FloraGuard: Tackling the Online Illegal Trade in Endangered Plants Through a Cross-Disciplinary ICT-Enabled Methodology

• Author: Geoff Neumann,Anita Lavorgna,Brian Pickering,Stuart E. Middleton
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1043986220910297
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986220910297

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2020, Vol. 36(3) 428 –450

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986220910297

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Article

FloraGuard: Tackling the

Online Illegal Trade in

Endangered Plants Through

a Cross-Disciplinary ICT-

Enabled Methodology

Anita Lavorgna1, Stuart E. Middleton2,

Brian Pickering2, and Geoff Neumann2

Abstract

This article presents a part of the ongoing Economic and Social Research Council

(ESRC)-funded project “FloraGuard: Tackling the illegal trade in endangered plants”

that relies on cross-disciplinary approaches to analyze online marketplaces for the

illegal trade in endangered plants, and explores strategies to develop digital resources

to assist law enforcement in countering and disrupting this criminal market. This

contribution focuses on how the project brought together computer science,

criminology, conservation science, and law enforcement expertise to create a tool

for the automatic gathering of relevant online information to be used for research,

intelligence, and investigative purposes. The article also discusses the ethical standards

applied and proposes the concept of “artificial intelligence (AI) review” to provide a

sociotechnical solution that builds trustworthiness in the AI approaches used for this

type of cross-disciplinary information and communications technology (ICT)-enabled

methodology.

Keywords

wildlife trafficking, plant crimes, explainable AI, ethics in online research, natural

language processing

1University of Southampton, UK

2Gamma House, Southampton, UK

Corresponding Author:

Anita Lavorgna, Associate Professor of Criminology, Department of Sociology, Social Policy &

Criminology, University of Southampton, Murray Building, 58 Salisbury Road, Southampton SO17 1BJ,

UK.

Email: a.lavorgna@soton.ac.uk

910297CCJXXX10.1177/1043986220910297Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeLavorgna et al.

research-article2020

Lavorgna et al. 429

Introduction

Over the last 60 years, the horticultural trade, and particularly the market of exotic and

wild plants, has increased significantly (Novoa et al., 2017; Sajeva et al., 2007). Exotic

and wild plants are harvested and traded all over the world to use their parts and

derivatives for a variety of purposes, including as pharmaceuticals, beauty products,

and food. Alongside the legal trade in plants and their derivatives, the profitability of

this market has contributed to the increase in illegal commerce, with endangered spe-

cies traded in contravention to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered

Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The internet has further increased the ille-

gal trade of plants and their derivatives, facilitating the connection of supply and

demand and making it a real hybrid (online and offline) market (Lavorgna, 2014). No

matter how highly specialized the market in a certain species is, it is much easier to

find potential buyers or sellers online than in the physical world (Interpol, 2013, 2018;

Lavorgna, 2014; Olmos-Lau & Mandujano, 2016; Sajeva et al., 2013; Wu, 2007).

Within this context, there is consensus that the policing of such criminal activity is

still limited and poorly resourced (Elliott, 2012; Lavorgna, 2014; Lemieux, 2014;

Runhovde, 2017). A major challenge is the fact that law enforcement agencies have

limited training opportunities and lack of equipment and specific expertise to counter

this illegal trade effectively (CITES, 2016; World Wildlife Fund [WWF], 2016, 2018).

Crimes against wildlife have low priority on the law enforcement agenda (International

Fund for Animal Welfare [IFAW], 2008); as a result, investigations are generally

sparse (Fajardo del Castillo, 2016; Zimmerman, 2003). As such, there are minimal

consequences for those perpetrating wildlife trafficking, making it a high-profit, low-

risk criminal business (Hinsley, Nuno, et al., 2017). Consequently, the question of how

we can best control and prevent this criminal market needs to be addressed.

This article presents our (United Kingdom) Economic and Social Research Council-

funded project “FloraGuard: Tackling the illegal trade in endangered plants,” which

analyses the criminal market in endangered plants involving the United Kingdom

using mixed methods and cross-disciplinary approaches, and explores strategies to

develop digital resources to assist law enforcement. For the scope of this article, we

will focus on a specific part of the project, which brings together computer science,

criminology, conservation science (plant ecology), and law enforcement expertise to

create a tool to gather relevant online information on illegal trade in endangered plants

more effectively to be used by researchers for analyses, and by law enforcement and

other stakeholders for intelligence and investigative purposes. After presenting a brief

outline on the illegal trades in plants and their research significance, the article contin-

ues by presenting the peculiar characteristics of the approach we are using in our

(ongoing at the time of writing) research project (our sampling strategy, the data col-

lection methods, and the strategy for data analysis). The rest of the article conceptual-

izes and elaborates on the information and communications technology (ICT)-enabled

methodology we propose for work analyzing online markets and communities, with a

specific focus on ethics. Finally, the article introduces the idea of an “Artificial

Intelligence (AI) review” to be included in sociotechnical studies relying on AI