According to a paper recently published in the journal Science, environmental challenges like overfishing, wildlife trafficking, and endangered species may all have cascading social consequences when it comes to forced labour, organised crime and even piracy.

The paper, published by a group of University of California, Berkeley researchers, examines the connection between resource depletion and its unexpected social consequences. Although it can be difficult to pin down a direct causal link between these two issues, the authors point to several convincing examples.

“What we try to do in this paper is specifically highlight some of the mechanisms ...(through which) wildlife decline actually connects mechanistically…(and) how something like the loss of an endangered species or a really important food resource can precipitate something unexpected like an increase in child labour or an increase in regional conflict,” says Doug McCauley, an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara, who contributed to the paper as a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley.

“Obviously it is bad to be losing some of these species and impacting some of these populations, but it is much worse if we are losing these species…and on top of that, we are also seeing increased violence and increased social injustices like forced labour practices.”

The fishing industry provides perhaps the starkest example of resource depletion contributing to social conflict. As fishing stocks become depleted across the world, fishermen must travel further and spend more time fishing to maintain their catch, which drives up the cost of business.

As labour demands increase, fishing boats are turning in increasing numbers to human trafficking, employing children and migrant workers without pay.

In Thailand, for example, migrant workers are subjected to gruelling 18-20 hour days, physical abuse and little food or rest. Similarly, the authors believe that competition over fishing rights, combined with a weak national government, contributed to the rise of piracy off the Somali coast, spurring local fishers to trade fishing nets for weapons. The study observes that this pattern seems to be repeating itself in Senegal, Nigeria, and Benin.

However, not everyone agrees that scarcity of resources is the main issue facing the fishing industry. “It is the high demand for seafood and the scarcity of the labour that is the issue even more than the scarcity of seafood,” says Mark Lagon, a foreign services professor at Georgetown University and former US ambassador at large to combat human trafficking.

“The situation, for instance, in Thailand is a shortage of seasonal fisherman and the need to surge migrant fisherman from other Southeast Asian nations to fill that need.”

But resource-related tensions aren’t limited to the fishing industry, they also extend further inland. In West Africa, for example, as fish populations have declined, communities have relied more heavily on terrestrial animals for protein.

These terrestrial species have, in turn, become sparser, and hunting has become more difficult and time consuming. Again, in this context, hunters have begun to rely more heavily on child labour to subsidise increasing difficulties in obtaining food.

In Africa, ongoing wildlife trafficking also brings with it a litany of social consequences. The high value of ivory, for example, has attracted organised crime to the illegal wildlife trade, with grave implications for local communities.

“This paper is about recognising wildlife decline as a source of social conflict rather than a symptom,” says lead author Justin Brashares, associate professor of ecology and conservation at UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, in a press release.

“Billions of people rely directly and indirectly on wild sources of meat for income and sustenance, and this resource is declining. It's not surprising that the loss of this critical piece of human livelihoods has huge social consequences.”

The authors are not alone in their observations. When asked about the potential link between depleted fish populations and forced labour, Benjamin Smith, currently a senior officer for the International Labor Organisation’s Corporate Social Responsibility programme, offered anecdotal evidence from previous work with Fiji’s fishing industry.

“When I was (chief technical advisor) of the TACKLE child labour project, I learned of child labour induced or aggravated by climate change [and] stock depletion in Fiji,” he says. “Fishers were forced to go further out to sea, beyond the areas protected by reefs where conditions are less hazardous, at times with children accompanying them.”

According to the paper’s authors, what we need most is interdisciplinary cooperation and coordinated policy. Cooperation between disciplines will allow for a more integrated and effective approach to addressing both environmental and social challenges.

Policy makers must also expand their focus beyond the limited realm of legal enforcement. In addition to enforcing anti-poaching or labour laws, governments must address the root causes of these problems, including declining wildlife populations.