEO of the Elephant Protection Initiative Foundation, Chair of the Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime and Chair of the UK Governments’ IWT Challenge Fund. John has worked in the private sector, in government and in senior positions with the World Commission on Dams, in Cape Town, South Africa; IUCN in Bonn, Germany; and UNEP in Nairobi, Kenya, where he served as Principal Adviser on Policy and Programme to the Executive Director and Team Leader of the Strategic Implementation Team. In Australia, after starting his career in private legal practice, John served as Chief Executive of the Department of Environment, Heritage and Aboriginal Affairs, Commissioner on the Murray Darling Basin Commission and as an adviser to State and Federal Environment Ministers. He established the Environmental Defender’s Office in his home State in 1992 and served as its founding Chair. John holds a Bachelor of Laws, Master of Laws (Environmental), and is an accredited mediator. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to wildlife conservation and protection through roles with international organizations.

Editor of World Security Report, Border Security Report and Director of the World Border Security Congress

Giovanni's work focuses on building capacity to tackle transnational organized crime in the environment sector, such as illegal wildlife trade, timber trafficking, fishery crime and waste trafficking. He has 17 years of experience in the field of project management related to criminal justice, organized crime, border control and law enforcement, largely in Southeast Asia. He worked in Afghanistan, Namibia, Northern Macedonia and he is now based in Thailand.

Giovanni holds a PhD in Development studies with focus on Environment, a Master in International Relations with focus on Corruption and an undergraduate degree in Economics with focus on drug markets.

Jenny Constantine is a Consultant and Trainer in Transnational Organized Crime. She has 18 years of practical and theoretical policing experience in the Trinidad & Tobago Police Service. Jenny holds a unique set of qualifications including a Master of Science in Transnational Crime, Justice and Security from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and a Certificate in Countering Transnational Organised Crime from the George C Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Germany.
Jenny is a member of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime Network of Experts. She has participated in numerous research projects and presented on organized crime topics both at home and abroad. She is also a Certified Train the Trainer for Human Trafficking Investigations and Lecturer at the Trinidad & Tobago Police Academy’s Advanced Training Programs Unit and the Recruit Training Program.

Justin Gosling is a law-enforcement and criminal justice consultant specialising in counter-trafficking. Justin’s professional experience spans 30 years, including service as a British police detective, and over 17 years working for a range of leading non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations, including UN agencies and INTERPOL. Most of his work focuses on environmental crime, particularly counter wildlife trafficking.

Justin has written and contributed to dozens of publications for practitioners, including the Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit (UNODC, 2012) and The Globalisation of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment (UNODC, 2010). Justin has conducted policy and capacity assessments, led covert investigations and trained hundreds of national enforcement officers in 18 countries across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America.

Justin holds an MSc in International Criminal Justice and a Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Research Methods. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a former member of the Advisory Group to the Defra Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, and a member of the Network of Experts of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.